Earl K. Long Politickin' in Sicily Island, 1938

The first article appeared in the July 28, 1938 edition of Biloxi Daily Herald.

Transcription:

Newt Mills And Earl Long Clash

Sicily Island, La., July 28 [1938]

Louisiana political circles were confronted today with a wide-open split between Representative Newt V. Mills of Monroe, seeking re-election from the fifth congressional district, and Lieut. Gov. Earl K. Long, likely gubernatorial candidate in 1940.

Long and Mills exchanged sharp words from the same platform at a political rally here yesterday.  Their blunt charges that the other was a "double-crosser" and Mills' announcement that he would support Senator James A. Noe of Monroe for the governorship against Long surprised a crowd of more than 1,000.

The lieutenant-governor touched off the fireworks after Mills and four other candidates for Fifth District nomination had bid for the crowd's votes.

A year later, the following article appeared in the June 30, 1939 edition of the Indiana Evening Gazette.

Transcription:

By JAMES E. CORWN

NEA Service Special Correspondent

NEW ORLEANS-All Louisiana these days is remembering a homely farm boy phrase [Lieut.] Gov. Earl Kemp Long spoke a year ago.  The scene was Sicily Island, Louisiana.  Earl Long rose before a joint mass meeting, faced friends and enemies, and opened his speech with seven words now historic:

"Now, I'm going to skin a skunk!"

Earl Long now sits in the governor's chair in Baton Rouge, with the great Maestri machine behind him, and all the power the law and party politics can place in a governor's hands in Louisiana.

Earl Long has a lot of "skunks" to skin, and today he has the knife to do the job if he wants to.  For a long time, now, a lot of "the boys" have been kicking Earl's houn'-dawg around.  They thought Earl was neatly shelved in the innocuous job of lieutenant-governor, from which he would retire, his term ends May 12, 1940, and become just one more Louisiana lawyer.

And they get little consolation from the interview Earl Long gave when he first learned Governor Leche had announced he was going to resign.

"I'm not governor yet, so I have no statement to make," said Lieut.-Gov. Long, in the luxurious suite of Mayor Robert S. Maestri of New Orleans in the Roosevelt Hotel.