Rose McConnell Long: From a Cake Contest to Huey Long's Senate Seat

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Rose McConnell Long was born on April 8, 1892, in Greensburg, Indiana. She met Huey Long by winning a cake baking contest he had organized to promote a product he was selling. After a two and a half year courtship they married in 1913, and a year later Huey turned to law and passed the bar. They had three children, Russell, Palmer Reed and Rose Lolita, as Huey rose to governor of Louisiana in 1928 and U.S. senator in 1930, building a highly centralized political machine. His assassination in 1935 left that machine without a clear successor and the state in political crisis.

Rose was appointed to fill her husband's Senate seat, then won the special election on April 21, 1936, to finish the term. She became only the third woman to serve in the Senate and the first to represent Louisiana, and with Arkansas Democrat Hattie Caraway already seated, it was the first time two women served in the Senate at once. She chose not to run for a full term, left in 1937, and later moved to Boulder, Colorado, near her daughter. She died on May 27, 1970, at 78, while her son Russell B. Long was serving as a U.S. senator from Louisiana.

The contest where she met Huey was his own promotional stunt, and she took the grand prize.
The episode questions the label widow's succession, noting she won an election rather than simply holding an appointment.
Her decision not to seek a six year term kept the Long name intact for her son's later Senate career.
Ann Dowd portrayed her in the 1995 TV movie Kingfish: A Story of Huey P. Long.
On February 1, 2014, she was inducted into the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield.

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