“We went back to the hotel for lunch. He said there was no need of me
coming up to Baton Rouge either that night or the next day, as the first
time the bills would come up for passage would be in the House on Monday
morning; it would be just routine up to that time. So I said Bob Maestri
[State Conservation Commissioner and later for ten years mayor of New
Orleans] and I would be in Baton Rouge on Monday morning, and then we
parted. Murphy Roden had been waiting to drive Huey to the capitol, and
they left, right after lunch. Everything indicated the going would be so
smooth and easy. Who could have dreamed that the next time I saw him,
only a day later, he would be waiting for Dr. Maes to come up from New
Orleans and try to save his life?”
* * * * *
Baton Rouge’s hotel lobbies and the State House corridors alike were
crowded by the time Murphy Roden and the Senator reached the skyscraper
capitol, where they went at once to his apartment on the twenty-fourth
floor. He had the state maintain a suite for him there because he felt
that at that height the freedom from pollen and dust enabled him to
sleep better.
Most of the House members were already on hand, but many of the senators
did not trouble to put in an appearance until the following day. Since
all bills were to be introduced in the House, the Senate had nothing
more momentous on its agenda than to meet, answer roll call, listen to
the chaplain’s invocation, and appoint two committees. One of these
would solemnly inform the governor, and the other the House, that the
Senate of Louisiana was lawfully convened and ready for business. Having
conveyed this somewhat less than startling intelligence, the token
quorum by which a constitutional mandate had been fulfilled could, and
in fact did, adjourn until Monday afternoon, at which time all bills
duly passed by the lower house would be laid before them.
These would be headed by House Bill Number One, the anti-Pavy
gerrymander, and a somewhat similar measure which was designed to keep
Congressman J. Y. Sanders, Jr., from returning to his home in Baton
Rouge to run for a judgeship. His father, a former governor and
congressman, stood at the very head of Huey Long’s _bête noire_ list.
Another measure high on Long’s “must” roster made provision for the fact
that his current senatorial term would expire unless renewed in the fall
of 1936 by re-election.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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