POLITICAL NOTES: Long’s Latest

Early one morning last week at Baton Rouge, James J. Bailey, Louisiana’s Secretary of State, died suddenly of pneumonia. Governor Huey Parham Long, the State’s 36-year-old political dictator, went around to the Bailey home to offer condolences. When he returned to the capitol, he said to pretty little Miss Alice Lee Grosjean, his hazel-eyed, auburn-haired, 24-year-old confidential secretary: “Miss Grosjean, write out a commission appointing Miss Alice Lee Grosjean Secretary of State, effective at once.” An hour later Miss Grosjean took the oath of office, telephoned her parents at Shreveport that she was “just thrilled to death.” Thus did Louisiana get its first female Secretary of State (salary $7,000).

At 15, Miss Grosjean had left high school to marry James Terrell of El Dorado, Ark. At 18 she went to work for Lawyer Huey Parham Long. She has been constantly with him ever since. She campaigned with him for the Governorship in 1928, helped him beat impeachment proceedings in 1929, worked to win him his nomination for the U. S. Senate this year. Three years ago she divorced Terrell. During this year’s campaign Terrell threatened to sue Governor Long for alienating his wife’s affections. Mrs. Rose McConnell Long whom the Governor married in 19103 after she had won a baking contest with a lard substitute he was peddling, does not regularly reside with her husband in ihe executive mansion at Baton Rouge or in his elaborate hotel suite in New Orleans. She remains at Shreveport where she says she prefers the schools for the three Long youngsters.

Last week’s appointment which elevated Miss Grosjean to a State office higher than any woman had ever held before in Louisiana set many a gossipy tongue to wagging. It also set to wagging the new Secretary of State’s tongue: ”I’ll probably have a little time now to go to dances, play some golf and tennis. . . . I’m going to modernize the office. . . . I’m going to take a vacation. . . . I love to dance. . . . I don’t believe a woman’s place is in politics. . . . I’d rather manage a home. . . . This appointment will not prevent my going to Washington with the Governor as his secretary when he takes his post in the Senate in 1932.”*

*Governor Long, as the Democratic nominee, will be elected to the Senate next month. However he does not plan to take his seat there until the expiration of his gubernatorial term, lest his successor, by dismissals, annihilate the Long political patronage machine.