Catherine (Cathy) S. Long married into Louisiana’s
legendary political family and spent nearly four decades
immersed in state and national politics as a politician’s wife.
When her influential husband, Gillis William Long, died
suddenly in 1985, Democratic Party leaders believed Cathy
Long was a logical choice to succeed him, having served as
his campaign surrogate and close advisor. She easily won the
special election to his seat. “The biggest change in my life is
not Congress,” Congresswoman Long told a reporter shortly
after taking office. “It was the death of my husband.”1
Cathy Small was born in Dayton, Ohio, on February 7,
1924. She graduated from high school in Camp Hill,
Pennsylvania, and studied at Louisiana State University
where she received a BA in 1948. In 1947 Cathy Small
married Gillis Long, a decorated World War II veteran
and member of one of Louisiana’s most powerful political
families. He was a distant cousin of the flamboyant
Louisiana political boss Huey Pierce Long and longtime
U.S. Senator Russell Billiu Long. In 1962 Gillis Long
won election to the U.S. House of Representatives from
a central Louisiana district encompassing Baton Rouge.
A supporter of civil rights, he was targeted in 1964 by
his cousin, Speedy Oteria Long, who defeated him for renomination by charging that Gillis Long had aided the
passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.2
Long had voted with
the House leadership to expand the membership of the
House Rules Committee, effectively giving a majority to
civil rights advocates and unleashing a logjam of reforms.
After his defeat, Long served in the Lyndon B. Johnson
administration for two years before returning to private
law practice. Gillis Long won re-election to the U.S. House
in 1972 to the first of seven consecutive terms in his old
district. He became one of the most respected figures in the
Democratic Party as chairman of the House Democratic
Caucus in the early 1980s, a high-ranking member of the
Rules Committee, and a close ally of Speaker Thomas P.
(Tip) O’Neill Jr. of Massachusetts.
While raising their two children, George and Janis,
Cathy Long’s early career included nonelective political
work. After college, she had worked as a pharmacist’s mate
in the United States Navy. She subsequently was a staff
assistant to Oregon Senator Wayne Lyman Morse and Ohio
Representative James G. Polk. She also served as a delegate
to Democratic National Conventions and was a member
of the Louisiana Democratic Finance Council and the state
party’s central committee. She put that experience to work on behalf of her husband’s career—campaigning, canvassing
the district to hear constituent issues, and acting as an
informal adviser to Gillis Long. “You couldn’t have found
a wife that was more active than I was,” she recalled. A
heart condition slowed her husband in his later years in the
House, leaving Cathy Long to make the frequent trips back
to the district for the “physical campaigning.”3
Throughout
her husband’s political career, Cathy Long recalled, she
campaigned more than the candidate. “I feel thoroughly at
home with campaigning, I’ve done it so much,” she said.4
When Gillis Long died on January 20, 1985, the party
turned immediately to his widow to run for his vacant seat.
“From the very minute Gillis died, I was under terrific
strain to run,” Cathy Long recalled. “One person called
me at 3 a.m. that morning and said, ‘You have to run.’
At the wake I had two people give me checks for $1000
each.”5
On February 4, 1985, she declared her intention to
seek the nomination.6
Long ran on her name recognition
with a central campaign pledge to fulfill her husband’s
legislative interests without offering many specific policy
positions of her own. She also noted her familiarity with
the institution: “I don’t have to start from scratch. I already
know the way Congress works.”7
The Baton Rouge-centered
district contained a cross-section of the Louisiana economy,
with rice, soybean, and sugar farmers, as well as labor
union interests. African Americans made up 33 percent
of the constituency.8
Unemployment, which had eclipsed
12 percent in the district, emerged as the primary issue
in the campaign. Long’s principal competitor, Louisiana
state legislator John (Jock) Scott, challenged her refusal to
commit to positions on the issues: “If Cathy Long can’t talk
to us here, how can she talk for us in Washington?”9
Cathy
Long defeated Scott by a more than a two-to-one margin
with 56 percent of the vote (in a field with three other
candidates) and carried all but one of 15 parishes in a
special election on March 30, 1985.10 Sworn in on April
4, 1985, Cathy Long was appointed to the Committee on
Public Works and Transportation and the Committee on
Small Business. Among her chief allies were two longtime
friends and Members of the state delegation: Representatives
John Berlinger Breaux and Corinne Claiborne (Lindy)
Boggs who, in 1973, succeeded her late husband, Majority
Leader Thomas Hale Boggs Sr.
As a Representative, Cathy Long hewed to the same
agenda as her husband, who often criticized the Ronald
Reagan administration.11 Her first major vote was against aid to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels. For the most part,
however, she focused on Louisiana’s economic needs. She
sought to preserve price supports for sugar and opposed an
amendment to the Mississippi River and Tributaries Project
Bill that would have required local governments in the lower
Mississippi Valley to share the costs of flood control. It was
a program that the federal government had for decades
recognized as an issue of national concern. Long also joined
her colleagues in the Louisiana delegation in introducing
legislation to authorize the Legal Services Corporation to
make a grant to the Gillis W. Long Poverty Law Center at
Loyola University in New Orleans.
Additionally, Representative Long worked on issues
impacting women and other minorities. She cosponsored
the 1985 Economic Equity Act, which secured pension and
health benefits for women and sought to restrict racial and
sex discrimination in insurance practices. In foreign affairs,
the Louisiana Representative voted for economic sanctions
against South Africa for its apartheid system and worked to
provide aid for Nicaraguan refugees.
Shortly after taking office, Long sought to dispel notions
that she was a one-term caretaker. “I would not have run
if I didn’t want to stay,” she told a reporter. “Of course I’m
going to run again. It was part of the decision I made at
the time.”12 Yet, several months later, citing the burden of
remaining campaign debts from her special election and a
year in which she lost nearly a half dozen close friends and
family members, Long declined to run for re-election in
1986. “The decision was not an easy one,” she told reporters
on October 15, 1985. “I sought this seat to carry on my
husband’s work. I would love to continue the job, but the
weight of my current debt jeopardizes the possibility of
a credible campaign in 1986. I believe it better for me to
step aside now to give all others the opportunity to pursue
this job.”13
After Congress, Long worked as a volunteer in
Washington, DC, area homeless shelters and as a reading
tutor. She also spent time with her grandchildren, who grew
up near the capital. At the age of 95, Cathy Long died on
November 23, 2019, in Chevy Chase, Maryland.14
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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