Long, Rose McConnell, 1892-1970

Rose McConnell Long (April 8, 1892 – May 27, 1970) was a United States Senator and the wife of Huey Long. She was the third woman to ever serve as a U.S. Senator, and the first from Louisiana. She was a member of the Democratic Party.

Born in Greensburg, Indiana, her family moved to Shreveport, Louisiana in 1901, where Rose attended the public schools and later became a local schoolteacher. She met Huey Long after she won a cake baking contest that he had organized to promote a product he was selling at the time. After a two-and-a-half year courtship, Rose and Huey were married in 1913. The Longs moved to New Orleans, where Rose worked as a secretary to pay Huey’s way through the Tulane Law School. After finishing a three-year program in seven months, he was admitted to the bar in 1915. Rose Long put her stenography skills to use on behalf of her husband’s early political campaigns and served as a political adviser while raising their three children. After serving on the state railroad commission, Huey Long was elected as governor of Louisiana in 1928 and then U. S. Senator from Louisiana in 1930. Long completed his term as Governor before assuming his Senate seat in 1932.

After her husband's assassination in 1935, Rose Long was appointed to serve in his seat in the United States Senate until a special election could be held. She won the special election on April 21, 1936, to serve the remaining months of her husband's term, but declined to run that fall for re-election to a full six-year term. As Arkansas Senator Hattie Caraway was already serving in the Senate when Rose Long was elected, it marked the first time that two women had ever served simultaneously in that body.

After leaving the Senate in 1937, Rose Long retired to private life in Shreveport. She died in Boulder, Colorado, in 1970, where she lived near her daughter, Rose Lolita Long McFarland. She was also survived by her sons, Palmer Reid Long of Shreveport, Louisiana, and Russell B. Long, then the sitting United States Senator from Louisiana. Huey, Rose, and Russell Long were the only father-mother-child combination in Senate history.