Louisiana Governor

Gubernatorial elections on the Mississippi's lower left bank are cross and colorful. Most Louisianans, state-proud, would rather be Governor than President. Republicans being as scarce in Louisiana as frogs in the Sahara, an all-Democratic primary such as was held last week, is all that matters.

This year's tusslers were Ormel Hinkley Simpson, who rose from Lieutenant-Governor to fill the big chair when Governor Henry J. Fuqua died in 1926; Huey P. Long, a talkative, curly-headed bantamweight on the Public Service Commission; and U. S. Representative Riley Joseph Wilson, who tried to gain fame as a Mississippi flood controller.

Louisiana elections are won and lost in the newspapers. When Candidate Wilson ran strongly last week, his votes feathered the cap of the New Orleans Item, edited by Marshall Ballard, "intellectual roughneck.'' When Candidate Wilson admitted defeat and withdrew, leaving Candidate Long with an enormous lead over impotent Governor Simpson and obviating a second primary, that was triumph for the New Orleans Item and The Shreveport Times, published by aristocratic Colonel Robert Ewing. Governor Simpson's trouncing by Candidate Long was a bitter trouncing for the famed New Orleans Times-Picayune.