On the other hand, Davis reached out to the Longites when he commuted the prison sentence imposed on former LSU President James Monroe Smith in the Louisiana Hayride scandals of the late 1930s.
Earl Long was seeking the lieutenant governorship on the Lewis Morgan "ticket" and led in the first primary in 1944, but he lost the runoff to J. Emile Verret of New Iberia, then the president of the Iberia Parish School Board.