Word: whip
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...tying him to the crime empire of Carlos Marcello. One Louisiana mafia henchman admitted a few years ago to having carried money from Marcello to Long; others in the mob there take credit for using Marcello and Teamsters money to buy seven Senate votes to help elect Long Senate Whip in 1965. The Senator, it should also be noted, took a very active interest in the Jimmy Hoffa case earlier this decade...
Perhaps unwisely, Carter has insisted that both he and the Congress should have their first-year performance in domestic matters judged almost solely on the energy legislation. The tumultuous tone and tactics of the struggle?including a precedent-smashing Senate filibuster and a whip-cracking maneuver by Majority Leader Robert Byrd to end it?have reinforced the public perception of a wrangling and perhaps even ineffectual Congress...
...made it practically a sacred relic. But it had also been used by Huey P. Long, the Kingfish himself, while he served in the U.S. Senate, and then by his son Rus sell. South Carolina's Senator Olin Johnston coveted that desk. Russell Long was running for Senate majority whip in 1964 when the matter of the desk came up. Long needed every vote he could command or cajole from his colleagues. His was a classic dilemma, solved in classic Russell Long style. He cut a deal ? first with his father's shade, then with Olin Johnston. On bended...
Long won a close race for majority whip, and when Olin Johnston died the following year, he got the desk back as well. He has not had to swap it since. But that is not to say he would not ? if the quid were worth the quo. Russell Long has raised the art of political horse trading to the highest level in living congressional memory. An unabashed wheeler-dealer, he scratches backs with a fine, silken stroke, then calls in his debts with a firm arm twist. He also repays his own lous with interest. "I gave Russell...
After Long reached the post of majority whip, a deteriorating marriage and a drinking problem eroded his power, and in 1969 he was unseated by Ted Kennedy. He repaid the favor two years later when he helped mastermind Byrd's upset victory for the whip post over Kennedy. Settled into a new marriage, he began rebuilding his influence at about the same time...