Joseph Ransdell

Joseph Eugene Ransdell
United States Senator for Louisiana
In office March 4, 1913 – March 3, 1931
Preceded by	Murphy J. Foster, Sr.
Succeeded by	Huey Pierce Long, Jr.
U.S. Representative for Louisiana's 5th congressional district
In office August 29, 1899 – March 3, 1913
Preceded by	Samuel Thomas Baird
Succeeded by	James Walter Elder
Born	October 7, 1858 Alexandria, Louisiana
Died	July 27, 1954 (aged 95) Lake Providence, Louisiana
Resting place	Lake Providence Cemetery
Political party	Democrat
Spouse(s)	Olive Irene Powell Ransdell (married 1885-1935, her death)
Relations	Francis Xavier Ransdell (brother) Frank Voelker, Sr. (nephew by marriage) John Martin Hamley (nephew by marriage) David Voelker (great-great-nephew)
Alma mater	Union College (New York)
Occupation	Attorney; farmer; real estate

Joseph Eugene Ransdell (October 7, 1858 – July 27, 1954) was an attorney and politician from his native Louisiana. Beginning in 1899, he was elected to seven consecutive terms as the United States Representative for his state's 5th congressional district. He subsequently served for three terms in the United States Senate before his defeat in the 1930 Democratic primary election for the seat by Governor Huey Pierce Long, Jr.

Background

Born in Alexandria in Rapides Parish in central Louisiana, Ransdell attended public schools. In 1882, he graduated from Union College in east central New York. He returned to Louisiana to read the law with an established firm, and was admitted to the bar in 1883.

He practiced law from 1883 to 1889 in the small town of Lake Providence in East Carroll Parish. During the 1880s, Ransdell practice law with his younger brother, Francis Xavier Ransdell, who years later was elected as a judge of the Louisiana 6th Judicial District Court. Joseph Ransdell served as district attorney for the 8th Judicial District of Louisiana from 1884 to 1896. He also cultivated cotton and pecan groves on a plantation than that he owned. From 1896 to 1899, he served on the Fifth Levee District Board. In 1898, he was a member of the Louisiana state constitutional convention

Career

U.S. Representative

In 1899, Ransdell was elected as to fill the vacancy created by the death of Samuel Thomas Baird (1861-1899). He won his first full term in Congress in 1900, having defeated the Republican businessman Henry E. Hardtner of Urania in La Salle Parish, 6,172 votes (90.8 percent) to 628 (9.2 percent). Hardtner was the last Republican to contest the seat until 1976, when Frank Spooner of Monroe waged a strong but losing challenge to the Democrat Jerry Huckaby, then of Ringgold in Bienville Parish and later in Lincoln Parish for the right to succeed Democrat Otto Passman. By 1910, Hardtner had switched to Democratic affiliation and served for two years as a state representative, the first member ever from La Salle Parish. From 1924 to 1928, Hardtner was a state senator.

U.S. Senator

Representative Ransdell's tenure in the U.S. House extended from August 29, 1899, to March 3, 1913. He was not a candidate for renomination in 1912, having instead been elected by the state legislature to the United States Senate, two years prior to the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which mandates direct election of Senators. In 1918, Ransdell defeated later U.S. Senator John Holmes Overton. Sr. (1875-1948) of Alexandria in a disputed vote. Ransdell won his third term in the Democratic primary in 1924, having defeated Lee Emmett Thomas, the mayor of Shreveport,

Ransdell served in the Senate from March 4, 1913, to March 3, 1931. But in 1930 Governor Huey Long ran in the Democratic primary against him for the seat and won. With 149,640 votes (57.3 percent), Long toppled Randsell, who polled 111,451 (42.7 percent). Long was then elected in the general election without Republican opposition.

Ransdell had appeared in 1927 at a Long political rally in Lake Providence, where his younger brother introduced Long. District Attorney Jefferson B. Snyder (1859-1951), another long-term advocate of planter interests, sat on the stage. Snyder had not really favored Long so much as he was convinced that Long would defeat his chief opponent, U.S. Representative Riley Joseph Wilson (1871-1946), the favorite of most planter interests, and Snyder wanted to influence the new governor. At the rally, Huey Long began "a harangue that castigated their closest friends and political allies and the old establishment itself, of which these men were a part."

Particularly outraged at Long's treatment of the Randsdells was state Senator Norris Charles Craft Williamson (1874-1949) of East Carroll Parish, the vice-president of the Constitutional League of Louisiana. He would not compromise with the Longs and retired to private life in 1932, rather than face likely defeat by the pro-Long faction.

T. H. Harris, the long-term Louisiana state superintendent of education, called Ransdell "one of the most lovable and distinguished citizens of the United States. [Yet] the people elected Long to the Senate because they believe that he can be of more use to them there. The people trust Long. I find it mighty easy to get on with Governor Long. I have seen the school appropriations increased by $1.9 million during the past two years. .."

Through his chairmanship of the House Committee on Public Health and National Quarantine, Ransdell passed a law bearing his name. The Ransdell Act established the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.

Later years and legacy

In 1920, Ransdell founded a printing firm in Washington, D.C., at a time when members of Congress could run businesses while also holding office. When his Senate tenure ended in 1931, Ransdell returned to Lake Providence to engage in real estate and growing cotton and pecans. He was a member of the board of supervisors of Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge from 1940 to 1944 during the administration of Governor Sam Houston Jones. Ransdell died in Lake Providence and is interred there at Lake Providence Cemetery.

Ransdell was a great-uncle of Frank Voelker, Jr., a Lake Providence attorney who chaired the former Louisiana State Sovereignty Commission during the administration of Governor Jimmie Davis and then ran unsuccessfully for governor in the 1963 Democratic gubernatorial primary. He withdrew before the balloting on December 7, 1963. Frank Voelker, Sr., judge of the Sixth Judicial District from 1937 until his death in 1963, was married to Ransdell's niece, Isabel. The senior Voelker was hence a son-in-law of Judge Francis Ransdell.

Ransdell's great-great nephew was the New Orleans entrepreneur and philanthropist David Ransdell Voelker. Following Hurricane Katrina, Democratic Governor Kathleen Blanco named David Voelker to the Louisiana Recovery Authority. Blanco's successor and past opponent, Republican Bobby Jindal, elevated Voelker to the chairmanship of the authority. In 2008, though he had been identified previously as a "longtime, diehard Republican," David Voelker was the largest donor in Louisiana to Democrat Barack Hussein Obama of Illinois, having given Obama $80,000, according to the proclaimed nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, D.C.

Ransdell named for his boyhood plantation in Rapides Parish the community of Elmwood southwest of Lake Providence, where he owned much of the land, for his boyhood plantation in Rapides parish. In 1976, more than thirty years after Ransdell's death, St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church in Lake Providence moved into a new building on a lot which the former senator had willed to the congregation. The new location at 207 Scarborough Street, is directly across the street from the earlier structure where Ransdell and his family had long worshiped.

Adras LaBorde, long-time managing editor of the Alexandria Town Talk and an inductee of the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield, penned a biography of Senator Ransdell in 1951.