Ernest W. Gibson Jr. was the scion of a small political dynasty, the son of a United States Senator from Vermont. Like all successful Vermont politicians, Gibson was a Republican. He briefly served as Senator following his father's death, before running for Governor. In primarying the incumbent he violated one of the sacred norms of the Vermont Republican Party but ran anyway. Gibson was a progressive, and an internationalist, but respected the roots of Vermont.
Even as Huey Long's power, and willingness to subvert democracy to keep it, grew Vermont had remained largely untouched. Republicans across the nations were harassed, attacked, and faced with stuffed ballots. Republican conventions and primaries were manipulated to produce unelectable candidates. But Vermont had backed the Grand Old Party when Abraham Lincoln was an obscure ex-Congressman and was not willing to change. By 1948 only New England and some plains states had what could be termed functional opposition.
Long's (technically illegal) influencing of the GOP Convention was laxer than it had been in '40 and '44, and Gibson, who saw it as his duty to fight for the nation nabbed the nomination. No matter, it was thought, another obscure nobody to lose to Long's fourth campaign. But Gibson was not a bland non-entity, nor was he a "burn it all down" conservative. He campaigned hard and fast, running a well-organized campaign. Even members of the embryonic Labor Party found his talk appealing. Long's Machines meanwhile were lethargic and complacent. It was a perfect storm.
Gibson still lost by a wide margin, but he had shaken the boat. The Republican Party was showing signs of life. This would not do.
Shortly after the electoral college met, Gibson and his wife were walking home from an event at their local library, when two men approached the couple and riddled them with bullets, before escaping in a getaway car. The bullets came from a gun commonly used by agents of the Bureau of Criminal Investigation. When local police attempted to investigate matters, BCI agents swarmed Vermont to take control of the case, as well as other matters.
Public opinion was appalled, and the assassination is the latest point one can mark the transition from "Long Administration" to "Long Regime." Any independence the Republican Party had still enjoyed was soon gone, as were political hopes of unseating Long. On the right, ex-Republicans drifted towards the new Liberty Party, while the Labor Party would capture much of the working-class vote in years to come. But the regime would not fall until after Long's Death.
In the wake of liberalization, BCI files were uncovered implicating Director J. Edgar Hoover in the organization of the murder, although the actual shooters were never identified. No concrete evidence proving Long ordered the killing has ever been found, but most scholars agree that the Kingfish had a hand in the assassination.
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