Thought experiment (and possible TL): What if Cleo Moore gets into politics?

While I was preparing today's classic-actress entry for the Cahiers du Cinema thread ( https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...cinema-the-classic-movie-buffs-thread.396450/ ), I got to thinking about what if today's subject, B-movie/film noir "bad girl" Cleo Moore:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleo_Moore

had gotten into politics. She and her family had strong connections to the Long dynasty, and her parents were heavy-hitter activists in the Louisiana Democratic Party in the Huey Long era - in fact, Cleo herself was briefly married to the Kingfish's youngest son, Palmer. She joked at one time that she was thinking about running for governor of Louisiana, so that got me thinking; what if she decided to get serious about it, and ended up possibly being a well-enough-known, highly-regarded-enough national Democratic figure to be able to make at least a serious run for the Presidency, say, in 1992? (She was born only five months after George H. W. Bush, so she'd have been 68 in that year, when he ran for reelection OTL.)

I put up several posts in the Politiyanks thread about the idea, and the scenario I like best so far, more or less, has her, impelled by Ronald Reagan's example and with the encouragement of the Long family (e.g., Senator Russell Long) and the "pro-Long" faction in Louisiana Democratic politics generally, running for the governorship of Louisiana in 1971-72. In my scenario, she'd overcome initial skepticism about a "blonde B-movie bombshell from Baton Rouge" (mmmm, maybe I should incorporate that into the title if this does go to a full TL ;) ) wanting to win elective office to defeat Edwin Edwards and Bennett Johnston in the primaries, then beat David Treen in the general, does well enough to win election again in 1975, then move on up to the Senate in 1978 when Allen Ellender, who due to butterflies lives longer than OTL, either dies or retires. With her two decades' track record in Baton Rouge and Washington, she'd probably be one of the best-known Democrats nationwide by 1990. Very little appears to be recorded about her political opinions online, so she's pretty much a clean slate politically. For the purposes of the current exercise, I think it likely that she'd be associated with the "Blue Dog" moderate/conservative Democratic faction in Congress and be a founding member of the Democratic Leadership Council or its TTL analogue in 1985. One idea I had was that she might take a cameo role (maybe it even metastasizes into a full-on supporting role) in 1989's Steel Magnolias, which is set in her state, and the favorable notice she gets therefrom helps fire her up to take the big plunge in 1992.

I think the idea is worth pursuing, if not here in post-1900 then at any rate in the Writer's Forum, but I'd need assistance from people knowledgable about 1960's-1980's Louisiana politics to help pull it off. P.S. If you think this scenario is silly, just remember that a lot of people in Hollywood (and elsewhere) thought exactly the same thing about Reagan when he decided to run for the governorship of California in 1966. Cf. Jack Warner's famous crack when he heard about it: "No, no, no, you've got it backwards. Jimmy Stewart for governor, Ronald Reagan for best friend."
 
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So, this is what Cleo Moore said about the possibility of getting into politics (this is on several classic-film-related sites):

In 1960, Moore announced her intention to run for governor of Louisiana. "I was married to Huey Long's son for six weeks," she explained, "and while that doesn't make me an authority on politics, I know a lot about Louisiana. Matter of fact, I'm related to 50 per cent of the people down there. I'm sure I stand a good chance of getting elected." Elsewhere, she stated that she wanted to become "a political Florence Nightingale" and that any great politician had to be a great actor. If elected, she promised more rights for women, but asserted that all her right-hand men would be men. Although this was a mere publicity stunt, and Moore never actually ran for governor, it became so firmly implanted in her press copy that the New York Times stated it as fact in her obituary and is included in Hal Erickson's All Movie Guide.

As noted above, in OTL this was never anything more than a publicity stunt, but the POD would be that she does this for real...and succeeds, leading on to other things. I don't think she could do this in the early 1960's, but circa 1972 when she'd acquired business success and maturity (the other POD would be, as I mentioned previously, her maintaining good health) would be the right time for her to make her move. Based on what she says above, I can see moderate feminism being a part of her platform, though she might clash with the harder-line segments of what was then called the "women's liberation" movement on occasion.
 
Honestly, I don't see her going much further than Helen Gahagan Douglas, especially with Louisiana being more conservative than California.
 
Honestly, I don't see her going much further than Helen Gahagan Douglas, especially with Louisiana being more conservative than California.

Don't forget, in the scenario as I posited it, she'd have the backing of the Long political machine. This could, by all means, cause her some problems down the line, but then Louisiana politics is Louisiana politics, and I never said she'd be running as a left-winger (in fact, for the scenario I have in mind, she'd be a "Blue Dog"/DLC type). I want @Beata Beatrix to weigh in on this, since her mother is Louisianan. (If the scenario turns out to be too implausible to work in the tight standards of Post-1900, then I'll take it to the Writer's Forum and work from there. This is just an exploration at this point.)
 
I know Texas had an oil slowdown around (?) 1986.

Not in the industry, but I live in the state.

I was thinking that Cleo's governorship would be helped along by the energy-related events of the 1970's, which caused major booms in the oil-producing areas of the country (including Louisiana). So the slowdown wouldn't happen until, TTL, she was already well into her second term in the Senate, and I see her clashing with the Reagan Administration, presuming Reagan is elected TTL, on relief for Texas, Oklahoma and the Gulf.
 
President Reagan

Address to the Nation on Tax Reform
May 28, 1985

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=38697

" . . . Under our new tax proposal the oil and gas industry will be asked to pick up a larger share of the national tax burden. The old oil depletion allowance will be dropped from the tax code except for wells producing less than 10 barrels a day. By eliminating this special preference, we'll go a long way toward ensuring that those that earn their wealth in the oil industry will be subject to the same taxes as the rest of us. . . "
Boom, there's some conflict right then and there! :p

This was one of President Reagan's early poker moves in what would become the Tax Reform Act — either with or without this! — which was passed and signed more than a year later in Oct. '86.
 
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