Gene & Junior

(See front cover) One year ago next week a young man in a white suit stepped out into a corridor of Louisiana's Capitol at Baton Rouge and changed the course of U. S. history by pumping a fatal bullet into Huey P.

Long. Since then the closest approach to the earthy, colorful antics and harangues of a Roosevelt-hating Democrat with which Louisiana's Senator used to pack the galleries and make national headlines have been the juvenilities of West Virginia's Rush D. Holt. Next week--one day before the anniversary of Long's death--Georgians will have a chance to supply the nation with a Senate successor who comes considerably closer to matching the talents and temperament of the late Kingfish. To oust Senator Richard Brevard Russell Jr., 38, from his comfortable seat in the Democratic primary (as good as election) is the supreme purpose of Governor Eugene ("Our Gene") Talmadge, 51, and a large but indefinite number of Georgians.

"Huey Long," says Gene Talmadge in his vaudeville-hill billy drawl, "was a mighty smart man. He and I were mighty good friends." That Georgia Governor and Louisiana Senator had made a deal "to stop Roosevelt" before Long's death, Talmadge admits. The extent and degree to which Gene Talmadge possesses Huey Long's talents is a subject for observers to debate and time to determine. But certain it is that the Governor of Georgia hates the New Deal as bitterly as the one-time Governor of Louisiana ever did.

That, plus the facts that he is spectacular, has a national reputation and can rouse a rabble along with the best of them, made next week's election of solemn interest both to the New Deal and the nation.

By last week Georgians were agreed that the Talmadge-Russell contest had turned into their hottest political fight since Joe Brown and Hoke Smith chased each other over the red clay hills 32 years ago.

Up & down the State, by radio and at big, riproaring rallies and barbecues the candidates have poured abuse on each other, whipped up passions and prejudices, kept the State in a frenzy of excitement. Farmers wearing red suspenders, the Talmadge trademark, turned out by hundreds for the Governor's barbecues of free pork, lamb, beef, chicken and "corn likker." Aside from the major matter of personalities, the chief issue was the New Deal, of which young Senator Russell is a stanch supporter.

Tall, thin Candidate Russell harped on the 396,000,000 Federal dollars which have rolled into Georgia, assailed his opponent as a dictator who ruled the State by militia, described him as a pawn of Yankee capitalists plotting to break up the Democratic Party. Russell played for all it was worth the revelation before the Senate lobby investigating committee that John J. Raskob and Pierre S. du Pont had paid $5,000 each to finance Governor Talmadge's convention of anti-Roosevelt "Goober Democrats" at Macon last winter (TIME, April 27). "Sure, I helped raise the taxes," cried the tax-raising Senator. "We raised 'em on Gene's friends, the Raskobs and the du Fonts and that's why he's mad."

Candidate Talmadge contemptuously referred to his opponent as "Junior," proclaiming him the political creature of his gaunt, grizzled, tobacco-stained father, Chief Justice Richard Brevard Russell of the Georgia Supreme Court. Now 75, Father Russell has been on the Georgia payroll, in one capacity or another, almost continuously since he was 21. By two wives he has sired 18 children, bitterly opposes birth control, fancies himself as an oldtime orator, spends much time in old clothes lounging on the front porch of his home at Russell, Ga. A Talmadge broad side listed eight office-holding members of the Russell family, figuring their combined political service at 219 years, and declared: "It appears to us as farmers and taxpayers of Georgia that the Counties, State and Federal Governments have supported the Russell family long enough and others should be given a chance to be benefited."

"Junior," charges Governor Talmadge, has been nothing but a rubber stamp for President Roosevelt. "You can buy a rubber stamp," roars he, "for 30-c-. . . . You need men in the Senate that won't bend their knee to no power on earth. . . . My opponent in this race says I couldn't do anything if I was elected to the Senate. He says I would be powerless because I couldn't take the Army and Navy with me. But if you send me up there and those big bullies get to cutting up, Ickes and Wallace will think the Army is after them."

But Gene Talmadge, who once carried his abuse of Franklin Roosevelt to the point of declaring that the next President of the U. S. would be able to walk a two-by-four plank, has mended his talk about the President's person.

Georgia's Governor was bitterest against President Roosevelt when he was genuinely hopeful of securing a Presidential nomination. After the failure of his Goober Democratic convention and a convincing upsurge of Roosevelt sentiment in Georgia, he realized that his political life required some show of Party loyalty. A conscientious hater, he refused to attend the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia, lost his National Committee post to his onetime ally, roly-poly Publisher Clark Howell of the Atlanta Constitution. But he announced in advance that he would support the convention's nominee. Last week he was declaring: "I'll support the President when he's right and fight him when he's wrong."

Having made that concession to political necessity, however, Gene Talmadge continued to lambast the New Deal with might & main. He professes to oppose it for its extravagance, its paternalism. But he fights it effectively by appeals to race prejudice, detailing its concessions to Negroes, accusing it of fostering social equality between Whites and Blacks. Of the Social Security Act's old age pensions he asserts : "In Georgia the white folks would get about $30,000 a month. The Negroes would get $2,250,000. If that plan was in effect in Georgia there wouldn't be a plow-hand, hoehand or washwoman in the State."

Last week Candidates Russell and Talmadge seemed to be coming down the homestretch neck & neck. Georgia's Press was almost solidly against Talmadge, chief exceptions being the Savannah morning News and evening Press, which also sup ports Landon, and the vigorous, influential Macon Telegraph, whose able Publisher William Thomas Anderson has not forgot ten that Senator Russell kept his brother out of Macon's postmastership. Fiercest Talmadge opposition was from the Atlanta Constitution, which is still coasting along on the reputation the late great Henry Grady made for it in the last century. Says Talmadge: "You know the Const'ution is helpin' me by tellin' all them lies. People jest know they ain't so."

Greatly favored was the Governor, whose strength lies in rural districts, by Georgia's primary system of county unit voting, a version of the nation's Presidential Electoral College plan. Each of Georgia's 159 counties casts no less than two nor more than six primary votes. Hence Echols County, with 300 votes, is one-third as influential as Fulton County (Atlanta), with 30,000. Any three back-country counties can offset the vote of the State's largest city, help give victory to a candidate with a minority popular vote.

When Gene Talmadge announced for the Senate last July 4 he put forward a ten-point platform which included abolition of tax-exempt Government bonds, a Federal budget of less than $1,000,000,000 per year, 2^ postage and abolition of the Federal income tax. But beyond any such fantastic reforms, beyond his abuse of Richard B. Russell Jr. and the New Deal, Candidate Talmadge stressed in his speeches, his broadsides and his weekly sheet The Statesman ("Editor: The People; Associate Editor: Eugene Talmadge") the impressive and incontrovertible fact of his Governorship: TALMADGE KEPT HIS PROMISES.

Outside his State, Gene Talmadge is widely regarded as a scraggle-haired, red-gallused, cigar-smoking demagog who, while bawling at the New Deal for being "un-American," has ruled Georgia at the bayonet points of his militia. When the Legislature refused to fulfill his campaign promise of cheap automobile licenses, he created them by executive fiat, booted out his Motor Vehicle Commissioner for refusing to sell them. When the head of the potent State Highway Board refused to dismiss five of his engineers, Talmadge sent militia to seize the Board's funds, declared martial law, ousted the Board Chairman and set up a new Board of his own. The Public Service Commission balked at lowering utility rates, another Talmadge campaign promise. The Governor constituted himself judge & jury, sat under military guard while he tried the elected Commissioners on the flimsy charge of using railroad passes, replaced them with his own men. During the textile strike of 1934 he earned millowners' gratitude and Labor's hatred by declaring martial law, throwing picketers into barbwired concentration camps. This year Governor Talmadge enlarged his domination to include all State departments by refusing to summon a balky Legislature to pass an appropriation bill, proclaiming himself financial dictator of the State. That involved not only court fights, but also sending militia to drag the State Treasurer out of his office, summoning locksmiths to cut open the Treasury vaults.

What Governor Talmadge has boasted of in the current campaign are not his methods but his results. His record for economy makes Kansas' Alf Landon look like a spendthrift. Far from stopping at a mere balanced budget, he has in his four years as Governor paid off $7,500,000 of State deficit. Simultaneously he cut the State property tax a staggering 40%, lopping some $5,000,000 off tax bills. He claims to have saved Georgians more than $10,000,000 by substantial cuts in tele phone, railroad, gas and electric rates. Proudest is he of having downed the price of automobile licenses from an $11.25 minimum to a flat $3, for a four-year saving to Georgia motorists of some $12,000,000.

As do those of Alf Landon, Talmadge critics point to the Federal millions which have poured in to pay for Georgia's relief, roads, schools while the Governor was economizing. But no one can deny that Gene Talmadge has kept his campaign promises, pared expenses, lopped payrolls ruthlessly. His solid strength derives from the gratitude which the State's big property-owners and small farmers feel for their fattened pocketbooks. Potent is his slogan: COUNT THE TAX DOLLARS GOVERNOR TALMADGE HAS SAVED YOU.

Such intelligent Talmadge defenders as Publisher Anderson concede his dictatorial ruthlessness, say he has been forced to use strong-arm methods to rid the State of greedy politicians who have been sapping it for decades. Making the point in farmer talk, Gene Talmadge says: "A lot of people say they like what I did, but don't like the way I did it. I don't either, but if a bunch of hogs get into your fields or your garden or your flowers and won't come out when you say 'sooey, sooey, sooey.' then you have to use language and methods that hogs and pigs understand."

A middle-sized, stocky man with swart, flattened features, wide mouth and cold, defiant, suspicious eyes peering from thick, horn-rimmed spectacles, Gene Talmadge belongs to the poorer branch of a respected Georgia family. Son of a thrifty farmer, he studied law at University of Georgia, gave up after one year of trying to practice in Atlanta, moved to Ailey in south Georgia where he clerked in a general store, wooed and married a young widow named Mattie Thurmond Peterson. When she shortly inherited some 1,500 acres near McRae, Husband Talmadge settled down to managing her farm, dabbling in local politics. He got into State office when he became Commissioner of Agriculture in 1927.

Soon as he got to be Governor in 1933, Gene Talmadge built a barn for his pigs and chickens behind the Governor's Mansion in Atlanta's fashionable Ansley Park. Genuinely fond of going off to one of his farms and getting manure on his shoes, he makes shrewd political capital out of being a "dirt farmer," shows up at political rallies in overalls, talks "cracker" to his rural audiences. Some Georgians think their Governor is actually as loud and uncouth as he chooses to appear for political purposes. That he is not is proven by his private conversation, by the dignified, grammatical speech on Abraham Lincoln which he made at Springfield, Ill. last winter (TIME, Feb. 24). He is a convivial mixer, holds liquor well, usually has a long, black cigar in his mouth.

Gene Talmadge has hated the New Deal ever since it offended his official and masculine pride by adjudging him and his staff incompetent to administer Georgia's relief, putting a female Federal agent in control. But the Governor also fancies himself a political philosopher and fiercely hates the New Deal's expensive paternalism. Proclaiming himself a Jeffersonian Democrat, he believes in a free hand for business, the least and cheapest government possible.

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