Exit Gene Talmadge

The usual election-night whoops & hollers from the Atlanta headquarters of old vote-gettin' Eugene Talmadge were strangely absent. Ol' Gene sat glumly by the radio, staring suspiciously through his horn-rimmed glasses at the voice which told him his days as Georgia Governor were numbered. A news photographer entered, asked for a big smile in case the trend changed by the morning editions. Ol' Gene snapped: "Git yore pictures and hurry up."

The trend did not change. The count gave Talmadge 117,731; whiz-bang young Attorney General Ellis G. Arnall, 162,889. Despite the Palace Guard he built up during three terms, despite his rabble-rousing, nigger-hating appeal to Georgia's "wool-hat" boys (small farmers), Gene Talmadge had taken a sound trouncing.

Thus ended the reign of the most high-handed, lowbrowed local dictator that U.S. politics has known since the days of the late Huey Long. Posing as a great man suffering for the common people (although his campaigns were financed by reactionary moneybags who liked his low-tax policy). Gene Talmadge had pulled strings and lopped the heads of Georgia politicos for 15 years.

He began by getting himself elected Agricultural Commissioner, promptly fired everybody in the department, put his own men in. He pushed his way to the Governorship, got the right to hire & fire State officials at will and use State funds as he saw fit.

Decline & Fall. Until this year, Ol' Gene never had much trouble getting reelected. His wild political rallies, with free fish fries and watermelon, panicked Georgia's rural voters. His traveling stooges, including the famed Tree-Climbing Haggards, yipped encouragement to his glowering, grammar-proof oratory. He showed his red galluses and his love for pore folks. The busy Palace Guard, working less spectacularly, machine-tooled many another vote. Ol' Gene rode high.

This year Gene Talmadge had an energetic young opponent who knew a few tricks of his own. He also had, hanging around his neck like a millstone, a major political mistake. In flimsy trials before a hand-picked Board of Regents, he had fired some of Georgia's top educators on charges (denied) that they favored teaching Negroes and whites in the same schools (TIME, Oct. 27). Result: one scholastic association after another had black-listed the University of Georgia, long the State's pride & joy.

Georgia finally had a bellyful of Ol' Gene. He played frantically on his campaign theme of "white supremacy. State rights, local self-government and oldtime religion." He sent a fiery campaign booklet to all farmers: Do You Want Your Child to Go to School With Negroes? But his attempt to ride back to office on the race issue was a rank failure. Last week's election simply proved a political axiom laid down by Abraham Lincoln.

The new Governor, Ellis Gibbs Arnall, 35, is the boy wonder of Georgia politics. Short (5 ft. 6), stocky (190 Ib.) pear-shaped, a great joiner and organizer, he got the urge for politicking from a grandfather in the Alabama Legislature. As a twelve-year-old, he worked as page boy in the Alabama House; less than 13 years later, he was a full-fledged member of Georgia's Legislature.

He went to the University of Georgia for his law degree, got himself elected president of 1) his class, 2) his legal fraternity, 3) the interfraternity council, 4) the student body, 5) the campus Gridiron Club. He graduated at the top of his class, practiced law just long enough to get his political bearings, then ran for the Georgia House against five opponents who managed to scrape up 232 votes among them, to his 2,546.

Arnall's record does not yet prove him a statesman. He played along for awhile with Governor Talmadge, who gave him his first appointive office. Once, in 1932, he tried to boom Oklahoma's Alfalfa Bill Murray for President. He has made a few rabble-rousing speeches of his own.

But Ellis Arnall is now Georgia's boy hope as well as its boy wonder. He has promised to end the Talmadge-fostered laws which give Georgia a one-man Government, has promised to restore the university system to accredited lists. And when he was assured of election last week he made a statement which warmed his voters' hearts: "I now call on all Georgians regardless of political affiliation, to help us in our endeavor, so that Georgia may no longer be the laughing stock of the nation."

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