Quote:
Originally Posted by Umbrella
I made a deal with the far right wing faction to vote for their candidate (Eugene Talmadge) as party leader. Of course after I made this deal, I looked him up on Wikipedia and found he was a white supremacist.
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Please forgive me if I can't help but laugh, simply because he's such a familiar figure to anyone from Georgia.
He was a powerful three-term governor (and would have had a 4th term had he not died from hepatitis & cirrosis before he could be sworn in) but he's probably best remembered today as the father of future Sen. Herman Talmadge, who had been long groomed as the next governor (indeed, most aside from Gene himself wanted Herman to run in his place for that eventual 4th term).
Herman would end up serving that term (after no shortage of controvery, the "three governors affair") at the age of just 33, and by 1957 would start nearly three decades in the U.S. Senate.
In the waning days of Herman's career, he survived a bitter primary against a young upstart ... Zell Miller... but lost to (R) Mack Mattingly. His downfall was the censure due to "financial irregularities" highlighted by his wife testifying that she routinely took spending money for decades from an old overcoat that her husband kept stuffed with $100 bills. (reportedly at least $45,000 worth of $100s were in that coat)