Bonus: The Three Governors Controversy

Note: This transcript has been generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers. It may contain errors. Whenever possible, we strongly encourage you to listen to the Buried Truths audio.

Hank Klibanoff: 00:38:29 This is Buried Truths. I’m Hank Klibanoff. I want to tell you a little bit more about the Three Governors Controversy, which I made a reference to in the first episode. Gene Talmadge was elected Governor of Georgia in 1946, but he died before he could take office, and what happened next made national headlines. That’s because three men rushed forward and each claimed to be the rightful Governor of Georgia. There was Melvin Thompson.
Melvin Thompson: 00:39:00 My contention is that the people elected me Lieutenant Governor of the State of Georgia knowing that I would succeed . . .
Hank Klibanoff: 00:39:07 The second man was Ellis Arnall.
Ellis Arnall: 00:39:09 I will continue to remain Governor of Georgia.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:39:13 And then there was Herman Talmadge, the son of Gene Talmadge.
Herman Talmadge: 00:39:17 I have accepted my election, have taken my oath of office, and . . .
Hank Klibanoff: 00:39:23 So how did we end up with this almost comical standoff of state leadership? Let’s just say it’s a good lesson in how the Talmadge political machine operated. The 1946 Democratic Party Primary was hardly a shoo-in for Gene Talmadge. Yes, he had passionate supporters across rural Georgia, two decades worth of campaign experience, and three terms as governor. But Gene Talmadge and his trusted aides were deeply concerned. For one thing, this was the first time blacks in Georgia would be allowed to vote in the Democratic Party Primary. Talmadge and the Ku Klux Klan were doing everything they could to stop it. The FBI had swept into the state to investigate voter intimidation and were hot on Talmadge’s trail. How many black voters would turn out? Nobody knew.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:40:15 Another reason Gene Talmadge’s disciples were worried: His opponent was James Carmichael, an attractive, well- funded business leader from just outside Atlanta. Carmichael was comfortable campaigning as a racial progressive. Now, Talmadge had always boasted that he can, quote: “Carry any county that ain’t got streetcars.” Carmichael seemed certain to sweep the vote in urban centers across the state, but Talmadge’s inner circle had a more serious, and a much more secret, reason to worry.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:40:48 After many years of hard drinking, Gene Talmadge was dying. But more than Gene Talmadge’s life hung in the balance, so did the Talmadge political dynasty upon which so many people depended. He’d been generous with political goodies to legislators, to farmers, to the country folk, and he’d freely handed out government jobs to his family and his friends. In the early 1930s, he was found to have packed the state’s payroll with relatives, and he charged personal expenses to the government to the tune of $40,000. Today, that would be nearly $700,000. But none of that, or the FBI, or Carmichael’s popularity seemed to matter. In July 1946, Gene Talmadge won the Democratic Party Primary, but only in the strangest way.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:41:47 Now you may not believe this. When all the votes were counted, Gene Talmadge came in second place. Carmichael had 45% of the vote, Talmadge had 43%. Carmichael wins, right? Nope, not in Georgia. The popular vote didn’t matter. See, thanks to a tricky little device that rural legislators had built into Georgia’s election laws, a device they called the county unit system, votes that were cast in small rural counties counted more than votes cast in large urban counties. I’m serious. This may remind you of the electoral college in our presidential elections, and it should. In Georgia, the county unit system assured that rural interests held control of statewide offices, the Governor or Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, Agricultural Commissioner and so on, and it prevailed for 45 years until the early 1960s.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:42:57 But back to 1946. While Gene Talmadge won only 43% of the popular vote, he swept the rural counties across the state and won 60% of the county unit vote. Gene Talmadge wins. He then easily prevails in the rubber stamp general election in November and his dynasty is intact. Except, as we said, he was dying, and die he did in December 1946, just a few weeks before he was supposed to take the oath for his fourth term as Georgia governor.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:43:39 The death of Gene Talmadge led to one of the oddest moments in Southern history, the Three Governors Controversy, in which for two months three men would lay claim to the governor’s seat. This is Melvin Thompson who was elected Lieutenant Governor the same day Talmadge was elected governor.
Melvin Thompson: 00:43:57 My contention is that the people elected me Lieutenant Governor of the State of Georgia knowing that I would succeed to the governorship in an emergency which now exists. I have a mandate from the people which I must carry out.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:44:13 That would seem to make sense. Governor-elect dies, Lieutenant Governor gets sworn in and becomes Governor, but that’s not what the Talmadge inner circle had in mind. They were holding on to another secret, and they were about to reveal it. Turns out that during the primary campaign privately aware the Gene Talmadge might not live, they’d arranged for 1,000 Talmadge supporters to cast write-in ballots for Gene Talmadge’s son, Herman Talmadge.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:44:48 They were relying on a vague and little-known clause in the state’s constitution. Gene Talmadge’s friends concluded that Herman Talmadge, if he had more write-in votes than anyone else, could become governor by a vote of the legislature. Now, don’t ask me how such a provision could ever have been devised to give a write-in candidate equal standing with the candidate on the ballot who got more votes, but it played to their strength. They knew the legislature was in the back pocket of the Talmadges.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:45:23 So of course the Lieutenant Governor, Melvin Thompson, protested. “This was not a monarchy,” he said. “Herman Talmadge wasn’t even on the ballot and you’re going to make him governor now just because of his name, his lineage?” The sitting governor, Ellis Arnall, felt the same way. Now this gets good here. Arnall was a racial moderate who detested anything to do with Talmadge. He wanted Thompson to become governor. So Arnall found another provision in the very same Georgia Constitution to show how he remained governor until a successor was legally chosen. Here’s a clip from Ellis Arnall.
Ellis Arnall: 00:46:00 I fear no man. I stand alone without the military to defend the Constitution and laws of Georgia and to preserve the rights of the people to see that the man they intended to be governor is installed, and that this office is not given to a pretender and a usurper.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:46:20 But more surprises lay ahead. When the legislature, at Herman Talmadge’s bidding, went through the routine exercise of counting the write-in ballots in order to coronate him, guess what? The Talmadge camp had miscalculated. He had received far fewer than a thousand votes, and even worse for them, he had come in second among those receiving in write-in votes. The succession, the dynasty, appeared doomed.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:46:50 But in a melodramatic moment that would rival any film noir from the 1940s, at the last minute, guess what appears? A box of uncounted write-in votes. And where do you think they came from? Herman Talmadge’s home, Telfair  County. Those votes put Talmadge in the lead. The legislature wasted no time to call for a vote. This was the
stuff of theater, of high comedy and low tragedy. The newsreels that Americans saw at the movie theaters at the time dished out a heavy dose of it.
Newsreel Audio: 00:47:28 Talmadge, whose claim to the governorship is supported by the state legislature, presents his side.
Herman Talmadge: 00:47:34 The legislature elected me governor of Georgia by a vote of 161 to 87. I have accepted my election, have taken my oath of office, and am now at my desk attending to the duties of my office.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:47:55 But Ellis Arnall didn’t stand down.
Newsreel Audio: 00:47:57 Here Mr. Arnall is denied occupancy of his modest rotunda office in a heated argument with a burly state representative.
Hank Klibanoff: 00:48:07 In March 1947, after two months of wrangling, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled that Herman Talmadge had no rightful claim on the office. They ruled that Lieutenant Governor Thompson was officially the governor. But, they added, there should be a special election in less than two years’ time in the fall of 1948. Melvin Thompson took over the office of governor, but Herman Talmadge was not going away. These two men would soon face each other again in the fateful 1948 special election for governor. We’re going to tell you about that in episode two of Buried Truths.
Announcer: 00:48:56 CREDITS: Buried Truths is hosted by Hank Klibanoff, former reporter, editor, and coauthor of the Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Race Beat, and today he’s a professor at Emory University. Buried Truths is produced by David Barasoain and Kate Sweeney, edited by John Haas. The executive producer is Christine Dempsey. Please subscribe to the show, and if you have a moment, leave us a review in Apple Podcast. We’d love to hear what you think, and your review will help others find the show. If you have any information related to this case, you can write or send a voice memo to this email address, stories@buriedtruths.org. You can also follow us on social media at Buried Truths Podcast. There you’ll find photographs and documents related to this case. We had help on this episode from the nearly 100 students who’ve taken the Civil Rights Cold Cases class that Hank Klibanoff teaches at Emory. Thanks to Professor Brett Gadsden whether helped create and teach the course. Special thanks to 2 former students, Ellie Studdard and Lucy Baker. Thanks to Emery University and its Centers for Digital Scholarship and Faculty Excellence for their support. Buried Truths is a production of WABE Atlanta.