Huey's Boy Friends

Columnists Drew Pearson and Robert S. Allen in their Washington Merry-Go-Round last week exploded a story, backed by affidavits, about diversion of WPA man power and materials to private uses in Louisiana. Chief privateer mentioned was none other than Governor Richard Webster Leche (rhymes with flesh), 41, the burly New Orleans lawyer whom Huey Long on his deathbed named as his political heir.

When investigators from WPA and the Department of Justice sped to Baton Rouge, Dick Leche welcomed them on his sickbed, where arthritis born of infected teeth had him down. And he announced that illness constrained him to resign, bequeathing the governorship to Huey's ambitious, vituperative Brother Earl, the Lieutenant Governor. Said Richard Leche: "Mr. Long has tremendous backing throughout the country and is the announced choice of Mayor Robert S. Maestri of the city of New Orleans."

Huey's onetime boy friends, Mayor Maestri and Hotelman Seymour Weiss of New Orleans, were no less interested in this development than was State Senator James A. Noe, onetime friend of Huey's friends. It was Mr. Noe who was reported to have stirred up Washington columnists, hoping thereby to better his chances to wrest the Governorship from the Leche-Maestri-Weiss organization next year. If he runs Senator Noe will have to beat Earl Long, who will have to rumple up both his hair and his personality before he can hope to equal his late brother in vote appeal and administrative aptitude.

Because "serious irregularities" in the finances of Huey's beloved Louisiana State University had turned up, and its President Dr. James Monroe Smith had vanished, Governor Leche at week's end temporarily postponed his resignation, this week handed over his job to impatient Earl Long.

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