Maestri Rides Again

Huey Long's machine fell apart after an assassin's bullet knocked Huey out of the driver's seat in 1935. But the machine has been patched up. This week it rolled as smoothly as ever through the quaint, crooked streets of New Orleans.

In the driver's seat now sits squat, swarthy Robert Sidney Maestri, Mayor of New Orleans. Grandson of an Italian immigrant, Maestri is one of the richest men in Louisiana. His father made a fortune selling furniture to the love-for-sale ladies in the cribs of the Vieux Carre. When the cribs were raided, old man Maestri repossessed the furniture, sold it over & over. Bob Maestri put his inheritance in real estate.

When death cut short the boisterous career of Huey Long, Maestri (who backed him long before he became the Kingfish) was his Commissioner of Conservation. New Orleans, the last rampart which held out against Huey's domination, gave up a few months later. Big-beaked Mayor T. Semmes Walmsley (known to Huey as old Turkey Head) resigned, and burly Governor Richard Webster Leche (rhymes with flesh) certified Candidate Bob Maestri to the job. Normally, Maestri would have come up for reelection in 1938. But Leche talked the Louisiana Legislature into giving Maestri a six-year term.

Nobody has ever found anything seriously wrong with Maestri's administration. Federal investigators have raked over his record without finding a trace of the graft that sent most of Huey Long's inheritors (including ex-Governor Leche) to the penitentiary. Since he took office five years ago, he has pulled New Orleans out of bankruptcy, put its finances on a cash basis, cut $20,000,000 from its debt. Like the Kingfish, Maestri is smart. His friends dabble in rackets to their hearts' content, but Maestri apparently keeps his hands clean. "Let the other guys have that stuff," he once told a reporter. "I made mine outside."

The cycle of reform that turned out most of the Long gang, rolled "Sweet-Smellin' " Sam Houston Jones into the Governorship in 1940, did not touch Bob Maestri. Instead, it got rid of his rivals for Huey's power. Most of the disgruntled Longsters who teamed with Sam Jones to lick Huey's brother Earl are now in Maestri's camp. It looks as if Reform has about run its brief cycle in Louisiana.

There is no real opposition to another term for Bob Maestri. Running against him is a bullnecked, balding lawyer, 38-year-old Herve Racivitch, who has been licked three times before--once for a minor city office, twice for Congress. If Maestri wins the city primary on Jan. 27, he will be on his way to the Governor's Mansion, may even start unpacking the rakish toga that Huey wore to the U.S. Senate.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.