Gene's Exit

Gallus-snapping Gene Talmadge was a bitter, unhappy man last week as he turned over the Governorship of Georgia to stocky, ambitious Ellis Gibbs Arnall. With his coat collar turned up, his owl eyes staring straight ahead, he sat glumly on the platform throughout Arnall's inauguration; when the ceremonies were over he refused to shake hands, stomped off to his home in the hardwood swamps of Telfair County.

Ever since hustling Ellis Arnall trounced him in the Democratic primaries last September, vindictive Gene Talmadge has tried to embarrass his successor. With the near-dictatorial powers he had wangled from a supine Legislature, he arbitrarily raised schoolteachers' salaries 25% (added cost: $3,500,000 annually). No one begrudged the teachers the raise; but most knew that Gene did not act out of altruistic motives. In a further attempt to gut the State Treasury he put 40,000 additional old-age pensioners on the rolls (cost: $1,600,000 annually); only a taxpayer's injunction suit stopped him from buying $1,600,000 of unneeded textbooks.

His last week in office capped the climax. When a guard at the State Prison at Tattnall testified that he had regularly delivered ham, eggs and chickens to Gene's home, Gene was unperturbed. Said he: "Sure I got the eggs and the chickens and I ate them. ... I'd advise the next Governor to try the same plan. It helps to keep expenses down." Just before his special powers expired, Gene displayed thrift with a vengeance: he sent Georgia's check for exactly $1,070,231.35 to the Federal Government. This was the State's share of building the marble Tattnall Prison--but the debt was not due until 1986. Only increased revenues as the result of war prosperity prevented Gene Talmadge from depleting the State Treasury to a dangerous low.

Gene still had one job to do, and it was one he relished. While criminal lawyers jammed his office, he turned prisoners out of jail at the rate of 35 a day. The night before his retirement he proudly announced his achievement: in two years as Governor he had freed 2,941 convicts.

Said magnanimous Gene Talmadge, with an eye on future elections: "I am sorry it couldn't have been more."

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