Griffin v. Talmadge

Anxious to become a world seaport, Bainbridge, Ga. (pop. 7,562) enjoys two advantages: 1) it straddles the Flint River, 105 miles from the Gulf of Mexico; 2) it is the home town of Georgia's frog-voiced Governor S. (for Samuel) Marvin Griffin. Last week a state senate investigating committee complained that Bainbridge's home-town boy has been doing too much in trying to overcome nature's oversights. The Griffin administration has spent half a million dollars for a 400-ft. pier, a transit shed and sulphur unloading facilities. And along with brother Cheney Griffin (Bainbridge's mayor and Marv's paid state assistant) and six other Griffin administration officials, the governor is a stockholder in Caribe Transport Line, Inc., a company that will this spring take advantage of the facilities, put its one Honduran-flag freighter on a Bainbridge-to-Havana run.

The senate's attempt to nail Governor Griffin, who once ruled both houses of the legislature with little trouble, signaled that Griffin has run head on into Georgia Kingmaker Herman Talmadge, his predecessor as governor and now Georgia's junior U.S. Senator. Under Georgia law, Griffin may not run again at term's end. Talmadge and his U.S. Senate colleague, Richard Russell, want Lieut. Governor Ernest Vandiver for Georgia's next governor. Griffin is backing former State Highway Board Chairman Roger H. Lawson, presumably because Lawson would turn the governor's chair back to Griffin at the end of his four-year term.

Watching the web weave around him, Marv Griffin last week summoned newsman and investigating senators to his ornate office, snapped off a defiant but undiplomatic double negative: "I ain't got no apologies to make." Griffin's enemies gleefully prepared to push more evidence under senatorial eyes, wondered meanwhile when the governor would return to his favorite role of No. 1 Southern white supremacist. Said one Griffin opponent: "Every time he gets in trouble, he talks about segregation."

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