Ole Earl's Downfall

"Ole Earl" Long, three-time Louisiana Governor and heir to the political dynasty founded by Brother Huey, last week slid toward oblivion as the reigning force in Louisiana politics. Barred by law from succeeding himself and harried by doctors as he was chased in and out of mental hospitals (TIME, June 15 et seq.), Ole Earl, 64, tried to get himself nominated as next Lieutenant Governor in the free-for-all primary, put a hand-picked successor in as Governor. He cagily passed a bill to change the Democratic primary date from traditional Tuesday to work-free Saturday, thus tried to lure all the Long-loving back-country people down to the voting machines. But even the backwoods had seen enough; neither Earl nor his candidate for Governor, ex-Governor James A. Noe, 65, got enough votes to win a place in next January's decisive primary runoff.

To make the defeat more galling, Louisiana picked two of Long's bitterest enemies to fight it out in the runoff. High man of the eleven candidates scrambling for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination: de-Lesseps Story Morrison, 47, veteran reform Mayor of New Orleans (four four-year terms), clobbered by Ole Earl in the 1956 gubernatorial primary, and running an uphill race against rural Louisiana's traditional prejudice against 1) a big-city boy and 2) a Roman Catholic. Some 63,000 votes behind Morrison came ex-Governor (1944-48) Jimmie Davis, sometime songwriting guitarist (You Are My Sunshine), who riled Ole Earl by stealing away the support of the Old Guard New Orleans regulars, won 207,000 votes with a serious, nonsinging campaign. With the 340,000 total votes of the nine also-rans providing the prize, "Chep" Morrison and Jimmie Davis will doubtless battle right down to the January runoff primary (the Democratic nomination means almost certain victory in the April general election).

Aside from Ole Earl's downfall, Long-suffering Louisianans had something else to their credit. Trailing back in third place with 138,000--and thus out of the running--was State Senator William Rainach, who billed himself as the most diehard segregationist of all, warned the voters that they had the choice of voting for him or "losing the segregation battle." The voters decided to take their chances.

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