The Tried-&-True Technique

Barely two weeks after President Kennedy's assassination, Louisiana Democrats held their gubernatorial primary. The leader, by a thumping 140,000 votes, was about the closest thing in Louisiana to a real New Frontiersman: former New Orleans Mayor de-Lesseps S. ("Chep") Morrison, a racial moderate, a Catholic, and a global-minded fellow who, as U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of American States, had been a working member of the Kennedy team.

Morrison did not get a majority in the primary, which put him into a runoff with Louisiana Public Service Commissioner John J. McKeithen. Even though Morrison had twice before run unsuccessfully for Governor, almost everyone thought that this time he would make the grade.

They were wrong. Driving toward the Jan. 11th runoff election, McKeithen, 45, a lawyer-farmer from the small town of Columbia, fell back on the Southern office seeker's tried-and-true technique for getting votes: he ran on the race issue. Although he had al ways before been considered a moderate on race, he now charged that Morrison had made a "deal" with the N.A.A.C.P. for the Negro vote. "Without question," he cried of the first primary, "98% of the colored vote went to Mr. Morrison." To a New Orleans rally he declared: "The only things that increased while Morrison was mayor were your crime rate and your Negro population." He kept up the attack through two statewide TV debates, which, he said, also "demonstrated that while we were not necessarily Morrison's superior in intelligence and knowledge of governmental affairs, we at least approached his equal, and that we were not the uneducated buffoon that some of the papers had suggested."

All the while, Morrison refused to be drawn into a race-baiting contest, kept talking blandly about his "program for progress for Louisiana." As a Morrison supporter said later: "We were just overconfident. We didn't realize How bad he was hurting us."

Just how badly was shown when the results were in. McKeithen won by a 41,000-vote plurality, 492,000 to 451,000. Now he must face Republican Oilman Charlton Lyons, a Shreveport conservative, in the March 3 general election. No Republican has been elected Governor in Louisiana since 1877.

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