Trial of a Lion

Talmadge fights for survival

Only three times in the past 45 years has there been anything like it: a Senate committee hearing that amounts to a public trial of one of the upper chamber's own members. And in this case, one of its most powerful members: Democrat Herman Eugene Talmadge, 65, Senator from Georgia since 1957; seventh in seniority among all 100 Senators; chairman of the powerful Agriculture Committee and second in command on the tax-writing Finance Committee; dynastic political leader of his home state for decades. Last week the six-member Senate Ethics Committee began hearing testimony on five charges of financial misconduct against Talmadge. If the committee finds Talmadge culpable, it could recommend to the full Senate that he be stripped of his seniority, or censured, or even expelled.

One of the charges against Talmadge is that he collected money from the Senate for expenses that he either did not incur or that were not reimbursable. Other accusations are that he did not pay federal taxes on gifts to his former wife Betty; that he did not report gifts by constituents, as is required by law; that he filed false reports of campaign contributions and expenditures with the Senate; and that he improperly converted campaign contributions to his personal use. The Justice Department is awaiting the outcome of the hearings before deciding whether to take any action against Talmadge, who may also find his tax returns scrutinized by the Internal Revenue Service.

Most of the charges stem from Talmadge's messy 1977 divorce from Betty, who forced disclosure of the Senator's financial records. Since then, Daniel Minchew, a former Talmadge aide, has told Ethics Committee investigators that he deposited $26,000 in unreported campaign gifts and almost $13,000 in excessive Senate expense reimbursements in an account kept in the Senator's name at the Riggs National Bank in Washington.

On opening day, Talmadge led off by delivering an angrily worded statement. With the air of a wounded lion determined to fight off encircling vultures, Talmadge denounced Minchew as "a proven liar, cheat and embezzler." Minchew has admitted receiving money from the bank account, but claimed he was simply being reimbursed for money he spent--for the Senator. Talmadge said that if he had committed the offenses he was accused of, he would be dimwitted, and the Senator added: "Even my enemies don't claim that I'm that stupid."

Talmadge has conceded some irregularities; indeed, he has offered to repay the Senate $37,000 in expense money that he grants was improperly drawn. But he blames the improprieties on confusion and sloppy bookkeeping by his office staff. He insists that he did not even know until last summer that the Riggs bank account existed.

Puffing on a Gold Label cigar, Talmadge closely followed the first week's action and then summed it up accurately enough by declaring: "They haven't learned anything" that was not agreed upon by him and the committee in advance. The pace may pick up for Talmadge as the hearings continue and he faces the testimony of Minchew and, possibly, that of his ex-wife Betty.

What the hearings will do to Talmadge's chances for election to a fifth Senate term next year is uncertain. After a string of personal setbacks--the death by drowning of his son Robert, the bitter divorce from Betty, a bout with alcoholism that once sent him reeling onto the Senate floor--Talmadge has little left but his political career, and he intends to fight for it. He defiantly reaffirmed his candidacy in February, upon emerging from the Long Beach Naval Medical Center after five weeks of treatment that he says cured his drinking problem. Two weeks ago, he spurned an offer by Senator Adlai Stevenson, chairman of the Ethics Committee, to drop the hearings if he would accept Senate censure.

Talmadge's popularity undoubtedly has nosedived in Atlanta. But the church-going rural fundamentalists who idolized his father, gallus-snapping Eugene Talmadge, four times elected Governor, view the Senator's troubles more in sorrow than in anger. Bill Robinson, a veteran Georgia political observer, says that they regard Betty as a vindictive woman and see the Senator as "an old man kicked out of his home, living in an apartment while his wife got the hogs, the land and the pecan trees. His only home is the Senate." The prevailing view is that Talmadge can be beaten only if the Senate votes to censure him outright--and even then it would be a close race.

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