Battle Royal for Huey's Throne

A Republican, of all people, may become Louisiana's Governor

Huey Long made the governorship of Louisiana the most powerful state executive office in the U.S., which explains why half a dozen major candidates have spent a record $20 million this year trying to occupy the grandiose state capitol that the Kingfish built in Baton Rouge 48 years ago. What is surprising is that for the first time since Reconstruction, a Republican, Congressman David Treen, 51, is favored to win the runoff on Dec. 8. That is not what the archpopulist Huey Long had in mind.

But Louisiana has come a long way from the Depression poverty that Long fought--and exploited. If the state has the highest illiteracy rate in the nation, it ranks with Texas as a leading producer of gas and oil. A burgeoning middle class has produced conservative politics. Republicans are still vastly outnumbered by Democrats, 1.7 million to 81,000, but the G.O.P. is making rapid gains, and many of the state's Democrats are so conservative that they act, and vote, like Republicans. Three of the state's eight Congressmen are now Republicans, and a fourth Republican missed being elected last year by just 266 votes.

Annoyed by the growing G.O.P. challenge, state Democrats thought they had found a way to eliminate it. In 1975 they changed the election law so that candidates of both parties would all enter a single primary. They figured that the two top vote getters would invariably be Democrats, thus eliminating the problem of having anyone face a Republican in the runoff. They figured wrong. In the October primary, Treen outdistanced his adversaries, and will face Democrat Louis Lambert, 38, in the runoff.

A dull, almost dour campaigner, Treen is supported by Louisiana's lead ing newspapers and the business community. He has earned a high cumulative rating from the American Conservative Union--89 out of 100--during his four terms in Congress.

Lambert, backed by labor and blacks, has updated Huey Long. As chairman of the Louisiana public service commission, the same office that propelled Long into the governorship, Lambert has regularly opposed hikes in utility rates, even though many of his decisions were overturned by the courts.

All of the other major Democratic candidates in the primary have thrown their support to Treen, whose buttoned-down conservatism they prefer to Lambert's unbuckled populism. In a televised debate, Lambert strongly implied that Treen had offered to pay off the campaign debts of House Speaker Edgerton L. ("Bubba") Henry and State Senator Edgar ("Sonny") Mouton and give them top jobs in his administration in exchange for their support. The outraged legislators claimed that Lambert made the offer, not Treen, and they challenged Lambert to join them in taking a lie detector test. Then Charles ("Buddy") Roemer III, who ran unsuccessfully for Congress last fall, charged that Lambert had also proposed to pick up his campaign debts in return for an endorsement. Lambert said that it was a "damned lie."

A Treen victory would be a welcome lift for Republicans going into the 1980 election year. The national G.O.P. would be able to boast that the party had invaded a Democratic stronghold and captured an office whose occupant was once described by a Louisiana politician as "the closest thing to a king this country could have."

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