Part One: America's First Fascist Governor

Garrison Davis is joined by Robert Evans to discuss Eugene Talmadge, the racist southern country lawyer who became a dictator.

(4 Part Series)

Sources:

The Wild Man From Sugar Creek by William Anderson
Race and Racism in the United States by Charles A. Gallagher, Cameron D. Lippard

Labor in the South by F. Ray Marshall

https://www.ajc.com/news/special-reports/when-georgia-had-three-governors-the-story-that-won-george-goodwin-journalism-prize/PNNohvV4spaPsd5lFSzbkK/ 
https://www.atlantahistorycenter.com/blog/the-three-governors-controversy/ 

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna19251476 
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/16/suspects-1946-moores-ford-bridge-georgia-mass-lynching-alive 
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/17/naacp-cover-up-georgia-lynching 

 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hey everybody, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast
that uh is, you know, a podcast. I don't know.
I don't know what to say. Uh, you're not always
knowing what to say at the start of a week,
and that's where I am this week.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
You just don't seem like you're qualified to host the
podcast today.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
No, that's that's why we've We've brought in a Ringer,
our equivalent of Sophie, who's a baseball guy.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
That's not my sport.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
But that's not your sport.

Speaker 4 (00:34):
That is my sport. But I don't know.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
You're into baseball now, okay, okay, but not guys baseball.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Interesting baseball, baseball.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Nate Silver, he's into baseball, the Nate Silver of baseball.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
O Oh, what's the what's the guy's name from the
Dodgers that my mom would be so disappointed in?

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Men? Of course? Total Yeah, I know who he is.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
My mom loves him.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
And Garrison is that guy of helping me out with
my podcast for this week and next week, because you
know Garrison. In my culture Italians, we have a ritual
that's gone back thousands of years. When a young person
turns twenty two to celebrate their entry into adulthood, where

(01:22):
they research and write like a sixteen thousand word essay
on a figure from Georgia state history. This goes back
to ancient Roman times in which Georgia didn't exist as
a state. So actually there were no adults in Italy
for a very long period of time, which is a
large part of why the Catholic Church got up to
some of the trouble it got up to.

Speaker 4 (01:43):
Ooh, that's not good, absolutely not.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
Anyway, who are we learning about this week, buddy.

Speaker 4 (01:57):
So when I first moved to Georgia, kind of one
of the first people I heard about that would be
like a contender for a pretty fucked up guy is
one of the old governors. Now. He served during the
nineteen thirties, so you can already tell there's gonna be
some fucked up stuff going on.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Probably not going to be a happy story in several
specific ways.

Speaker 4 (02:19):
Yeah. So I was first told that this was like,
this was like Georgia's main.

Speaker 2 (02:23):
Fascist, and that's saying something.

Speaker 4 (02:28):
It is saying something. And the more I looked into him,
the more he kind of just felt like kind of
the template for like a conservative fascist like governorship, especially
this kind of new wave that we're seeing in the
United States, and he's kind of like America's first like
real fascist in some way. Now, I know people point

(02:48):
to Huey Long, Yeah, the governor of our neighboring state.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
And if you don't know, Huey Long was the governor
of Louisiana who was like kind of a dictator of
Louisiana but also rely definitely more on closer to further
left at least than the guy we're talking about.

Speaker 4 (03:04):
He was much more socially liberal. He certainly was a
dictator and in some ways kind of a more efficient dictator.
He actually knew how to like be a dictator.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Well, yeah, he was the Tito of the United States.

Speaker 4 (03:16):
Yeah, our guy for these next few weeks that Eugene
and Talmadge. Uh was not a super efficient dictator, but
he really wanted to be and he certainly was a
fascist excellent, And that's who we're going to be looking
at for these next few weeks. And kind of how
his reign over Georgia modeled what you know, these like

(03:36):
like DeSantis and all these kind of new new kind
of more fascist governors kind of how they have kind
of replicated this sort of governing strategy. So that's that's
what we're looking at today. Let's start by kind of
going back to lay the groundwork for the area that
that Jean grew up in. So Jean's great grandfather was

(03:58):
born in New Jersey and moved to Georgia in the
early eighteen twenties after first like traveling the South while
serving under Andrew Jackson in his attack on the Creek Nation,
where he drove Native Americans from Alabama and Georgia deep
into Florida. Great Grandpa Talmuch decided to settle in central
Georgia and started buying up hundreds of acres of land

(04:19):
and began his career as a cotton farmer. Jean's biographer,
Guy named William Anderson from Athens, Georgia, refers to this
period as the birth of cotton culture. He was part
of a large wave of settlers moving into the Deep
South after the indigenous tribes were killed off and forcibly
relocated by Andrew Jackson. During this period, there was certainly

(04:39):
a desire for slaves as like a status symbol and
obviously to help with like farm labor. Especially he didn't
have a big family. Now it's unclear. If Jean's family
had slaves, like they certainly would have liked them, but it.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
Wasn't the tower im economically to be able to afford them.

Speaker 4 (04:57):
At least not for like his grandparents. Yeah, and they
had a large enough family that they kind of ran
their farm that way. Now, it is a little tricky
to find tons of information on this guy on Eugene Talmage,
because he's really looked over as a historical figure because
he represented a moment that people would rather just kind
of blaze past. He was like an unfortunate obstacle in

(05:19):
the inevitable progress of history, so people kind of just
skipped over him largely in the history books. There's really
only one one book that gets into him in depth.
That's his biography of the Wild Man from Sugar Creek
by Willie Anderson, which did a whole bunch of interviews
with like friends, enemies, political associates, and rivals to kind
of draw a picture of this guy. Now, that book

(05:41):
was published in the seventies, but about like thirty years
after Jean's demise, and it certainly criticizes Gene for his racism,
but there's only so much you can do for being
you know, a book about Southern history written by a
guy raised in this period in.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
They were at a specific in that stage and it
was not where we are now. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (06:03):
So I've also kind of supplemented some of the research
that that Willie Anderson did in that book with a
few other books like Race and Racism in the United
States by Charles A. Gallagher and Cameron D. Liftd, as
well as the book Labor in the South by f
Ray Marshall.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
Now I am choosing to read that as Gallagher the
stage comedian Garson. Do you know who Gallagher was?

Speaker 4 (06:26):
I have heard of a man named Gallagher.

Speaker 2 (06:29):
Oh, that's a shame. He was well, he wasn't very good, actually,
but he was a guy who hit fruit with a
mallet anyway.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (06:39):
So now to kind of demonstrate how there's certain periods
of Southern history that's kind of just skipped over by
the history books. We don't really know what Jean's family
was up to during the Civil War. They were certainly
certainly were pro Confederates.

Speaker 2 (06:53):
I think we know kind of what they were up
to during the Civil War.

Speaker 4 (06:56):
Yes, it's just not discussed in great detail. Yeah, but
Jean's father, a man named Thomas Ramalgous Talmadge, which is
a fantastic Southern name. He grew up in the wake
of the Civil War during the reconstruction era. Now Thomas
had the then rare privilege of attending the University of Georgia,
but returned to his grandfather's land to continue to farm

(07:17):
and process cotton, and he got wealthy by learning that
there was more money in the processing of cotton rather
than just the growing of it. Now Thomas married a
girl named Carrie Roberts, the daughter of the so called
meanest man in Jasper County, a lawyer named Eugene Roberts,
and the couple had their first son in eighteen eighty
four and named him after Carrie's father. This is Geene Talmadge.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
What a night. That's we really don't have that anymore,
like being able to be like the meanest man in
a county. He's the meanest man in Essper. I couldn't
tell you what the meanest man in Moltnomah County was.
I couldn't tell you the meanest man in any county
I've ever lived in. Yeah, And that's that's really that's
an example of how we've lost are the collective speed
that once made this nation great.

Speaker 4 (08:02):
I mean, that's kind of a Eugene Talviadge believed he
was right.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
We could make Robert the meanest man in Milton, Noma
County easily.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 4 (08:14):
That's true.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
I don't know. We have a lot of cops, although
they don't live here.

Speaker 4 (08:17):
So also true. Now, Thomas wasn't raising his kids to
just be simple farm hands, and he works to guarantee
that his children had the highest quality education provided in
the area. Now, Gene was kind of a sickly kid,
and he remained a little bit sickly throughout his whole life.

(08:38):
He was very, very lean, very thin, and it was
apparent to his family from a very young age that
he would not be one to labor away in the fields.
Anderson writes he tried the plow as a boy, but
his mind was recognizably his strong suit. Now, Jean's dictorial
ambitions could be seen from quite an early age, as

(09:00):
his childhood hero was none other than Napoleon. Ah see,
which is a media red flag.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
Yeah, a red flag. That's a red flag.

Speaker 4 (09:10):
If your kid's into Napoleon, you gotta stop that ship
cracked down hard.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
I spent all my time reading Hitler books as a
little kid, and that only turned out marginally better.

Speaker 4 (09:19):
So, no, you you're the best case scenario for a
kid Butler books.

Speaker 2 (09:25):
But Napoleon was definitely the Hitler of that period. And yeah,
you just got He needed more, you know what, Garrison,
he needed more time with the plow. You know, a
little more time with that plow would have fixed him up,
maybe enough that he gets threshed and he doesn't ever
learn how to read better.

Speaker 4 (09:40):
He was not built for the plow. And Gene was
really obnoxious about it too. I'm going to read a
quote from Anderson here. Quote. He baited family members and
house guests by betting them he could quote passages from
a volume of Napoleon's biography that he constantly carried around. Absolutely,
you don't think I can do it, he would say,

(10:01):
until someone would answer that they didn't believe he could.
A verbatim quote would then issue forth, and its length
and precision never failed to impress all who heard it. Unquote.

Speaker 2 (10:11):
I think, Look, I'm not I'm not an expert parent here,
but I think the right way to respond to that
a parent, you get a you get a you get
a sprayer and you you just spray him in the
face a little bit. Every time they try to like
get you, to get you to ask him a Napoleon quote,
you just get him, right, yeah, yeah, bout like no, yeah,
you know what it's like. You know when I heard him.
You just want to teach them, like that's not how

(10:32):
we behave in public. You know, a little bit of water.

Speaker 4 (10:35):
Yeah, Genga's cons on the line Napoleon hard no, yeah,
hard no, just to say, well, we're time, Robert, you're
not a parent.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
Let I have I have two entire cats, sure, and
I raised them, and I mean definitely your parenting strategy.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
Yeah, nice cat spray. Uh uh huh. Cats are fine
around tan, right, Garrison's other kinds of explosion.

Speaker 4 (11:04):
They might just use it as a litter box, honestly.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
Yeah. Essentially just started tracking at all over the house.
You know, there's no reason you couldn't, and then you
can blow it up afterwards. This is not anymore the
litter Just shoot it just once a week. Take your
box at ten right into the backyard. Just shoot it
with a three o eight. This is perfect. Oh man,

(11:28):
I think I've got a new product idea.

Speaker 4 (11:33):
That's certainly a better idea than what Gene was up
to as a kid, because he was quite the little bastard.
As a twelve year old, he had his private pony
and buggy ride to his school, the Hillard Institute for Boys,
just insufferable, and he was also a debate kid. Schoolmates
recounted he was a very skilled debater who almost like

(11:53):
never lost and had a very devilishous spirit. He was
also quite a mean child, as the grandson of the
meanest man in Jasper County. Jean said that the quote
N word boys I grew up with would call me
mean lou Jean because I was so damn mean unquote,
and this continued all throughout his life. He was consistently

(12:16):
not just like extremely racist, but like just in general
a very cruel man. Yeah, Like for fun, he would
he would just start fights between boys at school and
he would just sit and watch them go at it.
This is also something he continued to do late into
his career. He didn't want to be a part of
the fighting, he just wanted to watch it happen.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
I I He's reminded me a little bit of Peter
Teal because I'm working on his episodes. Now, so I'm
reading about him as a child, and Teal wasn't exactly
this kind of kid, but there's this like this commonality
and like they recognize that they're smarter than other people,
and their primary, the primary thing that they take from
that is I should fuck with them.

Speaker 4 (12:54):
Yeah. Yeah, no, he that's like.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
And I need to be ruling them.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (12:58):
His capacity to manipulate people and gain pleasure out of that, yeah,
and then eventually wheeled power over them. That's definitely like
an early drive, and like that's why he liked Napoleon,
Like that's when you found a Compoleon figure.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
We need to just all Napoleon books. We need to
coat in like a form of lithium that just gets
in through your skin and really just lithium. These kids
the fuck out.

Speaker 4 (13:21):
Honestly, that's the right that might have happened to Geen
because he spoiler alert, he didn't live super long, so
he may have very well been poisoned by a great
many things that were around this area of like rural
Georgia in the twenties thirties.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
People talk about microplastics, just thinking about all the ways
that they're going to damage our reproductive health. And lead
to cancer clusters. YadA, YadA, YadA. Think of how many
assholes are going to check out early thanks to that stuff.
You know, we could really dodge a few major bullets there.
Every week, I buy a palette of bottled water and
I just hook it in the back of a high school.

(14:01):
You know.

Speaker 4 (14:03):
What is what?

Speaker 1 (14:04):
Continue Garrison.

Speaker 4 (14:06):
So, although Napoleon was the childhood hero of Gene, a
populist speaker named Tom Watson was his first real like
political inspiration on the local level. Anderson writes that Watson
became Gene's quote unquote spiritual leader and that Gene was
quote fascinated by his fiery style, understanding of the rural mind,

(14:26):
and his electrifying manner of speech on quote Now, Watson
later became like a kind of like politician and lawyer who,
as as he got older, got increasingly racist and increasingly
anti Semitic, as kind of as liberalization was setting in
the twentieth century, what he would do. He just goes
Georgia just blaming black people and Jewish people for like

(14:50):
all of the resulting economic complications that like liberalism and
modernism was was like encroaching onto Georgia. So this is
this is Gene's like real, like real like local hero
the guy he actually he's like. Gene knows he's not
going to be like an actual Napoleon, but he can
be a Tom Watson. So later in college, Gene would

(15:11):
brag about how far he would walk to attend to
Tom Watson's speech, and he would just get so excited
talking about it that he would start walking around and
pacing around the room telling his friends. So he was
super into this guy now, Like his father, He attended
the University of Georgia in Athens, where he served as
football manager and was a champion debater. He continue to

(15:33):
be a debate kid until his death. After school, he
started teaching in the small farming town of Auburn, Georgia,
which he quickly found to be quite boring. Jane loved
debate and like intellectual combat, so he decided to go
back to Athens enroll in law school to become a
lawyer like his hero Tom Watson. He graduated in nineteen
oh seven and moved to Atlanta to work in a

(15:54):
law firm, but he was still just very unsatisfied with work.
He just wasn't doing very well. Jean's father didn't really
know how to help him because he was quote unquote
so goddamn. Mean, it's like even his father knew, like
you just can't succeed in life because you're just like
a cruel person.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (16:13):
Now, a friend of his father, a legislator named William Peterson,
offered for Gene to stay at his home with his
sister in the small town of a Ley in South
Georgia to straighten him out. There he could live cheaply
and start his own law practice. Another woman was living
in the house, a young widow with a child from
South Carolina named Mitt or nicknamed Mitt.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
What what year is he in school? What year was this?

Speaker 4 (16:38):
He graduated law school in nineteen oh seven? Okay, so
he moved this is this is around like the late
like like seven nineteen aughts.

Speaker 1 (16:48):
Yeah, so technically he could have been a Rhodes Scholar,
but he wasn't.

Speaker 2 (16:53):
I guess, so we all could have been a Rhodes
school I.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
Think Rhodes scholar was like nineteen oh two, nineteen oh
three when it first started, So technically he could have been.

Speaker 4 (17:03):
I guess.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
So I guess.

Speaker 4 (17:04):
So, okay, so Mitt from South from South Carolina didn't
really like that a city slicker was going to be
living in the same house as her. So when Gine arrived,
she quickly met him first to charge him just an
exuberant rent to scare him off, but he agreed, and
the two, actually you started to get along quite well.

(17:25):
Gene appreciated her for, as he said, her sassiness. Anderson
writes that her independent nature as well as her quote
infectious sense of humor, complimented the talmadge wit unquote. So
they quickly got along and a courtship began, which resulted
in Gene having to move out of the house, as
it would be improper for the couple to be living

(17:46):
under the same roof. Of course, so Jane relocated to
the nearby community of Mount Vernon, where he had a
small law office across from the courthouse with an older
lawyer named Colonel Underwood, another great Southern name. This this,
this whole story is is peppered with some just fantastic names.
Now in Mount Vernon, he gained reputation for being a

(18:06):
short tempered dick, which he was. There was one time
he falsely blamed a neighbor kid for letting out his
pony and threatened to beat the hell out of the kid.
An old Mount Vernon local called him, quote the meanest
son of a bitch I've ever met, unquote. So this
is in Kikika did just to be like a really
veen guy. And he was not a very popular man,

(18:26):
not just because of his bubbly personality, but also because
the sort of cases he took on, which were often
ones that like older and more established lawyers could afford
to pass up on. So like murders, muggings, and dealing
with clients just so poor that they could only pay
in chicken, eggs and milk, Jene took just nearly every
case offered. Anderson writes of one instance where Eugene defended

(18:47):
a black woman quote who was so poverty stricken that
she gave him her four young boys as partial payment,
or perhaps because she could not afford to keep them.

Speaker 2 (18:59):
I mean, first off, I gotta say, what else are
you gonna do with four young boys? Garrison?

Speaker 4 (19:04):
It's it's this is this is a pretty uncomfortable little,
uh little tidbit here. Uh, I don't Robert Jean took
the boys and fixed a place for them in a
small barn behind his house.

Speaker 2 (19:17):
Sounds nice. That's like an a du Sure, the.

Speaker 4 (19:20):
Boys did odd jobs around the house, and stories still
circulated about how he used to beat the hell out
of them when they bade him.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
Now it's gotten problematic, you know.

Speaker 4 (19:30):
Oh not the not the kind of sort of slavery.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
It was starting starting to sound like, couldn't look there
was no slavery here, you know, babes Robert, it's absolutely slavery. Curious,
it is like its adjacent to slavery. I was thinking
it was like the reverse of three men in a baby,
four kids, and a guy who wants to be the
dictator of Georgia.

Speaker 4 (19:53):
I don't think it's that charming, now, Okay. Ederson closes
is this litle anecdote by saying, there's no proof that
he kept them, but the rumor still does for six children.

Speaker 2 (20:07):
What a horrible thing to have someone say about you.

Speaker 4 (20:10):
We have also, we also just have no clue like
what happened to these kids, where did they go? How
long he had them? They just kind of they just
kind of disappeared from his biography after like a few paragraphs.
They're just like, oh, well, sure, so you.

Speaker 2 (20:27):
Children do something we'll never know to them, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
Don't finish that thought.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
But I don't. I can't.

Speaker 4 (20:37):
We don't know what happened to them now. Geene and
Mit got married in nineteen oh nine, and she and
her son John moved into the small Mountain Vernon home,
where they lived for two years as Gina struggled as
a lawyer. Now they were just doing so poorly that
Gene decided to quit law altogether and move onto midst
deceased husband's farm on Sugar Creek, about twenty three miles

(20:59):
away in the town of Gray. Mitt says, quote, we
weren't hardly in the place and starting to plant before
Jeane decided he didn't want to be no farmer. You
could say he liked being a farmer, but he didn't
like farming unquote. And I think this is one of
the truest statements about Jane's career. He loved like the
political idea of being a farmer. He hated farm work.

(21:22):
He did not enjoy it at all. He would almost
do anything to avoid it. But he found like great
solace in like in like the concept of being a farmer. Now.
Mitt eventually just took over farming operations to support the
family as Jane returned to his struggling career in law.
Do you know what else I struggle with?

Speaker 2 (21:43):
Robert Wow saying several of the words in that last sentence.
But yes, that is true. Who am I to judge
on that account?

Speaker 4 (21:52):
Words are often a struggle, as well as the products
and services that support this podcast, the eternal struggle for advertising.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
I guess yes, yes, I'm writing a book in German
about Nope. Okay, anyway, here's some ads. Garrison. It's hard
not to make a mind comp joke when someone says
the word struggle. You know, that's my struggle.

Speaker 4 (22:17):
We we will add some later point. Learned about genes
mine comp opinions because he did have them.

Speaker 2 (22:26):
Yeah, I was. I was going to ask you ye
to read to read the follow up, that's like an
episode three or four thing.

Speaker 4 (22:33):
Yeah, yeah, but she did have mine comp opinions. Yeah,
they weren't great.

Speaker 2 (22:38):
All right, okay, sorry.

Speaker 4 (22:41):
So at this point in Georgia, it was essentially just
a one party state wholly controlled by the white pharmacist
Southern Democratic Party. The white's only primary election dictated who
occupied governmental positions. In the late eighteen hundreds, Georgia informally
adopted a primary election system called the county unit system,

(23:03):
which was formally signed into law in nineteen seventeen. It
functioned like Georgia's own version of the electoral college, allowing
each county a certain number of votes in party primaries
which could overrule the popular vote. The eight most populated
counties had six votes each, thirty medium sized counties had
four votes, and the last one hundred and twenty one

(23:24):
counties with very small rural populations had two votes each.
So this system was designed and worked to maintain rule
control over the whole state, as only a few tiny
counties had the same voting power as the entire population
of Atlanta and other growing urban centers. The county unit
system tied Georgia to the past amidst a period of

(23:46):
rapid industrialization and urban growth. The system was managed by
local county officials, who were often corrupt and demanded favors
or promises in exchange for votes, acting as a sort
of lobbying group for the county. I'm going to quote
from Anderson here. Quote The rule power source created a
group of power wielders known as the Courthouse Gang, comprised

(24:06):
of city and county officials, the newspaper editor, the sheriff
and county lawyers. The gang represented the common denominator of
Georgia's power structure. Each gang had its own idiosyncratic ways
of operating, of obtaining power and losing it. Members were
the powerbrokers for the community. The gangs formed complex associations
of power with the state's money sources in urban Atlanta

(24:26):
that grew stronger during the first two decades of the
century as technology moved into Georgia. So there was like
this tension between the political power which was held in
rural counties and the monetary influence which resided in Atlanta.
What marked a good politician or power broker was one's
ability to thread that needle. Now. Almost immediately upon arriving

(24:50):
in McRae, Jen began asking around about the local courthouse gang.
In his old towns of Aley in Mount Vernon, the
courthouse gang there was under the control of the Peterson Fans,
who facilitated Jean's moved to the area, so he wisely
avoided getting into unnecessary fights with the local establishment, But
in McRae this ceased to be the case. This was
his first opportunity to play at politics, as he sensed

(25:13):
the local political structure was unstable, and positions of power
were often in flux. Now Jean had very naked ambitions
of power, but he preferred picking fights with the courthouse
gang rather than appeasing them. He was so immediately disliked
by this exclusive collection of powerbrokers that the other lawyers
saw him as quote the N word, who came to town.

(25:34):
So just using racism as a way to call someone
essentially like an unwonted stranger. So that's how they started
to That's how they started referring to Jean. Now, he
also just became so unpopular that it became hard for
him to win a case before the jury. Jean continued
to struggle with his law practice as he managed his
farm through the years up and through World War One.

(25:56):
At this point, he operated what they call a two
mule farm. He grew cotton and sugar cane, and then
moved on to peanuts. He hired white and black farm hands,
none of which were treated great whoa but dby, But
the black ones were treated much worse.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
Okay, but worse than the neighboring farms. See okay, well, okay,
there you go. Woke.

Speaker 4 (26:19):
It woke on the idea that everyone was all pretty
racist and pretty violent and pretty fucked up.

Speaker 2 (26:24):
Yeah. So if that's what woke means, then yes, done
I mean.

Speaker 4 (26:29):
In an anonymous interview from nineteen forty one, a close
friend of Jean recalled quote, Jean was like a lot
of farm bosses back then. He'd knock the hell out
of a black if he crossed him.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
Oops.

Speaker 4 (26:42):
I remembered when he was governor, he hit one of
his farm inwards upside the head with a pistol, and
the pistol went off. The N Word ran under the
house holding his head, and Jean got a little scared
that he killed him. He told me to go look
under the house to see if he was all right.
By the time I got there, the N word had
run home, packed its bags and left unquot.

Speaker 2 (27:04):
Wow, that's one of those remarkable passages. Were like every
additional clause makes it worse.

Speaker 4 (27:11):
Yes, Yeah, Instances like this were not uncommon for Jane,
Anderson writes quote. Jane later admitted to flogging a Negro
man and appeared ashamed of it, saying good people could
be misguided and do bad things. Disregarding this remerseful apology,
Talmadge's attitude towards blacks was that they were childlike, basically stupid,

(27:34):
barely moved from a savage ancestry, and should be closely controlled. Now,
Gene was just well known locally to have racist outbursts
of violence. During World War One, a Jewish man and
his wife from the North were accompanied by their black
butler traveling back home from Florida. While passing through mcray,
the woman and her butler walked through town snacking on apples,

(27:58):
and the display of white wool and a black man
alone eating food together shocked and angered the local shop owners.
As news reached the courthouse, Gene busted out the door,
brandishing an axe. With another lawyer armed with a hammer,
Gene charged towards the butler, screaming, I'm gonna get you
n word, and the white lady threw apples at Jean,

(28:18):
and a mob descended and demanded the couple leave town,
which they did, abandoning the black butler, who was left
to flee on his own. H Anderson notes that quote
no one ever did find the poor servant unquote, So
it's another one of these incidents, and like you can't
like name all of them. This is just like such

(28:38):
a common common occurrence now, Anderson writes, quote this incident
reflects the complexity and the cruelty of the racial situation.
Jeane saw nothing wrong with having negroes to eat lunch
at his table and cook his food, as long as
they don't sit next to his wife. But he considered
it unthinkable to have a black man accompany a white
woman down the street eating apples together, no matter how

(28:59):
innocent their motives. To explain this position towards black people
in the nineteen twenties is to explain that of most georgiansuote.
By nineteen eighteen, Jeens, or rather myts farming venture was
a steady operation, but his law practice was still largely
a failure, and his political aspirations remained completely unrequited. His

(29:20):
first real brush with politics arose when the office of
Solicitor to the City Court became vacant. Now, it wasn't
a big position, but it could provide a foot in
the door. Now Jean had the perfect idea to secure
his spot in the open post. He wrote to his father,
who was a very well connected and well respected man
in Atlanta, and asked him to speak with the governor

(29:40):
about appointing e Gene to the position. Now, the governor
was apparently happy to oblige, but instead of this impressing
the local courthouse gang, this only made them hate Gene
Moore because like, of course, you're just asking your like
fancy dad to like it give you, give you this
post instead of actually having like a work for it yourself.

(30:01):
They were so unhappy with this state of affairs that
they had the office voted out of existence by the legislature.
They really wanted nothing to do with Jean. One of
the stories about how Jean got into politics was that
the local courthouse gang was refusing to grade the roads
around his farm, so he sought office to do it himself. Now,
this is most certainly like not the main reason he

(30:21):
got into politics. He was always interested in politics, but
this is a story that was deployed for his own
political gain over time. Now, at this point in Georgia, rail,
oil and power were the main political industries, but with
the advent of the automobile, the age of the road
was around the bend. Georgia roads were famously quite bad

(30:42):
in the nineteen twenties, and rural roads were often way
too rough for like buggies and cars and really only
good for horses and.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
Walking same today, honestly, I.

Speaker 4 (30:53):
Mean sometimes in certain areas, Jane made friends with multiple
early roadbuilders, including a man named John Whitley, who would
later become one of his best friends. Jean also struck
up a friendship with the so called most knowledgeable roadbuilder
in the area, a man named J. C. Thrasher.

Speaker 2 (31:11):
Another fantastic name, amazing name. Oh, I'm gonna steal that
man's name to write a fucking TV show like I
was say, forty five minute episodes twenty six this season
about a guy who repossesses cars in Miami.

Speaker 4 (31:27):
Yeah, that's a good like repoman the name JC Thrasher.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (31:33):
Now. Thrasher and Jean bonded over their shared aspirations of
getting into the Courthouse Gang, both feeling like they've been
screwed over by the local establishment. Now. Thrasher wanted to
run for county commissioner, and Jean volunteered to be his
campaign manager. He ran Thrasher as an independent since the
Democratic Party was tied in with the local Courthouse Gang,
but he managed to get Thrasher elected. As soon as

(31:55):
he took office, Thrasher appointed Jen as attorney for the county.
The court host gang had finally been broken, and the
pair began their successful road building program. Now, but after
only being a county attorney for like just a few months,
Jean wanted more. He decided to run for state representative. Now.

(32:15):
His wife, Met wasn't thrilled. She didn't really care much
for Jean's political aspirations and felt that he was abandoning
the farm that they had spent a decade building, which
he absolutely was. But nevertheless, Jane persisted and announced his
candidacy in a short statement. I'm going to quote from
Anderson here. Quote. Much of the Talmadge future in politics

(32:36):
can be read in this first announcement. Know the poor voter,
articulate few problems and fewer solutions, and bear down heavily
on your own honesty. Do nothing but do it with honor. Unquote.
And yeah, Gene had kind of had like a libertarian
esque undercurrent to a holemunchie of his campaign.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
He certainly do.

Speaker 4 (32:58):
He's which is like funny because like he is a dictator,
but he's like a libertarian dictator.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
It's a thing in US politics in particular kind of
no matter who you are, you have to have some
libertarian even to the present day. Some libertarian sign posting
in your I mean, Kamao just did this with her
like I have a gun, I'd shoot someone who.

Speaker 4 (33:16):
Broke it, who comes into my house.

Speaker 2 (33:18):
Yeah, you have to do it a little bit, because
it's just so baked into what Americans are, you know,
So I get that.

Speaker 4 (33:25):
Yeah. Jane mostly ran his campaign alone. He would get
up early and right around on county roads, talking with farmers,
rail workers, and shopkeepers. Anderson notes, quote Gina knew that
he had to counter years of bad publicity from the
gang and many unpopular court fights unquote, And despite Jean's
work to counter this bad publicity, he did lose seven

(33:47):
hundred and fifty six votes to one hundred and eighty
seven votes, which gives you an idea of like the
voting population of this area.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (33:56):
Yeah, But Jean took the loss well, knowing that he
did reasonably reasonably well for his first run, and he
didn't want to damage the positive reputation that he'd worked
hard to build up that summer with his newly garnered goodwill,
Jean McKim friends with the old leader of the gang,
Lamar Murdeaux, eventually moving into his law office. Gene's second

(34:18):
attempt to run for office was in nineteen twenty two,
this time for the state Senate. In attempts to discredit
him during the race, the courthouse lawyers convened a grand
jury to accuse Talmage of having sex with his plowing mule, which,
as a tried and true political tactic, is just accusing

(34:39):
your opponent of having sex with animals. It is an
old one that simply will not go away. Still, Gene
was improving as a politician, evidenced by winning the popular
vote in the three county race. Yet the courthouse gang
decided that this election would be subject to the county
unit system and chose to over rule the popular vote.

(35:01):
Just despite Jean Jean was now forty years old. He
couldn't manage to get elected to local office and really
only got where he was via the courtesy of family
and friends, and was continuously outmaneuvered by his enemies. But
despite his losses, he kept thinking bigger. Around nineteen twenty four,
Jeane took a trip to Atlanta to, in the words
of his friend and long term political ally, Henry Sperlin, quote,

(35:25):
find the biggest dog he could to decide who to
run against. Now. While at Atlanta, Gene encountered the Agricultural Commissioner,
Old JJ Brown, another great another great name, who's who's
described as a huge man wearing a huge hat surrounded
by a personal posse.

Speaker 3 (35:46):
Now, Jean, so he was he was like strong pimp vibes. Yeah,
of course, who's yes, very much so, very much so.
And Jane was enamored by this, right, of course, Gene pimps.
That's an important moment. Never young boys live.

Speaker 4 (35:59):
Gene to be a guy with a big hat surrounded
by a personal posse.

Speaker 2 (36:03):
That's like all he wants. Who doesn't.

Speaker 4 (36:07):
Now, Andrew sid notes that quote. In rural Georgia, with
its weak central government and strong agricultural economy, the office
of Agricultural Commissioner had emerged as one of the more
powerful unquote, and Old JJ Brown was in with big
fertilizer and while he was like famously corrupt, he was
also one of the most powerful men in the state,
controlling a very fierce political lobby and awarded supporters with

(36:30):
cushy oil and fertilizer inspector jobs. To stand to stand
a chance against JJ, Gene would need substantial political assistance Luckily,
he'd become friendly with the editor of the very very
influential Atlantic Constitution newspaper, who, like many others, wanted to
see Old JJ go. But sympathetic coverage wasn't enough to

(36:53):
go up against JJ. Now, Old JJ Brown's open display
of corruption was turning more and more lawmakers against him.
A state legislator named Tom Linder was heading up an
efforts to find someone to run against Brown. On a
trip home to South Georgia, Linder happens to encounter Talmadge
while going farm to farm selling fertilizer. Talmdge had heard

(37:14):
of Linder, and the two started talking politics. He mentioned
that he was looking for someone to run up against
Old JJ with the backing of one hundred legislators, but
everyone was just too scared to run now. Jane quickly
right over and told Lamar Murdau about this coincidental opportunity,
and a few nights later, both men showed up outside
Linder's house announcing that Jean would like a run for

(37:36):
Agricultural Commissioner. Though he didn't have the best political track record,
Jeane was feisty, and more importantly, literally no one else
was willing to go up against JJ at this point. Now,
Jeane's wife was not pleased, and she only found out
about his candidacy while shopping in town one day. At
this point, Jean admit, we're not talking much about Jane's
political career.

Speaker 2 (37:56):
That's sad.

Speaker 4 (38:00):
Yeah, I mean Mit, MIT's very busy having to run
Jean's farm, so she has a lot to do.

Speaker 2 (38:05):
Yeah, fair enough, being a girl boss.

Speaker 4 (38:11):
Kinda although Gene will take all the credit for the farm.

Speaker 2 (38:14):
Well, that's what being a boy bosses.

Speaker 4 (38:17):
That is what being a boy bosses.

Speaker 2 (38:20):
Real Zuckerberg energy from our man Jean here.

Speaker 4 (38:23):
Now, some in the local courthouse gang were very quick
to snitch on Jean, but a fair amount of them
were wrangled into supporting him. Anderson notes said, for Jean's haters,
it was kind of a wind wind scenario for him
to run against a powerful man like JJ, because if
he lost, which he most certainly would, his ambitions would
once again be completely crushed. And if he somehow won,

(38:44):
then Gene just wouldn't be their problem anymore. Now, Murdeaux
headed up Inner County relations, going around talking to different newspapers,
courthouse gangs, and churches, and the election had a few
other local boys from across the state, eventually running on
a similar platform against Brown, but Jean stood out because
of his presentation and theatrics reminiscent of the populist Tom Watson,

(39:05):
as well as the favorable coverage in the Constitution and
Murdeaux later just paid off two candidates to drop out
of the race. This way, Gene was able to present
himself as the lone combatant standing against all odds town,
which was absolutely trying to fill in the populist power
vacuum left by the death of his adolescent inspiration, Tom Watson.

(39:27):
Jean started using little nicknames to attack his opponents, calling
JJ's corrupt oil inspectors oily boys. Work.

Speaker 2 (39:37):
Yeah, that's a good start. Start, It's a good start.

Speaker 4 (39:41):
Did start oily boys?

Speaker 2 (39:45):
Start with Hillary before he reached his apothesis with Joe
meatball Ron. That was his finest hour. That's his battle.

Speaker 4 (39:56):
You can see the uptick right, got crooked Hillary, sleepy Joe.

Speaker 2 (40:03):
You did just just nuked him. That That was the
verbal equivalent of a fucking cruise missile. Now Anderson does
right again. He wrote this in the seventies quote. Jean
had an unusual talent for coming up with simple, easy
to remember, funny phrases. Unquote, Yeah, that's that's a staple

(40:27):
of politics.

Speaker 4 (40:30):
To continue from Anderson quote, Jane had developed an uncanny
intuition about the emotional motivation of the farmer. He knew
they were gut motivated, responsive to emotional appeals and extremes,
and had a strong propensity for irrationality. They possessed great pride,
a fantastic sense of their past and an appreciation for it.
And they were suspicious of things strange and alien. The

(40:53):
strategy of erecting faceless enemies and conspiracies warring against the
little man, the haves against the have nots, had been
used definitively by Watson, and the disciple had learned well
from the master. His language could be earthy, profane, grammatically atrocious,
and very provincial in isolated rural areas. It was tailored
to be understood by the most ignorant farmhand, simple, uncluttered,

(41:16):
blunt discourse punctuated with bile passages and rule humor. His
language was also very adaptable. He was a highly educated man,
capable of polish and refinement and sophisticated dialogue. So he
kind of like he kind of like code switched and
talking to like rural farmers, he would talk a certain way,
and talking to like people in Atlanta, he would talk

(41:38):
a different way because he wasn't a hick, like he
went to the University of Georgia. He was educated.

Speaker 1 (41:46):
No, no, no, no, because like he literally said, he
wants people to think he's a farmer, but he hates farming.

Speaker 2 (41:52):
That's exactly Yet he understood the value of playing as
a hick.

Speaker 4 (41:58):
Exactly exactly he was. He had he kind of introduced
if I introduced, he kind of popularized this very like
theatrical style of politics for the US governor, Like this
is this is where he made his bread and butter
was being a very like theatrical Uh I think, I
think I think Anderson calls it a politics of crisis,

(42:19):
like a theatrical politics of crisis. That was his main tactic. Yeah,
And do you know what our main tactic is, Robert.

Speaker 2 (42:27):
Well, it's actually that Garrison. I'm a big fan of
the politics of crisis, which is why I'm trying to
convince everybody listening that there's a high stakes presidential election
occurring when you and I both know the lizards picked
the winner months ago.

Speaker 4 (42:44):
God, anyway, Okay, you're semess. It's a good bit. I'm
just not going to continue.

Speaker 2 (42:49):
I just can no, no, no, no, no, there's only
so far we should go into that. Otherwise somebody's gonna
send us a message on Reddit that makes me regret
in the last several years of work I've done. Anyway,
here's some ass.

Speaker 4 (43:06):
So that's why I think if the electoral count is tied,
the Senate's obviously going to pick Tim Walls. That was
That's been the plan the whole time. It's already illustrated.
It's very because Oh sorry, hey guys, welcome's behind the bastards.
We're returning once once again.

Speaker 2 (43:24):
A podcast about how Tim Walls absolutely is not descended
from an iguana. Look, I haven't gone through his childhood photos,
seen pictures of his parents. I can't prove to you
that he's part of guana. You know, that's just not
a thing I'm going to do. He's population DNA. Absolutely,
it has a lot of like you can keep an

(43:44):
iguana in a trarium. Garrison, don't be racist.

Speaker 4 (43:49):
Speaking speaking of racism, Eugene Talbach. Oh boy, So now
to Jean's delight again, we are we are in the
race for the Agricultural Commissioner, and to Jean's delight, JJ
Brown challenged him to multiple debates, the first of which
would take place in McRae. Now, this is exactly what

(44:10):
Gene was wanting. Now, JJ had heard that Gene was
unpopular in his hometown and thought it would be like
an easy win. But JJ made the mistake of only
hearing from Jean's local critics and failed to realize the
ability of a small town to rally together against a big,
slimy like, big city politician. This was going to be
the biggest political event in the town's history, and folks

(44:31):
were genuinely excited to see that fiery Gene Talmadge go
at it again. Jeane absolutely dominated in the debate, using
the hometown crowd to his advantage, and not that that
was needed though, as the second debate was in JJ's
hometown in North Georgia, and once again Talmadge handed JJ
Brown a humiliating defeat. Anderson writes that quote Brown had

(44:53):
been run off the stump in his own hometown unquote. Now,
Jane returned to McRae for election day, where he won
one hundred and twenty three thousand votes to sixty six
thousand votes.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
Gotta say the number of voters has really leapt up
since the last election.

Speaker 4 (45:11):
Yes, indeed, Gene also just completely dominated in the county
unit system, getting three hundred and sixty two county unit
votes to Brown's meager fifty two out to quote Anderson quote,
the Atlanta Press and the Georgia Legislature provided session blood
to a skeleton conceived and bound together by the tremendous

(45:32):
energies and aspirations of Eugene Talmadge unquote, and I think
this is this is this is really.

Speaker 2 (45:37):
Interesting place for a skeleton metaphor. But I'm on board.

Speaker 4 (45:40):
Gene was often very skeleton like. He kind of looked
like a walking skeleton.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
It doesn't look a good skeleton. I like skeletons, you know.
I think it's something with a skeleton.

Speaker 4 (45:49):
So I think it's important to point out that like
both the Atlanta Press and the Georgia and the Georgia
Legislature would later like hate Gene Talmadge, and yet they
are the ones responsible for first getting him into power.
It was only through their coverage and only through their assistance,
that he was made into the monster that he would become.

(46:12):
Without their participation, he probably would have stayed just a
small country lawyer. It was specifically their help that allowed
him to get to where he was now. Gene fulfilled
his campaign promises of cutting the bloated number of inspectors,
and while he removed any remnants of the old corrupt
JJ regime, he didn't tend to hire a lot of

(46:33):
his own family members, and he won reelection in nineteen
twenty eight. But for a man in such a high
political position, he had a very juvenile understanding of the
state economy. He cannot understand why southern bankers favored appeasing
Wall Street over helping local farmers. Gene weaponized fears of
Southern inferiority and oppression, preaching that rich Northerners were using

(46:57):
their influence to keep the agricultural South subserving to the North.
And Orison writes that this belief quote drove him beyond
old South conservatism to the point of know nothingism and
a semi rejection of all things geographically and idealistically removed
from the South. Unquote. He ran a column in the
department's own newspaper, the Market Bulletin, which ostensibly existed to

(47:19):
communicate directly with farmers, but he mostly used it to
spread his economic and political philosophy. Right, this is how
you used to send like updates on like farming and
like agricultural information because the Internet doesn't exist. But Gene
used this as his own Twitter feed, just just posting
posting his like economic opinions.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
This is a thing like with the very worst people
in like the Night of the twentieth century is they
all found ways to independently create Twitter for themselves.

Speaker 4 (47:46):
This is a Twitter.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
Yeah, everyone on Twitter, and all of the worst people
figured out how to make their own.

Speaker 4 (47:53):
Yes, yes, absolutely now. Gene one reelection a third time
in nineteen thirty and this year marked the first time
in the state's history that a majority of the population
weren't living on a farm. Basically, since the Civil War, Georgia,
especially rural Georgia, was stuck in a culturally imposed political isolation.

(48:16):
But now people were fleeing the countryside in droves as
a mixture of like economic hardships, developing technology, and urban growths.
As Anderson puts it, quote brought the reality of the
world to Georgia unquote and basically this like forced modernism
that was encroaching provided a compelling alternative to farm life
for the rural population. At the start of the depression,

(48:39):
the average price of farmland and cotton fell by one half,
and Jane still did basically nothing to help his supporters
weather these bad times. He mostly just encouraged people to
stay on the farm, and he embassaed the farmer starve
out there, you know, yeah, because like he thought that
was more noble than taking help from the federal government.
Like literally he spent all of his time just complaining

(49:02):
about the Federal Farm bureaus recommendations and attempts to help people,
saying that their efforts were like Unamerican right, trying to
give people like money to get food, trying to start
lending cooperatives, trying to encourage people to just farm a
little bit less land so they have a sustainable like
supplying to man ecosystem. Now, it's just very clear like
Gene lacked the economic knowledge to effectively enact any change,

(49:24):
so instead he blamed all of the state's agricultural and
economic woes on Wall Street and bankers quote unquote. The
poor economic situation seriously put into question the image of
individual frontier self sufficiency. So Why were people still supporting
Talmage even though he was so ill equipped to understand

(49:44):
their current economic situation, with the farmers often just ignoring
his advice but voting for him anyway. I'm going to
quote from Anderson to kind of answer that question. Quote
Gene was saying, we do not want to become dependent
on our government, and they were desperately looking for relief.
The Georgia farmer had lost the will to care for
himself because he had lost the ability. This forced him

(50:07):
to think beyond himself and realized that this was now
a world of alternatives to staying on the farm. These
new directions in which the farmer was moving were apparently
creating a problem of conscience, and by supporting the voice
of the past, Gene Talmadge, they were absolving guilty feelings
about leaving the past. So while farmers were struggling, Gina

(50:29):
was actually having quite a bit of fun. He would
take road trips.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
With his friends.

Speaker 4 (50:32):
Good.

Speaker 2 (50:33):
I hate it when people like put their back into
their work and just are miserable. You know, if you're
going to be a dictator, you might as well enjoy
the path to dictation.

Speaker 4 (50:42):
He was having a good time at this point, he
was less of a dictator and more just like I
saw on the road, he just wasn't doing it Like
this is like in terms of his like libertarian approach,
this is him being a libertarian. He's he's just not
doing anything.

Speaker 2 (50:56):
That's the dream of every ruler.

Speaker 4 (50:58):
People are in like a vere agricultural crisis, and as
the commissioner, he's just being like, good luck, stay out there,
don't stop farming, and like that's it. Meanwhile, he's taking
road trips with his friends and family to places like
Charleston's Botanical Gardens to quote unquote study to quote unquote
study agriculture. Sure, the commissioner's hard out, yeah, yeah, And

(51:27):
he just kept hiring family members and had this state
pay for cars that they crashed. And he also didn't
report the tax money he collected it to the state
treasury instead of putting it into his friend's bank accounts.

Speaker 2 (51:43):
A good friend.

Speaker 4 (51:44):
The state doesn't need to handle this money. I'll deal
with that. I'll just put it in Bill's account.

Speaker 2 (51:48):
That's not because you look Garrison, the state you know,
could get up to all sorts of corruption andigans. But Bill,
he's just gonna spend that on hooch and chew chew,
not beer.

Speaker 4 (52:00):
Beer is big. No.

Speaker 2 (52:02):
No, Look, if Joe Biden had just sent twenty billion
dollars to the guy who provides him with zins, none
of us would have an issue with it, right, you know,
That's all I'll say.

Speaker 4 (52:11):
So what got Gene into real trouble though, was when
he completely unauthorized used the state's money, took by eighty
two car loads of hogs from Georgia farmers and get
if Joe.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
Biden carloads of hogs, we'd be fine with it.

Speaker 4 (52:28):
Oh, holdd I've lost my place in this.

Speaker 2 (52:29):
Sure, that's a good number of car loads of hogs.
Although a car back then you're only fitting what two
to four hogs max. That's really not that many hogs.

Speaker 4 (52:38):
It's about fourteen thousand dollars worth of hogs in nineteen
twenties money. So it's it's it's a lot of hogs.

Speaker 2 (52:45):
That is a that's that seems like a decent quantity
of hogs. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (52:48):
Now this was an illegal and just bizarre attempt to
help the local hog market by buying these hogs and
shipping them to Chicago to sell at a higher price,
and us all behind the governor's back. This scheme lost
the state anywhere from twelve to twenty thousand dollars, just
depending who you ask is which is between a two

(53:08):
hundred and twenty five thousand to three hundred and seventy
five thousand dollars in today's money.

Speaker 2 (53:13):
So this is the kind of scam Aney Adams would
get caught doing today.

Speaker 4 (53:17):
Yes, he lost the state basically the at least the
equivalent of like a quarter of a quarter of a
million dollars with this weird hog scheme. And in the
summer of nineteen thirty one, his questionable practice is finally
caught up with him with a Senate investigation tesked to
look into his conduct. I'm going to quote from Anderson here. Quote.

(53:38):
The committee disclosed that Gene had paid forty thousand dollars
eight hundred thousand in today's money in salaries to himself
and members of his family over a three year period.
This also includes their expenses such as yearly trips to
the Kentucky Derby.

Speaker 2 (53:52):
Sure, of course, well that's that's a bit that's necessary.
Though you can't can run agricultural research. There's a certain
minimum number of mint julips you need to be effective
in Georgia government. And you're only gonna get that density
if you go to the care. Maybe next year you
and I will go to the Derby.

Speaker 4 (54:09):
That I would. I'd be very down for that. We
can get.

Speaker 2 (54:12):
Matching tailored white suits.

Speaker 4 (54:14):
I am already down for that. Let's let's do it.

Speaker 2 (54:18):
That'll be fun. That'll be a good.

Speaker 4 (54:20):
Calm year of twenty twenty five. Or hopefully nothing will happen.

Speaker 2 (54:23):
It'll be the only interesting thing occurring is our trip
to the Derby.

Speaker 4 (54:26):
God, God, I hope.

Speaker 2 (54:27):
So you and I are both going to learn about
new kinds of racism, not new kinds of racism, but
new to us.

Speaker 4 (54:34):
Yeah, new do me a Canadian?

Speaker 2 (54:36):
Uh, Well, there's there's racism in the South, and then
there is like family money racism in the South, and
that you really gotta you really gotta go to the
Derby to catch a load of that.

Speaker 4 (54:48):
I believe that one of those plantation weddings, it is.
It is like Gene's favorite place to go. So yeah,
I can see that. Yeah. The Senate Committee eventually called
for a second hearing to investigate Jean's use of fertilizer
tax money, which, instead of sending into the treasury he
was depositing into the accounts of his friends. Jane refused
to appear before the second hearing, claiming the committee had

(55:10):
no power to demand his appearance, which the committee responded
by asking for contempt proceedings and vaguely threatening impeachment. This
was all a little ironic after Jen ran as like
the big anti corruption candidate, but Talmdge was eventually forced
to show up at the Investigative Committee hearing, where he
proudly stated, quote, if I stole it was for farmers

(55:31):
like yoursels un quote, And this like determination and dedication
to helping farmers by against stealing hogs was enough to
strike down an appeachment resolution by one hundred and fourteen
votes to twenty two. So all of at this point,
the Senate was also kind of full of farmers who
weren't very smart, so they were like, yeah, Gene, you go.

(55:53):
So he was fine. But to appease a few of
the angry senators who wanted the governor to take action
in court, Governor Russell tasked his AG to undergo his
own investigation, which eventually recommended that Talmadge pay back the
state fifteen thousand dollars for the hogs and his stepson's
job as a clerk. But the governor didn't actually take
action on this because he was planning a run for

(56:15):
the US Senate and didn't want to anger the farmers.
So Gene essentially just got away with all of this,
emerging as a sort of like Robin Hood figure who
would steal from the stage to help the farmers. Now,
come nineteen thirty two, the governor was running for a
US Senate and Jean had his eyes on the governor's office.
The hometown crowd from McRae traveled to Atlanta to pay

(56:36):
for the qualifying fee and announce his candidacy. Jeane had
largely been able to get around the courthouse gangs by
appealing directly to the vast swaths of the rural population,
and as commissioner, he made enough contacts in various counties
that an election campaign organization could rather spontaneously take form.
The state's largest roadbuilder, John Whitley, who was old friends
with Gene, got close to his political circle once again

(56:58):
with the prospect of Gene taking over the Highway Department.
Jane was really obsessed in this campaign with paying off
state debt, which he viewed as an evil long plaguing
the South. Gene was also worried by the then presidential
candidate Franklin Deleanor Roosevelt's calls for a more involved federal government.
To quote from Anderson quote, Jane knew that if the

(57:20):
starving farmer were given food money as a handout, the
Southern farmer would therefore remain in subjugation, only this time
to the government instead of the local bank or Wall
Street psychological indebtedness far worse than the region's traditional financial indebtedness.
Gene's obsession with debt as evil was an example of
his inability to distinguish the symptom from the disease. His

(57:41):
nineteen thirty two platform was flawed by this failing, and
thus he attacked peripheral issues that ironically served to maintain
the very problems he was trying to cure. Jean had
entered the race naming the issue high taxes and high
government spending. The other candidates joined him in unison. The
entire slate were by the book, old line conservative who
saw the answers to the day's problems in yesterday's solutions unquote.

(58:05):
The one piece of government spending that Jane did earnestly
support was pensions for Confederate veterans, of course, which he
did like. This was actually something he like, sincerely advocated
for that this is this wasn't like a political gesture, No, this.

Speaker 2 (58:18):
Was clearly something that was important to him.

Speaker 4 (58:21):
Yeah, it was like he saw Confederate veterans as like
paragons of the lost world that Jane was like fighting.

Speaker 2 (58:27):
To return to. You know, some of us, some of us,
I just don't think we should get give out participation trophies.

Speaker 4 (58:32):
You know. It's so true, brother, so true. Now, on
July fourth, a massive barbecue rally was held in McRae,
drawing huge numbers, with the Atlantic Constitution providing extremely thorough coverage,
which they did for no other candidate this this race.
As Jane traveled the state giving speeches, he was dubbed

(58:53):
the wild Man from Sugar Creek. Even though he was
politically ill prepared, his personality was perfect for the Russian period.
His performance was a distraction from the harsh reality of
rural life, and if not much else, offered the sweet
taste of nostalgia. Anderson writes that quote, those who attached
their dreams to his words could, in a small part

(59:14):
escape those realities by believing in Eugene Talmadge unquote. Gene
was seen as the clear front runner, and his platform
relied on his ability to make a speech so impactful,
so unforgettable in the lives of the attendees that they
would immediately become Talmadge loyalists. Gene utilized his supporters planted
in the crowd, to queum up for certain topics and

(59:36):
encourage audience interaction. All of his opponents attacked Talmadge's personal
record instead of his platform, focusing on his near impeachment,
his Senate in Agen investigation, and the whole Hog incident.
But Gina was able to flip this around and turn
the hog incident into a sort of rallying cry. Planted
members in the crowd would quum up by shouting, tell

(59:57):
us about them pigs, you stole Gene, and Gen would
lean in and point to figure out the crowd and say,
they say, I stole. Yeah, it's true, I stole, but
I stole for you. You mean in overalls, you dirt
farmers and the crowd which.

Speaker 2 (01:00:10):
Farmers amazing stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:00:12):
Man.

Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
Yeah, you know, Garrison, I should announce here when I
run for president, I want to promise the American people
one thing, which is that there will be a hog
based scandal within my first year in office. I guarantee you.
I just settled on the specific hog based scandal, but
there will be a hog based scandal. I guarantee it.

Speaker 4 (01:00:34):
No. I do think it is important to note, like
how all of these attacks on Jean's record, He's able
to completely flip around and turn into like assets, right,
Like he's he's he's smart. People attack him as ways
to make himself stronger.

Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
Well, yeah, it's it's it's the it's the kind of
thing Trump's able to do too. It's it's political judo. Right,
It's like using the momentum of your enemy's attacks in
order to advance. Yeah, it's it's Yet I hate because
it does seem to be there's a degree with both
Trump and with Talmage, because there's not like a class
on this, and you really don't get this. I don't

(01:01:10):
even know what they would have been reading that would
have taught them this. I mean there's bits of history
where you get pieces of this. I always have the
feeling with most of the guys who are good at this,
it's it's instinctive to a significant degree.

Speaker 4 (01:01:22):
Yeah. No, it's like it has to be just kind
of how like how their general like demeanor is, and
it just it just has a degree of like uncanny overlap.

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
Yep.

Speaker 4 (01:01:32):
Now. Gene supporters were also sometimes sometimes troublemakers to quote
Anderson quote. Although they were never instructed by Gene to
disrupt the opponent's speeches, the Talwich plants could wreak havoc
on the other candidates. Their tactics did not include booing,
but they did go in for causing suspicious accidents, like

(01:01:52):
setting a car on fire during an opponent's speech. The
resulting smoke and sirens would invariably send the crowd a
racing towards the fire, leaving the hapless speaker without an
audience quote. So, instead like heckling the speaker, they would
just start a fire to distract everybody, which is actually
a pretty effective tactic. Yeah, people, it does. People love

(01:02:15):
running towards fires.

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
Yeah, Portland kids in twenty twenty, Eugene Dalmach demonstrative fires
to distract from other actions. Yeah, beautiful.

Speaker 4 (01:02:27):
Gene was also obsessed with crowd size. He would intentionally
book venues that were too small for the expected crowd.
So that reporting would say that there was an overflowing
crowd at every event, so to newspaper readers, Gene would
seem like he was just exceedingly popular. He would also
ask local sheriffs to count how many people were in attendance,
usually about fifteen thousand, which was bigger than the size

(01:02:49):
of like an average county, which would get the sheriff
to proudly proclaim that each event was a record crowd size. Again,
it's very very similar like overlap. Right, there's no class
that teaches you you should really care about crowd size.
It's just what these guys go for.

Speaker 2 (01:03:06):
Now.

Speaker 4 (01:03:06):
In less than two months, Jeane made over fifty speeches
and talked in front of more than seventy five thousand Georgians.
I'm gonna quote a little anecdote from Anderson quote. So
completely has he sold his image as one of the
boys that in one small town, the big limousine in
which he was riding was turned back because they thought
that town, which would resent so much wealth being displayed

(01:03:27):
at a speech, Jean was not recognized in the back seat,
so the driver turned around and drove outside town where
a farmer driving an ox cart was hailed down, Jeane
climbed on board, and in a more acceptable transportation, was
enthusiastically welcomed at the gate from which he had just
been turned away unquote. So yeah, this was all theater.

(01:03:48):
This was all play acting for theator.

Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
Garrison. You live in the South, now, talk like it.

Speaker 4 (01:03:55):
Theater? Theater? Is that how you say it, Robert, I'm
going to a theater night. That's not that's how. That's
not how people in Georgia talk. I often get made
fun of for my Southern country lawyer accent. You Georgia Yankees.
I just don't don't understand the truth South, which exists
abroughtly around two and a half hours around the small

(01:04:16):
town I grew up in in Oklahoma, Texas, every Homa,
everything else is Yankees. Sure, Sure, Robert fucking out l
Passo carpetbaggers. We got we got one page to go through, Buddy.
Let's let's wrap this up.

Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (01:04:30):
Now. As the race went on, Jeans started pushing a
conspiracy theory that all the other candidates were conspiring to
split up the county unit vote, causing a runoff. Smart
Smart Anderson Anderson notes, quote the picture of a sinister
movement a foot had high appeal for the entertainment starved
farmers who knew enemies had to be on the land

(01:04:51):
but could never identify them unquote, which is just a perfect,
perfect insight into in the mind of the conservative voter. Now,
although a runoff election was expected, as the results began
coming in, it was clear that Jean had achieved a
huge victory. He handily won the popular vote by thirty thousand,
along with two hundred and forty six county unit votes

(01:05:12):
against all his opponents combined total of one hundred and
forty six. Now, there was only two hundred and forty
thousand votes in total, so that's the voting population of
Georgia in nineteen thirty two. Jean's wife, Mitt never moved
to Atlanta while he served as Commissioner, but after this
election she reluctantly moved to Atlanta with their kids, and
the Talwich family turned to the governor's mansion in the

(01:05:34):
upscale Endslee Park into a sort of makeshift farm, but
mostly as like a political gesture, built a chicken coop
in the backyard, and they put an old cow on
the front lawn. During cocktail parties, the cow would often
escape to run off and chow down and tear up
the nearby golf course. Which is great because this area
I think this is now kind of like around like

(01:05:56):
Piedmont Park. If there should be way more cows walking
around this area of Atlanta, just ruining the golf courses,
that would be fantastic. Almost immediately, the Senate was not
too fond of Gene and largely ignored his proposed programs.
The legislature refused to pass his reduced tax and utility rates,
his Highway Department reorganization bill, but most devastating to Jane

(01:06:18):
his promise for a three dollars car tag, which was
a staple of his election campaign, though he did get
back pay for Confederate veterans past. So there you go.
The Georgia legislature is always always coming through for what
really matters.

Speaker 2 (01:06:29):
That's good. That's good. I'm sure there's still somebody in
George's legislature working on that bill. Oh. Absolutely, we're just
leaving checks on the graves.

Speaker 4 (01:06:41):
Gene also vetoed his fair share of bills, I think
around forty and Anderson notes that a complete breakdown had
occurred between the executive and legislative branches of government. Essentially
nothing was really getting done. But with this weekend legislature,
Jane's dictatorial methods began to Manageestjene thought that there was

(01:07:02):
like a conspiracy against him by the former governor and
his allies for Gene to fail, So as soon as
the legislature adjourned, he began to utilize archaic executive power
tal much suspended all regular state taxes for two years,
citing authority granted in a eighteen twenty one law. This
was how he was able to force his three his

(01:07:23):
promised three dollars license plate by ordering that all automotive
tax be dropped to three dollars. Now, Gina had a
lot of guys throughout his career who would just troll
through like really really old outdated laws to find like
what loopholes of executive power like existed. This is like
one of his core tactics was finding like any way
to exercise the full extent of executive power by often

(01:07:45):
going through laws that were like over one hundred years old.
To quote Anderson quote. It was a coup that made
the lawmakers look even worse and in the public side,
propelled Gene out of the whole mess. The Motor Vehicle
commission didn't like the idea and refused to sell tags
for three dollars. Gen immediately told the man that he
was off the state payroll, and almost as quickly, the
commissioner notified the governor that the tags would be sold

(01:08:08):
for three dollars after all. Unquote. Now, even without him
getting his bills passed, Gene would attempt to exert control
by directly puppeteering state agencies. The first he needed to
cue was the unwieldy Highway Department, which was taking fifty
three percent of the state budget. It was essentially the
biggest political lever in the state because roads controlled where

(01:08:28):
everyone went, and you could use road funds as like
a bargain for like county county courthouse gangs and to
get like election favors. Gene bargained with the board to
fire road engineers to cut down on costs, with Gene
just refusing to approve budgets and issue payments until his
demands were fulfilled. At this time, Gene was also being
pressured to call for a special session to legalize beer,

(01:08:51):
an issue that Gene largely found inconsequential, saying beer why
this is hard liquor. Country beer is a fad unquote.

Speaker 2 (01:08:59):
If you find it weird that beer was ever illegal
in Georgia. There's a documentary Pretty Go Doctormochi and Smokey
and the Bandit that you can watch that will explain
this to you.

Speaker 4 (01:09:11):
Now, Gene mostly didn't want to call this extra session,
mostly out of fear that they would strike down his
three dollars car tag and remove his ability to leverage
power over the Highway Department. Now, during this dispat Gene
was also picking a fight with the Public Service Commission
over high utility rates, saying that there was a conspiracy
between the five commissioners to charge high rates, and by
alleging this, he was able to take action under Georgia

(01:09:32):
Code to remove state officials who were derelict in their
duties and appoint their successors. You should can maybe notice
a trend here that he often was convinced or at
least claimed that there was all kinds of conspiracies against him. Always,
no matter what, there was always a conspiracy against him.
So as things were heating up in Atlanta, Eugene Talmage

(01:09:53):
traveled to New York City in mid June, accompanied by
four National Guard bodyguards. Rumors circulated that Talmadge was undergoing
a military occupation of the capital and the treasury. To
quote Anderson quote, National guardsmen were seen quietly moving about
the capital grounds armed with machine guns. Simultaneously, it was

(01:10:14):
leaked that two million dollars had been taken from banks
and placed in the treasury vault because the Highway Department
was going to sue in federal court. If the court
granted in their favor, the money could not be touched
if it was on state property. Unquote. Now, Gene was
questioned about these odd occurrences of like moving money and
armed men, to which he only smiled and replied, military

(01:10:36):
matters must necessarily be kept secret uncovered.

Speaker 2 (01:10:40):
Yeah, and that scance.

Speaker 4 (01:10:42):
This whole sequence of events is extremely profetic for what
Jene's reign over Georgia would look like in the next
like ten years. Now.

Speaker 2 (01:10:50):
Look, if I'm in power, am I going to have
the National Guard follow me around so that there's always
a body of soldiers meeting me wherever I show up,
like the Emperor in Star Wars. Wars, Absolutely, but they're
going to be dressed like those red guys, you know,
you know, the Red guys from Star Wars Garrison.

Speaker 4 (01:11:07):
That's very familiar. Yeah, with the Imperial Guard excuse Robert,
excuse me.

Speaker 2 (01:11:13):
Excuse me, and retooling. We're selling all of the National
Guard's tanks and weapons in order to buy uh screen
accurate Imperial Guard uniforms from Star Wars.

Speaker 4 (01:11:23):
You can get a pretty good one for about a
thousand bucks. I already see.

Speaker 2 (01:11:25):
This is all we got to sell, is like three
or four m wraps, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:11:30):
So that is where we're going to end our story
today with Jean's kind of military coup, and we will
we will learn what he did with his military coup
in the next episode. What a what a man? What
a man?

Speaker 2 (01:11:47):
What a man?

Speaker 3 (01:11:48):
What a man?

Speaker 2 (01:11:48):
What a mighty not very good man? No, does that
song ring a w Garrison?

Speaker 4 (01:11:54):
No, No, anyway, I'm on Twitter at Rooi still posted
for Void.

Speaker 2 (01:12:00):
Yeah, I'm on Twitter too, but I don't really post
that much anymore.

Speaker 4 (01:12:04):
No, you've been good.

Speaker 2 (01:12:05):
I've gotten it. I took it off my phone. I've
been I've been breaking the habit, just like that Lincoln
Park song, even though Lincoln Park's been canceled.

Speaker 4 (01:12:14):
All right, I'm done.

Speaker 1 (01:12:15):
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(01:12:36):
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