On election night, 36-year-old Herman Talmadge, the youngest governor in the U.S., his pretty second wife, and Georgia Kingmaker Roy V. Harris watched the returns in a seventh-floor suite of Atlanta's Henry Grady Hotel. Actually, the Talmadges were just observing the formalities. Even if Herman lost the popular vote, Georgia's one-sided county-unit electoral system was bound to keep him in office, just as it had his pappy, the late Gene Talmadge, before him.
Said Harris: "They had me scared when folks kept phoning in and saying, 'They won't even come to the polls when we send for 'em.'" But Herman finished slightly ahead in the popular vote, and led 3 to 1 in county units. Also renominated, and by a landslide: able, 72-year-old U.S. Senator Walter George.