All day long the three phones rang in a seventh-floor room of Atlanta's Henry Grady Hotel. A pudgy little man answered, shifting a black cigar into a corner of his mouth. "How're you, Jim?" he said. "We all right in your county? You gonna get them out to the polls? Fine. Well, if you need anything give me a ring and reverse the charges." Roy Harris, the man who makes Georgia governors, was busy electing Governor Herman Talmadge to a second term.
Tireless, stubby Roy Harris held no elective office at the moment, but any day the legislature was in session he could be seen spraddled in a front-row seat, while the people's representatives hurried up to him to hear his wishes. With one exception, no Georgia governor since 1936 had been elected without Roy's help. All the time Roy was in the law business in Augusta, and it never seemed to matter to him who the candidate was. The important thing was that he won; Roy's firm got a lot of business from people who dealt with state agencies. In fact, anybody wanting a state favor was likely to employ Roy's firm as consultants or Roy himself as a lobbyist.
As a political engineer, he got Reformer Ellis Arnall elected against red-gallused old Gene Talmadge, then switched to elect Talmadge against Arnall's picked successor ("I wouldn't go along with him when he started registering all the niggers so I built up the picture for Gene"). When "Ol Gene" died, Roy engineered son Herman's attempt to snatch the governorship. He had gotten the poll tax repealed for Arnall; he got the white-supremacy primary passed for Herman.
Roy's power was based on the rural vote and Georgia's unique, decrepit county-unit system. Roy himself was born on a farm in southeast Georgia, knew his woolhatters and had something on almost every politician in the state. In a state where 122 city votes can be offset with one tame woolhatter in a rural county and 25 woolhatters can sometimes swing a county, Roy's system worked fine.
Battle Ground. On the hustings last week, ex-Governor Melvin Ernest Thompson shouted himself hoarse with a vigor that astounded voters who remembered his fumbling efforts two years ago. In reply, young Herman Talmadge, showing his red suspenders, mocked the people who said his rival was a changed man. It reminded him, said Talmadge, of a contrite drunk coming home to his wife. Countered Thompson: "I know of no man in Georgia who is a greater authority on a man coming home drunk than the present governor."
Despite the vigorous words, the campaign seemed apathetic, a week before the election. Roy Harris was confident. He knew that Talmadge had the big-money support (at a recent dinner, Coca-Cola Tycoon Robert Woodruff toasted Herman: "To the best governor Georgia ever had, sired by the next best governor"). Roy was not worried about the Negro vote: "The niggers are a little disgusted. They thought they were going to get equality and now they have found out they are not. Now you have to pay the preachers to get 'em out." That wasn't worth the expense, Roy figured. The phone rang. "Hello, Mr. Leonard," said Roy. "What's the situation down there?"