• U.S.

POLITICAL NOTES: New Face in New Orleans

2 minute read
TIME

Political prophets in gay, gambling New Orleans always said the Independent Democrats would never elect a mayor until it snowed on election day. Last week, on election day, snow sifted over startled voters and Independent deLesseps Story Morrison beat Mayor Robert Sidney Maestri, the last office-holding henchman of the late Huey (“Lion in the Street”) Long.

Handsome, athletic “Chep” Morrison, who moves in New Orleans’ elegant society, was 18 when his father, “Old Chep,” a state prosecutor, died in 1929. His mother went to work teaching French at Louisiana State University. Young Chep sold silk stockings to pay his way through the university’s law school.

He practiced law, got into politics as a state legislator, entered the Army as a second lieutenant, at 33 had a colonel’s eagles and the Legion of Merit for his work in the Transportation Corps in Europe. The Independents drafted him as their candidate while he was still in a separation center.

Among his other political assets, Chep Morrison has a pretty 24-year-old wife, a handsome baby son. Although elected as a reform candidate by voters tired of the blatant inefficiency of the Maestri machine, he is not a reformer. (“New Orleans is no town for a Sunday blue law.”) His chief ambition as mayor: to help New Orleans outstrip Miami as “the gateway to Latin America.”

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