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Retreat with Dignity. More personable, more genial and more subtle as he grew secure in office, Herman began to build a core of support that even old Gene had never achieved. Businessmen who financed Georgia's political campaigns liked Herman's lower corporation taxes and found his conservative views comforting. The rank-and-file voters liked his lavish spending for public works (with no taint of corruption). And after the Supreme Court decisions, even Atlanta moderates found Herman's segregation policies less offensive. So when Herman, in January 1955, turned over the governor's office to hand-picked Marvin Griffin, Senator George and his friends knew that at last a Talmadge had a good chance of getting to the Senate. Four months before election came a panicky message from Georgia to George: the 78-year-old Senator's supporters had canvassed the state, found Herman had ample campaign money and was pulling far ahead. Listening to his friends' pleas, Walter George made a painful decision. He withdrew before the primary, accepted a post as Dwight Eisenhower's ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Herman stomped over Old Foe Melvin Thompson with a 376,000 majority and a grand slam of the county unit votes.
In the Senate Herman will find opportunity to voice his outrage against the present Justices of the Supreme Court ("A little group of politicians [who have] not had enough experience to handle one chicken thief in Mitchell County"). Isolationist as well as segregationist, he will take a stand against what he regards as pressing evils today in the U.S., e.g., foreign aid, overseas alliances, low tariffs, the breadth of the President's treaty-making powers. His views, his youthful vigor and his name will make Herman a new rallying point for the Democratic Party's Southern wing. Says Georgia Political Leader Roy V. Harris: "He is the man we are going to organize the South for."
Indeed, Herman will be an important figure not only to the South but as a regional spokesman in that all-embracing organization, the National Democratic Party. This was a point best brought out by Candidate Adlai Stevenson as he swung through the South last spring, drumming up support for his nomination. Said Stevenson of Talmadge, while a house guest at the executive mansion during Herman's regime in Atlanta: "We can agree on a great many more things than we disagree on, and we need one another."
* Gene and Herman Talmadge were the second father-and-son governors of Georgia. The first: Joseph E. Brown, elected 1858, and son Joseph M., elected 1908.