Word: earls
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Earl. He has none of Huey's wild, magnetic appeal. At 53 he is a soft, dumpy man with a mushy voice, a flaccid handshake, a venomous temper and the general bearing of a small-town pool-hall operator. Crowds bother him and he cannot hide a furtive wariness when job seekers approach him. He is a dedicated horseplayer-who makes two dollar bets. But he has the "Long Look" and a shrewd insight into the mind of Louisiana's tobacco-chewing common...
...calls himself "Old Earl," gets up as early as 5:30 in the morning to let visitors wander into the governor's mansion. He appoints "colonels" with a lavish hand (some 250 to date) and presents lesser fry with penknives-after first exacting a penny so "a friendship won't be cut." He enjoys the feel of clean white suits, but he never allows his interest in the finer things to interfere with a certain honest vulgarity. On the day after he was elected governor, he asked friends to his house, spread out a copy of the anti...
...power to get Huey's 29-year-old son Russell elected to the U.S. Senate. He sent his big, tough-looking Lieut. Governor Bill Dodd out on the road to blast Russell's closest competitor, Judge Robert F. Kennon, who had also had the audacity to oppose Earl for governor last January...
Contemplating all this, the cynical wondered if Earl wasn't booby-trapping himself. His nephew Russell had been left a priceless heritage: he looked and acted like Huey. The sight of Russell up on the stump "just like his daddy" stirred the faithful as Earl could never stir them; Russell had gotten more applause than Earl at Earl's own inauguration. Moreover, Russell was smart, personable, well-educated and had a good war record. He was a comer...
Power. But whatever the future held, Earl's obeisance to the shades of the Kingfish had paid him well. He had used Huey's tricks, Huey's share-tbe-wealth philosophy and Huey's lavishness with political promises for an ironic end-to prove to himself that he was a better man than Huey. And he had squeezed more dictatorial powers from Louisiana's supine legislature than Huey-or any governor of any U.S. state-had ever held...