Part One: America's First Fascist Governor
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Hey everybody, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast that is, you know, a podcast. I don't know. I don't know what to say. You're not always knowing what to say at the start of a week, and that's where I am this week. You just don't seem like you're qualified to host the podcast today. Yeah, no, that's why we've brought in a ringer, our equivalent of Sophie, who's a baseball guy.

That's not my sport, but... That's not your sport? LeBron? That is my sport, but I don't know you guys. You're into baseball now. Okay. Okay. But not guys' baseball. Interesting. Baseball. Baseball. Nate Silver. No. He's into baseball. The Nate Silver of baseball. Oh. Oh. What's the guy's name from the Dodgers? My mom would be so disappointed in me. I don't have an answer for you. Shohei. Shohei.

Of course, totally. Oshou Heyutani. Yeah, of course. I know who he is. My mom loves him. Hi, Mom. And Garrison is the that guy of helping me out with my podcast for this week and next week. Because, you know, Garrison, in my culture, Italians, we have a ritual that's gone back thousands of years. When a young person turns 22 to celebrate their entry into adulthood...

where they research and write like a 16,000-word essay on a figure from Georgia state history. This goes back to ancient Roman times, in which Georgia didn't exist as a state. So actually, there were no adults in Italy for a very long period of time, which is a large part of why the Catholic Church got up to some of the trouble it got up to. Ooh, that's not good. Absolutely not.

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Tackle these situations in stride and of course be annoyed when an unplanned expense comes up, but not let it be something that slows me down. Right. As I did with repairing my credit, you know, hiring somebody to do credit repair for me. That was a gift that I gave myself that allowed me to then, you know, get my first apartment. Like a good neighbor. State Farm is there. State Farm. Proud sponsor of My Cultura Podcast Network.

Anyway, who are we learning about this week, buddy? So when I first moved to Georgia, kind of one of the first people I heard about

That would be like a contender for a pretty fucked up guy is one of the old governors. Now, he served during the 1930s, so you can already tell there's going to be some fucked up stuff going on. Probably not going to be a happy story in several specific ways. Yeah. So I was I was first told that this was like this was like Georgia's main fascist.

And that's saying something. It is saying something. And the more I looked into him, the more he kind of just felt like kind of the template for like conservative fascist like governorship, especially this kind of new wave that we're seeing in the United States. And he's kind of like America's first like

real fascist in some way. Now, I know people point to Huey Long, the governor of our neighboring state. And if you don't know, Huey Long was the governor of Louisiana, who was like kind of a dictator of Louisiana, but also definitely more on closer to

further left, at least, than the guy we're talking about. He was much more socially liberal. He certainly was a dictator and in some ways kind of a more efficient dictator. He actually knew how to, like, be a dictator well. Yeah. He was the Tito of the United States. Yeah. Are...

our guy for these next few weeks, Eugene Talmadge, was not a super efficient dictator, but he really wanted to be. And he certainly was a fascist. Excellent. And that's who we're going to be looking at for these next few weeks and kind of how his reign over Georgia modeled what, you know, these like, like DeSantis and all these kind of new, new kind of more fascist governors, kind of how they have kind of replicated this sort of governing strategy. So,

So that's what we're looking at today. Let's start by kind of going back to lay the groundwork for the area that Gene grew up in. So Gene's great-grandfather was born in New Jersey and moved to Georgia in the early 1820s after first traveling the South while serving under Andrew Jackson in his attack on the Creek Nation, where he drove Native Americans from Alabama and Georgia deep into Florida.

Great-grandpa Talmage decided to settle in central Georgia and started buying up hundreds of acres of land and began his career as a cotton farmer. Gene's biographer, a guy named William Anderson from Athens, Georgia, refers to this period as the birth of cotton culture. He was part of a large wave of settlers moving into the deep south after the indigenous tribes were killed off and forcibly relocated by Andrew Jackson.

during this period, there was certainly a desire for slaves as like a status symbol and obviously to help with like farm labor, especially if you didn't have a big family. Now it's, it's unclear if Jean's family had slaves, uh, like they certainly would have liked them, but, uh,

But it wasn't the norm economically to be able to afford them. At least not for his grandparents. Yeah. And they had a large enough family that they kind of ran their farm that way. Now, it is a little tricky to find tons of information on this guy, on Eugene Talmadge, because...

He's really looked over as a historical figure because he represented a moment that people would rather just kind of blaze past. He was like an unfortunate obstacle in the inevitable progress of history. So people kind of just skipped over him largely in the history books. There's really only one book that gets into him in depth. That's his biography, The Wild Man from Sugar Creek by William Anderson, which did a whole bunch of interviews with friends, enemies, political leaders.

associates and rivals to kind of draw a picture of this guy. Now, that book was published in the 70s, about like 30 years after Gene's demise. And it certainly criticizes Gene for his racism, but there's only so much you can do for being a book about Southern history written by a guy raised in this period. They were at a specific point in that stage, and it was not where we are now. Yeah, so I've also kind of

supplemented some of the research that William Anderson did in that book with a few other books like Race and Racism in the United States by Charles A. Gallagher and Cameron D. Liptard, as well as the book Labor in the South by F. Ray Marshall. Now, I am choosing to read that as Gallagher, the stage comedian.

Kirsten, do you know who Gallagher was? I have heard of a man named Gallagher. Oh, that's a shame. He was, well, he wasn't very good actually, but he was a guy who hit fruit with a mallet. Anyway. Wow.

So now to kind of demonstrate how there's certain periods of Southern history that is kind of just skipped over by the history books. We don't really know what Gene's family was up to during the Civil War. They certainly were pro-Confederates. I think we know kind of what they were up to during the Civil War. Yes, it's just not discussed in great detail. But Gene's father, a man named Thomas Romalgus Talmadge, which is a fantastic Southern name,

He grew up in the wake of the Civil War during the Reconstruction era. Now, Thomas had the then rare privilege of attending the University of Georgia, but returned to his grandfather's land to continue to farm and process cotton. And he got wealthy by learning that there was more money in the processing of cotton rather than just the growing of it.

Now, Thomas married a girl named Carrie Roberts, the daughter of the so-called meanest man in Jasper County, a lawyer named Eugene Roberts. And the couple had their first son in 1884 and named him after Carrie's father. This is Eugene Talmadge.

We really don't have that anymore. Being able to be the meanest man in a county. He's the meanest man in Jasper County. I couldn't tell you what the meanest man in Multnomah County was. I couldn't tell you the meanest man in any county I've ever lived in. That's an example of how we've lost the collective spirit that once made this nation great. That's kind of what Eugene Talmadge believed. He was right. Return to tradition. We could...

We could make Robert the meanest man in Multnomah County easily. Yeah, I don't know. That's true. I don't know. We have a lot of cops, although they don't live here. Also true. Now, Thomas wasn't raising his kids to just be simple farmhands.

And he works to guarantee that his children had the highest quality education provided in the area. Now, Gene was kind of a sickly kid, and he remained a little bit sickly throughout his whole life. He was very, very lean, very thin. And it was apparent to his family from a very young age that he would not be one to labor away in the fields. Anderson writes, he tried the plow as a boy, but his mind was recognizably his strong suit.

Now, Gene's dictatorial ambitions could be seen from quite an early age, as his childhood hero was none other than Napoleon. Oh, see. Which is an immediate red flag. Yeah, that's a red flag. Huge red flag.

If your kid's into Napoleon, you got to stop that shit. Crack down hard. I spent all my time reading Hitler books as a little kid, and that only turned out marginally better. No, you were the best case scenario for a kid who's really into Hitler books. But Napoleon was definitely the Hitler of that period. And yeah, you just got to, he needed more, you know what, Garrison? He needed more time with the plow.

You know, a little more time with that plow would have fixed him up. Maybe enough that he gets threshed and he doesn't ever learn how to read better. He was not built for the plow. And Gene was really obnoxious about it, too. I'm going to read a quote from Anderson here. Quote.

He baited family members and house guests. By betting them, he could quote passages from a volume of Napoleon's biography that he constantly carried around. Absolutely not. Oh my God. I bet you don't think I can do it, he would say, until someone would answer that they didn't believe he could. A verbatim quote would then issue forth, and its length and precision never failed to impress all who heard it. Unquote. Look, I'm not an expert parent here, but I think the right way to respond to that is you get one of those little- You're not a parent.

You get a sprayer and you just spray him in the face a little bit. Every time they try to get you to ask him a Napoleon quote, you just get him right in the face. Yeah, like a cat. Yeah, like a cat. Can you give him a little spray bottle? Like, no, stop. Yeah, you don't want to hurt him. You just want to teach them that's not how we behave in public. A little bit of water. Genghis Khan's on the line. Napoleon, a hard no. Yeah. Hard no. And just to say one more time, Robert, you're not a parent.

let alone an expert I have two entire cats

Sure. And I phrase them. And this is roughly your parenting strategy. Yeah. Neither of them are very nice cats, but they are alive. They get too close to the Tannerite. Just spray, spray, spray. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Cats are fine around Tannerite garrison. It's other kinds of explosives you might be worried about. They might just use it as a litter box, honestly. Yeah, it's essentially the same. Just start tracking that all over the house. You know, there's no reason you couldn't, and then you can blow it up afterwards. This is not a bad idea. You don't have to do the litter anymore. You don't have to do the litter. Just shoot it. Yeah.

Just once a week, take your box of Tetherite into the backyard. - And just shoot it with a .308. This is perfect. - Man, I think I've got a new product idea. - That's certainly a better idea than what Gene was up to as a kid, because he was quite the little bastard. As a 12 year old, he had his private pony and buggy ride to his school, the Hillard Institute for Boys.

Just insufferable. And he was also a debate kid. Schoolmates recounted he was a very skilled debater who almost like never lost and had a very devilish spirit.

He was also quite a mean child as the grandson of the meanest man in Jasper County. Gene said that the, quote, N-word boys I grew up with would call me mean Lou Jean because I was so damn mean, unquote. And this continued all throughout his life. He was consistently not just like extremely racist, but like just in general, a very cruel man. Yeah. Yeah.

Like for fun, he would just start fights between boys at school and then he would just sit and watch them go at it. This is also something he continued to do late into his career. He didn't want to be a part of the fighting. He just wanted to watch it happen. He's reminding me a little bit

of Peter Thiel because I'm working on his episodes now so I'm reading about him as a child and Thiel wasn't exactly this kind of kid but there's this like this commonality and like they recognize that they're smarter than other people and their primary the primary thing that they take from that is I should fuck with them

Yeah. Yeah. No, he that's like and I need to be ruling them. Yeah. His capacity to manipulate people and gain pleasure out of that. Yeah. And then eventually wield power over them. That's definitely like an early drive. And like, that's why he likes Napoleon. Like, yeah, I found a component figure.

We need to just all Napoleon books. We need to coat in like a form of lithium that just gets in through your skin and really just lithium these kids the fuck out. Honestly, that's the right. That that might have happened to Jean because he spoiler alert. He didn't live super long.

So he may have very well been poisoned by a great many things that were around this area of like rural Georgia in the in the 20s, 30s. People talk about microplastics just thinking about all the ways that they're going to damage our reproductive health and lead to cancer clusters, yada, yada, yada. Think of how many assholes are going to check out early thanks to that stuff, you know?

We could really dodge a few major bullets there. Every week I buy a pallet of bottled water and I just hook it in the back of a high school, you know?

Continue, Garrison. Jesus Christ. So, although Napoleon was the childhood hero of Gene, a populist speaker named Tom Watson was his first real political inspiration on the local level. Anderson writes that Watson became Gene's quote-unquote spiritual leader and that Gene was, quote, fascinated by his fiery style, understanding of the rural mind, and his electrifying manner of speech, unquote. Uh-huh.

Now, Watson later became like a kind of like politician and lawyer who, as he got older, got increasingly racist and increasingly anti-Semitic as kind of as liberalization was setting in in the 20th century. What he would do, he would go around Georgia just blaming black people and Jewish people for like racism.

all of the resulting economic complications that like liberalism and modernism was, was like encroaching onto Georgia. It's like, this is, this is Gene's like real, like, like real, like local hero. The guy he actually, it's like, Gene knows he's not going to be like an actual Napoleon, but he can be a Tom Watson.

Yeah. So later in college, Gene would brag about how far he would walk to attend a Tom Watson speech. And he would just get so excited talking about it that he would start walking around and pacing around the room telling his friends. He was super into this guy. Now, like his father, he attended the University of Georgia in Athens, where he served as football manager and was a champion debater. Yeah.

Good God. Continued to be a debate kid until his death. After school, he started teaching in the small farming town of Auburn, Georgia, which he quickly found to be quite boring. Gene loved debate and intellectual combat, so he decided to go back to Athens and enroll in law school to become a lawyer like his hero, Tom Watson.

He graduated in 1907 and moved to Atlanta to work in a law firm. But he was still just very unsatisfied with work. He just wasn't doing very well. Gene's father didn't really know how to help him because he was, quote unquote, so goddamn mean. It's like even his father knew, like, you just can't succeed in life because you're just like a cruel person. Now, a friend of his father, a legislator named William Peterson,

Offered for Gene to stay at his home with his sister in the small town of Ailey in South Georgia to straighten him out. There, he could live cheaply and start his own law practice. Another woman was living in the house, a young widow with a child from South Carolina named Mitt or nicknamed Mitt. What year is he in school? What year was this? He graduated law school in 1907.

Okay. So he moved. This is around like the late. Ought seven, we say. 19 oughts. Yeah. So technically he could have been a Rhodes Scholar, but he wasn't. I guess so. We all could have been a Rhodes Scholar. I think Rhodes Scholar was like 1902, 1903 when it first started. So technically he could have been, but he wasn't. I guess so. I guess so. Okay.

So Mitt from South Carolina didn't really like that a city slicker was going to be living in the same house as her. So when Jean arrived, she quickly met him first to charge him just an exuberant rent to scare him off. But he agreed. And the two actually started to get along quite well. Jean appreciated her for, as he said, her sassiness, right?

Anderson writes that her independent nature, as well as her, quote, infectious sense of humor, complemented the Talmadge wit, unquote. So they quickly got along and a courtship began, which resulted in Jean having to move out of the house as it would be improper for the couple to be living under the same roof. Of course. So,

Gene relocated to the nearby community of Mount Vernon, where he had a small law office across from the courthouse with an older lawyer named Colonel Underwood, another great Southern name. This whole story is peppered with some just fantastic names. Now, in Mount Vernon, he gained a reputation for being a short-tempered dick, which he was. There was one time he falsely blamed a neighbor kid for letting out his pony.

and threatened to beat the hell out of the kid, an old Mount Vernon local called him, quote, the meanest son of a bitch I've ever met, unquote. So this is, he continued just to be like a really mean guy. And he was not a very popular man, not just because of his bubbly personality, but also because the sort of cases he took on, which were often ones that like older, more established lawyers could afford to pass up on. So like murders, muggings, and dealing with clients just so poor that they could only pay in chicken eggs and milk.

Jean took just nearly every case offered. Anderson writes of one instance where Eugene defended a black woman, quote, who was so poverty stricken that she gave him her four young boys as partial payment or perhaps because she could not afford to keep them. I mean, first off, I got to say, what else are you going to do with four young boys, Garrison?

This is a pretty uncomfortable little tidbit here. I don't know, Robert. Gene took the boys and fixed a place for them in a small barn behind his house. Sounds nice. That's like an ADU. Sure. The boys did odd jobs around the house and stories still circulate about how he used to beat the hell out of them when they disobeyed him. Now it's gotten problematic.

Oh, not the kind of sort of slavery? No, it was starting to sound like, look, there was no slavery here, you know? Robert! It's absolutely slavery curious. It is slavery. It's adjacent to slavery. I was thinking it was like the reverse of Three Men and a Baby, four kids and a guy who wants to be the dictator of Georgia.

I don't think it's that charming. Now, Anderson closes this little anecdote by saying, there's no proof that he kept them, but the rumor still does persist. There's no proof that he kept the children. What a horrible thing to have someone say about you. We also just have no clue what happened to these kids. Yeah, where did they go? How long he had them. Yeah.

They just kind of disappear from his biography after a few paragraphs. They're just like, oh, well, oops. When life gives you children to do something we'll never know to them. Don't finish that thought. I can't. We don't know what happened to them.

Now, Jean and Mitt got married in 1909, and she and her son John moved into the small Mount Vernon home where they lived for two years as Jean struggled as a lawyer. Now, they were just doing so poorly that Jean decided to quit law altogether and move on to Mitt's deceased husband's farm on Sugar Creek, about 23 miles away in the town of McRae.

Mitt says, quote, we weren't hardly in the place and starting to plant before Gene decided he didn't want to be no farmer. You could say he liked being a farmer, but he didn't like farming, unquote. And I think this is one of the truest statements about Gene's career. He loved the political idea of being a farmer.

He hated farm work. He did not enjoy it at all. He would almost do anything to avoid it. But he found great solace in the concept of being a farmer. Now, Mitt eventually just took over farming operations to support the family as Gene returned to his struggling career in law.

Do you know what else I struggle with, Robert? Wow. Saying several of the words in that last sentence, but you know. Yes, that is true. Who am I to judge on that account? Words are often a struggle, as well as the products and services that support this podcast, the eternal struggle for advertising, I guess. Yes, yes. I'm writing a book in German about, nope. Okay. Anyway, here's some ads.

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We will at some later point learn about Gene's Mein Kampf opinions because he did have them. Yeah, I was going to ask you, did Gene get a chance to read the follow-up? That's like an episode three or four thing. But Gene did have Mein Kampf opinions. Yeah. And they weren't great. All right. Okay, sorry. So at this point in Georgia...

It was essentially just a one-party state, wholly controlled by the white supremacist Southern Democratic Party.

The whites-only primary election dictated who occupied governmental positions. In the late 1800s, Georgia informally adopted a primary election system called the county unit system, which was formally signed into law in 1917. It functioned kind of like Georgia's own version of the electoral college, allowing each county a certain number of votes in party primaries, which could overrule the popular vote. The eight most populated counties had six votes each,

30 medium-sized counties had four votes, and the last 121 counties with very small rural populations had two votes each. So this system was designed and worked to maintain rural control over the whole state, as only a few tiny counties had the same voting power as the entire population of Atlanta and other growing urban centers.

The county unit system tied Georgia to the past amidst a period of rapid industrialization and urban growth. The system was managed by local county officials who were often corrupt and demanded favors or promises in exchange for votes, acting as a sort of lobbying group for the county. I'm going to quote from Anderson here, quote, "...the rural power source created a group of power wielders known as the Courthouse Gang."

Unquote.

So there was like this tension between the political power, which was held in rural counties, and the monetary influence, which resided in Atlanta. What marked a good politician or power broker was one's ability to thread that needle.

Now, almost immediately upon arriving in McRae, Gene began asking around about the local courthouse gang. In his old towns of Ailey and Mount Vernon, the courthouse gang there was under the control of the Peterson family, who facilitated Gene's move to the area, so he wisely avoided getting into unnecessary fights with the local establishment.

But in McRae, this ceased to be the case. This was his first opportunity to play at politics, as he sensed the local political structure was unstable and positions of power were often in flux. Now, Gene had very naked ambitions of power, but he preferred picking fights with the courthouse gang rather than appeasing them. He was so immediately disliked by this exclusive collection of power brokers that the other lawyers saw him as, quote, the N-word who came to town.

So just just just using racism as a way to call someone essentially like an unwanted stranger. So that's how they started to that's how they started referring to Gene. Now, he he also just became so unpopular that it became hard for him to win a case before the jury.

Gene continued to struggle with his law of practice as he managed his farm through the years, up and through World War I. At this point, he operated what they call a two-mule farm. He grew cotton and sugar cane and then moved on to peanuts. He hired white and black farmhands, none of which were treated great. Hey, woke, DEI! But the black ones were treated much worse. Okay. But not much worse than the neighboring farms. Well, that's probably fine with the people who are angry about DEI. Okay. Well, okay, there you go. Woke!

It woke on the idea that everyone was all pretty racist and pretty violent and pretty fucked up. Yeah. So if that's what woke means, then yes. I mean...

In an anonymous interview from 1941, a close friend of Gene recalled, quote, Gene was like a lot of farm bosses back then. He'd knock the hell out of a black if he crossed him. Oops. I remembered when he was governor, he hit one of his farm N-words upside the head with a pistol and the pistol went off.

The N-word ran under the house holding his head, and Gene got a little scared that he killed him. He told me to go look under the house to see if he was all right. By the time I got there, the N-word had run home, packed his bags, and left. Unquote. Wow. That's one of those remarkable passages where, like, every additional clause makes it worse. Yes. Yeah. Instances like this were not...

uncommon for Jean. Anderson writes, quote, Jean later admitted to flogging a Negro man and appeared ashamed of it, saying good people could be misguided and do bad things. Disregarding this remorseful apology, Talmadge's attitude towards blacks was that they were childlike, basically stupid, barely moved from a savage ancestry, and should be closely controlled, unquote.

Now, Gene was just well-known locally to have racist outbursts of violence. During World War I, a Jewish man and his wife from the North were accompanied by their black butler traveling back home from Florida.

While passing through McRae, the woman and her butler walked through town snacking on apples. And the display of a white woman and a black man alone eating food together shocked and angered the local shop owners. As news reached the courthouse, Jean busted out the door brandishing an axe with another lawyer armed with a hammer.

Jean charged towards the butler, screaming, I'm going to get you, N-word. And the white lady threw apples at Jean and a mob descended and demanded the couple leave town, which they did, abandoning the black butler who was left to flee on his own. Anderson notes that, quote, no one ever did find the poor servant, unquote.

So, another one of these incidents. You can't name all of them. This is just such a common occurrence. Now, Anderson writes, quote,

But he considered it unthinkable to have a black man accompany a white woman down the street eating apples together, no matter how innocent their motives. To explain his position towards black people in the 1920s is to explain that of most Georgians, unquote.

By 1918, Gene's, or rather Mitt's, farming venture was a steady operation, but his law practice was still largely a failure, and his political aspirations remained completely unrequited. His first real brush with politics arose when the office of solicitor to the city court became vacant. Now, it wasn't a big position, but it could provide a foot in the door. Now, Gene had the perfect idea to secure his spot in the open post, but he was not able to do so.

He wrote to his father, who was a very well-connected and well-respected man in Atlanta, and asked him to speak with the governor about appointing Eugene to the position. Now, the governor was apparently happy to oblige, but instead of this impressing the local courthouse gang, this only made them hate Gene more. Because, like, of course, you're just asking your, like, fancy dad to, like, give you this post instead of actually having to, like, work for it yourself.

Now, they were so unhappy with this state of affairs that they had the office voted out of existence by the legislature. They really wanted nothing to do with Gene.

One of the stories about how Gene got into politics was that the local courthouse gang was refusing to grade the roads around his farm, so he sought office to do it himself. Now, this is most certainly not the main reason he got into politics. He was always interested in politics. But this is a story that was deployed for his own political gain over time. Now...

At this point in Georgia, rail, oil, and power were the main political industries. But with the advent of the automobile, the age of the road was around the bend. Georgia roads were famously quite bad in the 1920s, and rural roads were often way too rough for like buggies and cars, and really only good for horses and walking. Same today, honestly.

I mean, sometimes in certain areas. Gene made friends with multiple early road builders, including a man named John Whitley, who would later become one of his best friends. Gene also struck up a friendship with the so-called most knowledgeable road builder in the area, a man named J.C. Thrasher.

Another fantastic name. That's an amazing name. Oh, man. I'm going to steal that man's name to write a fucking TV show. What's that? 45-minute episodes, 26 a season about a guy who repossesses cars in Miami.

Yeah, that's a good like repo man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now, Thrasher and Gene bonded over their shared aspirations of getting into the courthouse gang, both feeling like they've been screwed over by the local establishment. Now, Thrasher wanted to run for county commissioner and Gene volunteered to be his campaign manager. He ran Thrasher as an independent since the Democratic Party was tied in with the local courthouse gang. But he managed to get Thrasher elected.

As soon as he took office, Thrasher appointed Gene as attorney for the county. The Courthouse gang had finally been broken, and the pair began their successful road-building program.

But after only being a county attorney for like just a few months, Gene wanted more. He decided to run for state representative. Now, his wife, Mitt, wasn't thrilled. She didn't really care much for Gene's political aspirations and felt that he was abandoning the farm that they had spent a decade building, which he absolutely was. But nevertheless, Gene persisted and announced his candidacy in a short statement. I'm going to quote from Anderson here.

Quote, much of the Talmadge future in politics can be read in this first announcement. Know the poor voter, articulate few problems and fewer solutions, and bear down heavily on your own honesty. Do nothing, but do it with honor, unquote.

And yeah, Gene had kind of had like a libertarian-esque undercurrent to a whole bunch of his campaign. Yeah. He certainly... They often do. Which is like funny because like he is a dictator, but he's like a libertarian dictator. It's a thing in US politics in particular. Kind of no matter who you are, you have to have some libertarian, even to the present day, some libertarian signposting in your...

Kamala just did this with her. Like, I have a gun. I'd shoot someone who broke into my house. I'd shoot someone who comes into my house. Yeah. You have to do it a little bit because it's just so baked into what Americans are, you know? So I get that. Yeah. Yeah.

Gene mostly ran his campaign alone. He would get up early and ride around on county roads talking with farmers, rail workers, and shopkeepers. Anderson notes, quote, Gene knew that he had to counter years of bad publicity from the gang and many unpopular court fights, unquote. And despite Gene's work to counter this bad publicity, he did lose 756 votes to 1,187 votes.

Which gives you an idea of like the voting population of this area. Yeah, yeah. But Gene took the loss well, knowing that he did reasonably well for his first run and he didn't want to damage the positive reputation that he had worked hard to build up that summer. With his newly garnered goodwill, Gene became friends with the old leader of the gang, Lamar Murdo, eventually moving into his law office.

Jean's second attempt to run for office was in 1922, this time for the state Senate. In an attempt to discredit him during the race, the courthouse lawyers convened a grand jury to accuse Talmadge of having sex with his plowing mule.

Which, as a tried-and-true political tactic, is just accusing your opponent of having sex with animals. It is an old one that simply will not go away. Still, Gene was improving as a politician, evidenced by winning the popular vote in the three-county race.

Yet, the courthouse gang decided that this election would be subject to the county unit system and chose to overrule the popular vote just to spite Gene. Gene was now 40 years old. He couldn't manage to get elected to local office and really only got where he was via the courtesy of family and friends and was continuously outmaneuvered by his enemies. But despite his losses, he kept thinking bigger.

Around 1924, Gene took a trip to Atlanta to, in the words of his friend and long-term political ally, Henry Sperlin, quote, find the biggest dog he could to decide who to run against. Now, while in Atlanta, Gene encountered the agricultural commissioner, old J.J. Brown, another great name.

who's described as a huge man wearing a huge hat surrounded by a personal posse. Oh, man. So he was like strong pimp vibes. Yeah, of course. Who's not? Who isn't? Very much so. Very much so. And Gene was enamored by this, right? Of course. You see your first pimp. That's an important moment in every young boy's life. Gene wants to be a guy with a big hat surrounded by a personal posse. That's all he wants in life. Who doesn't?

Now, Anderson notes that, quote, in rural Georgia, with its weak central government and strong agricultural economy, the office of agricultural commissioner had emerged as one of the more powerful, unquote. And old J.J. Brown was in with big fertilizer. And while he was famously corrupt, he was also one of the most powerful men in the state, controlling a very fierce political lobby and awarded supporters with cushy oil and fertilizer inspector jobs.

To stand a chance against J.J., Gene would need substantial political assistance. Luckily, he'd become friendly with the editor of the very, very influential Atlantic Constitution newspaper, who, like many others, wanted to see old J.J. go. But sympathetic coverage wasn't enough to go up against J.J.,

Now, old J.J. Brown's open display of corruption was turning more and more lawmakers against him. A state legislator named Tom Linder was heading up an effort to find someone to run against Brown. On a trip home to South Georgia, Linder happened to encounter Talmadge while going farm to farm selling fertilizer. Talmadge had heard of Linder and the two started talking politics.

He mentioned that he was looking for someone to run up against old JJ with the backing of 100 legislators, but everyone was just too scared to run. Now, Gene quickly ran over and told Lamar Murdo about this coincidental opportunity. And a few and a few nights later, both men showed up outside Linder's house announcing that Gene would like a run for agricultural commissioner.

Though he didn't have the best political track record, Gene was feisty. And more importantly, literally no one else was willing to go up against JJ at this point. Now, Gene's wife was not pleased and she only found out about his Canada CUL shopping in town one day. At this point, Gene and Mitt were not talking much about Gene's political career. That's sad.

Yeah, I mean, Mitt's very busy having to run Jean's farm, so she has a lot to do. Fair enough. Being a girl boss. Kind of, kind of. Although Jean will take all the credit for the farm. Well, that's what being a boy boss is. That is what being a boy boss is. Real Zuckerberg energy from our man Jean here.

Now, some in the local courthouse gang were very quick to snitch on Gene, but a fair amount of them were wrangled into supporting him. Anderson notes that for Gene's haters, it was kind of a win-win scenario for him to run against a powerful man like JJ. Because if he lost, which he most certainly would, his ambitions would once again be completely crushed. And if he somehow won, then Gene just wouldn't be their problem anymore.

Now, Murdo headed up inter-county relations, going around talking to different newspapers, courthouse gangs, and churches. And the election had a few other local boys from across the state eventually running on a similar platform against Brown. But Gene stood out because of his presentation and theatrics, reminiscent of the populist Tom Watson, as well as the favorable coverage in the Constitution. And Murdo later just paid off two candidates to drop out of the race.

This way, Gene was able to present himself as the lone combatant standing against all odds. Talmadge was absolutely trying to fill in the populist power vacuum left by the death of his adolescent inspiration, Tom Watson. Gene started using little nicknames to attack his opponents, calling JJ's corrupt oil inspectors oily boys. That's not bad. That's not bad.

That's a good start. That's a good start, Sophie. It's a good start. Oily boys. It's like how Trump started with Crooked Hillary before he reached his apotheosis with Meatball Ron. Meatball Ron. That was his finest hour. That's his Battle of Britain. You can see the uptick, right? We got...

Crooked Hillary, Sleepy Joe, Meatball Ron. You did it. Just nuked him. That was the verbal equivalent of a fucking cruise missile. No, Anderson does write, again, he wrote this in the 70s, quote, Gene had an unusual talent for coming up with simple, easy to remember, funny phrases, unquote. That's all it takes. Yeah, that's a staple of politics. Mm-hmm.

To continue from Anderson, quote,

The strategy of erecting faceless enemies and conspiracies, warring against the little man, the haves against the have-nots, had been used definitively by Watson, and the disciple had learned well from the master. His language could be earthy, profane, grammatically atrocious, and very provincial. In isolated rural areas, it was tailored to be understood by the most ignorant farmhand. Simple, uncluttered, blunt discourse punctuated with bile passages and rural humor.

His language was also very adaptable. He was a highly educated man capable of polish and refinement and sophisticated dialogue, unquote. So he kind of looked like he kind of like code switched in talking to like rural farmers. He would talk a certain way in talking to like people in Atlanta. He would talk a different way because he wasn't a hick. Like he went to the University of Georgia. He went to law school. He was a very well educated guy. But he understood the value in playing one.

No, no, no, no. Because like he literally said he wants people to think he's a farmer, but he hates farming. That's exactly. He wanted he was an actor. He understood the value of playing as a hick. Exactly. He was he had he kind of introduced if not introduced, he kind of popularized this very like theatrical style of politics for the U.S. governor. Like this is this is where he made his bread and butter was being a very like theatrical actor.

I think I think Anderson calls it a politics of crisis, like a theatrical politics of crisis. That was his main tactic. Yeah. And do you know what our main tactic is, Robert? Well, it's actually that, Garrison. I'm a big fan of the politics of crisis, which is why I'm trying to convince everybody listening that there's a high stakes presidential election occurring when you and I both know the lizards picked the winner months ago.

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So that's why I think if the electoral count is tied, the Senate's obviously going to pick Tim Walz. That was that's been the plan the whole time. It's already been orchestrated. It's it's very. Oh, we're back. Oh, because. Oh, sorry. Hey, guys, guys, guys. Welcome. This is behind the bastards. We're returning once once again. A podcast about how Tim Walz absolutely is not descended from an iguana. Look,

I haven't gone through his childhood photos, seen pictures of his parents. I can't prove to you that he's part iguana. You know, that's just not a thing I'm going to do. He's not Nebraska famously known for his iguana population. DNA. Absolutely. It has a lot of like you can keep an iguana in a terrarium garrison. Don't be racist.

Speaking of racism, Eugene Talbitch. Oh boy. So now to Gene's delight, again, we are in the race for the agricultural commissioner. And to Gene's delight, J.J. Brown challenged him to multiple debates, the first of which would take place in McRae. Now, this is exactly what Gene was wanting. Now, J.J. had heard that Gene was unpopular in his hometown and thought it would be like an easy win.

But JJ made the mistake of only hearing from Gene's local critics and failed to realize the ability of a small town to rally together against a big, slimy, like big city politician. This was going to be the biggest political event in the town's history. And folks were genuinely excited to see that fiery Gene Talmadge go at it again.

Gene absolutely dominated in the debate, using the hometown crowd to his advantage. And not that that was needed, though, as the second debate was in JJ's hometown in North Georgia. And once again, Talmadge handed JJ Brown a humiliating defeat. Anderson writes that, quote, Brown had been run off the stump in his own hometown, unquote.

Now, Gene returned to McRae for Election Day, where he won 123,000 votes to 66,000 votes. Gotta say, the number of voters has really leapt up since the last election. Yes, indeed. Gene also just completely dominated in the county unit system, getting 362 county unit votes to Brown's meager 52. Ouch. To quote Anderson, quote,

The Atlanta press and the Georgia legislature provided flesh and blood to a skeleton conceived and bound together by the tremendous energies and aspirations of Eugene Talmadge, unquote. And I think this is really crucial. Interesting place for a skeleton metaphor, but I'm on board. Gene was often very skeletal. Like, he kind of looked like a walking skeleton. Who doesn't love a good skeleton? I like skeletons, you know? Everyone loves someone with a skeleton. I think it's important to point out that, like,

Both the Atlanta press and the Georgia legislature would later hate Gene Talmage. And yet they are the ones responsible for first getting him into power. It was only through their coverage and only through their assistance that he was made into the monster that he would become. Without their participation, he probably would have stayed just a small country lawyer.

It was specifically their help that allowed him to get to where he was. Now, Gene fulfilled his campaign promises of cutting the bloated number of inspectors. And while he removed any remnants of the old corrupt JJ regime, he did tend to hire a lot of his own family members.

And he won reelection in 1928. But for a man in such a high political position, he had a very juvenile understanding of the state economy. He cannot understand why Southern bankers favored appeasing Wall Street over helping local farmers. Gene weaponized fears of Southern inferiority and oppression, preaching that rich Northerners were using their influence to keep the agricultural South subservient to the North.

Anderson writes that this belief, quote, drove him beyond old South conservatism to the point of no nothingism and a semi-rejection of all things geographically and idealistically removed from the South, unquote.

He ran a column in the department's own newspaper, The Market Bulletin, which ostensibly existed to communicate directly with farmers, but he mostly used it to spread his economic and political philosophy. This is how you're supposed to send updates on farming and agricultural information because the internet doesn't exist.

But genius used this as his own Twitter feed, just posting his economic opinions. This is a thing with the very worst people in the 20th century is they all found ways to independently create Twitter for themselves. Everyone wants to have a Twitter. Yeah, everyone wanted a Twitter. Everyone wants Twitter. And all of the worst people figured out how to make their own. Yes. Yes, absolutely. Yeah.

Now, Gene won reelection a third time in 1930. And this year marked the first time in the state's history that a majority of the population weren't living on a farm. Basically, since the Civil War, Georgia, especially rural Georgia, was stuck in a culturally imposed political isolation.

But now people were fleeing the countryside in droves as a mixture of like economic hardships, developing technology and urban growth, as Anderson puts it, quote, brought the reality of the world to Georgia, unquote. And basically this like forced modernism that was encroaching provided a compelling alternative to farm life for the rural population. At the start of the Depression, the average price of farmland and cotton fell by one half, quote,

And Gene still did basically nothing to help his supporters weather these bad times. He mostly just encouraged people to stay on the farm and he lambasted the keep farm and starve out there, you know? Yeah, because he thought that was more noble than taking help from the federal government, like literally.

He spent all of his time just complaining about the Federal Farm Bureau's recommendations and attempts to help people, saying that their efforts were un-American, trying to give people money to get food, trying to start lending cooperatives, trying to encourage people to just farm a little bit less land so they have a sustainable supply and demand ecosystem.

Now, it's just very clear, like, Gene lacked the economic knowledge to effectively enact any change. So instead, he blamed all of the state's agricultural and economic woes on Wall Street and bankers, quote unquote. The poor economic situation seriously put into question the image of individual frontier self-sufficiency.

So why were people still supporting Talmadge even though he was so ill-equipped to understand their current economic situation, with the farmers often just ignoring his advice but voting for him anyway?

I'm going to quote from Anderson to kind of answer that question. Quote,

These new directions in which the farmer was moving were apparently creating a problem of conscience. And by supporting the voice of the past, Jean Talmadge, they were absolving guilty feelings about leaving the past, unquote.

So while farmers were struggling, Gene was actually having quite a bit of fun. He would take road trips with his friends. That's good. I hate it when people like put put their back into their work and just are miserable. You know, if you're going to be a dictator, you might as well enjoy the path to dictation. He was having a good time at this point. He was less of a dictator and more just like an absent figure. He's on the road. Yeah, he just wasn't doing it like this is like.

in terms of his libertarian approach, this is him being a libertarian. He's just not doing anything. That's the dream of every ruler. People are in a severe agricultural crisis. And as the commissioner, he's just being like, good luck, stay out there, don't stop farming. And that's it. Meanwhile, he's taking road trips with his friends and family to places like Charleston's Botanical Gardens to quote-unquote study agriculture. Oh, lovely.

Sure. The commissioner's hard at work. Figure out why it's not working for us. Yeah. Yeah. And she just kept hiring family members and had this state pay for cars that they crashed.

And he also didn't report the tax money he collected to the state treasury instead of putting it into his friend's bank accounts. Well, that's being a good friend. The state doesn't need to handle this money. I'll deal with it. I'll just put it in Bill's account. That's not because you look, Garrison, the state, you know, could get up to all sorts of corruption and against. But Bill, he's just going to spend that on hooch and shoe. Hooch and shoe. Yeah.

Not beer. Beer is big no-no. Look, if Joe Biden had just sent $20 billion to the guy who provides him with zins, none of us would have an issue with it, right? You know? That's all I'll say. So what got Gene into real trouble, though, was when he completely unauthorized used the state's money to buy 82 carloads of hogs from Georgia farmers and shipped them to Chicago to sell. Again, if Joe Biden had bought 82 carloads of hogs, we'd be fine with it.

Hold on, I lost my place in this. Sure. That's a good number of carloads of hogs. Although a car back then, you're only fitting what? Two to four hogs max. That's really not that many hogs. It's about $14,000 worth of hogs in 1920s money. So it's a lot of hogs. That seems like a decent quantity of hogs. Yeah.

Now, this was an illegal and just bizarre attempt to help the local hog market by buying these hogs and shipping them to Chicago to sell at a higher price. This was on all behind the governor's back.

This scheme lost the state anywhere from $12,000 to $20,000, depending who you ask, which is between $225,000 to $375,000 in today's money. This is the kind of scam Eric Adams would get caught doing today. Yes. He lost the state basically at least the equivalent of a quarter of a million dollars with this weird hog scheme.

And in the summer of 1931, his questionable practices finally caught up with him with a Senate investigation tasked to look into his conduct. I'm going to quote from Anderson here. Quote, the committee disclosed that Gene had paid $40,000, $800,000 in today's money, in salaries to himself and members of his family over a three-year period. This also includes their expenses, such as yearly trips to the Kentucky Derby. Unquote. Sure, of course. Well, that's necessary, though. Imported agricultural research.

There's a certain minimum number of mint juleps you need to be effective in Georgia government. And you're only going to get that density if you go to the... Gare, maybe next year you and I will go to the Derby. I'd be very down for that. We could get matching tailored white suits. I am already down for that. Let's do it. That'll be fun. That'll be a good bond. In the calm year of 2025 where hopefully nothing will happen.

It'll be the only interesting thing occurring is our trip to the Derby. God, I hope so. You and I are both going to learn about new kinds of racism. Not new kinds of racism, but new to us. Yeah, new to me, a Canadian. Uh-huh.

Well, there's racism in the South, and then there is like family money racism in the South. And that, you really got to go to the Derby to catch a load of that. I believe that. Or one of those plantation weddings. It is like Gene's favorite place to go. So yeah, I can see that. Now, the Senate committee eventually called for a second hearing to investigate Gene's use of fertilizer tax money, which instead of sending it to the Treasury, he was depositing into the accounts of his friends.

Mm-hmm.

But Talmadge was eventually forced to show up at the investigative committee hearing where he proudly stated, quote, if I stole, it was for farmers like yourselves, unquote. And this like a determination and dedication to helping farmers by, again, stealing hogs was was enough to strike down an impeachment resolution by one hundred and fourteen votes to twenty two. So all of this at this point, that's.

The Senate was also kind of full of farmers who weren't very smart. So they were like, yeah, Gene, you go. So he was fine. But to appease a few of the angry senators who wanted the governor to take action in court, Governor Russell tasked his AG to undergo his own investigation, which eventually recommended that Talmadge pay back the state $15,000 for the hogs and his stepson's job as a clerk.

But the governor didn't actually take action on this because he was planning a run for the U.S. Senate and didn't want to anger the farmers. So Gene essentially just got away with all of this, emerging as a sort of like Robin Hood figure who would steal from the stage to help the farmers. Now, come 1932, the governor was running for U.S. Senate and Gene had his eyes on the governor's office. The hometown crowd from McRae traveled to Atlanta to pay for the qualifying fee and announce his candidacy.

Gene had largely been able to get around the courthouse gangs by appealing directly to the vast swaths of the rural population. And as commissioner, he made enough contacts in various counties that an election campaign organization could rather spontaneously take form. The state's largest road builder, John Whitley, who was old friends with Gene, got close to his political circle once again with the prospect of Gene taking over the highway department.

Gene was really obsessed in this campaign with paying off state debt, which he viewed as an evil long plaguing the South. Gene was also worried by the then presidential candidate, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's calls for a more involved federal government. To quote from Anderson, quote,

Jean knew that if the starving farmer were given food money as a handout, the southern farmer would therefore remain in subjugation, only this time to the government instead of the local bank or Wall Street. Psychological indebtedness far worse than the region's traditional financial indebtedness. Jean's obsession with debt as evil was an example of his inability to distinguish the symptom from the disease.

His 1932 platform was flawed by this failing, and thus he attacked peripheral issues that ironically served to maintain the very problems he was trying to cure. Gene had entered the race naming the issue high taxes and high government spending. The other candidates joined him in unison. The entire slate were by the book old line conservatives who saw the answers to the day's problems in yesterday's solutions."

the one piece of government spending that Gene did earnestly support was pensions for Confederate veterans. Of course. Which he did, like, this was actually something he sincerely advocated for. This wasn't like a political gesture. No, this was clearly something that was important to him. It was. He saw Confederate veterans as like paragons of the lost world that Gene was fighting to return to. You know, some of us, I just don't think we should give out participation trophies, you know? Yeah.

So true, brother. So true. Now, on July 4th, a massive barbecue rally was held in McRae, drawing huge numbers with the Atlantic Constitution providing extremely thorough coverage, which they did for no other candidate this race. As Gene traveled the state giving speeches, he was dubbed the wild man from Sugar Creek.

Even though he was politically ill-prepared, his personality was perfect for the Depression period. His performance was a distraction from the harsh reality of rural life, and if not much else, offered the sweet taste of nostalgia. Anderson writes that, quote, those who attached their dreams to his words could, in a small part, escape those realities by believing in Eugene Talmadge, unquote.

Gene was seen as the clear frontrunner, and his platform relied on his ability to make a speech so impactful, so unforgettable in the lives of the attendees, that they would immediately become Talmadge loyalists. Yeah. Gene utilized his supporters planted in the crowd to queue him up for certain topics and encourage audience interaction. All of his opponents attacked Talmadge's personal record instead of his platform, focusing on his near impeachment, his Senate and AG investigation, and the whole Hogg incident.

But Gene was able to flip this around and turn the hog incident into a sort of rallying cry. Planted members in the crowd would queue up by shouting, tell us about them pigs you stole, Gene. And Gene would lean in and point his figure at the crowd and say, they say I stole. Yeah, it's true I stole, but I stole for you. You men in overalls, you dirt farmers. And the crowd would just eat it up. Amazing stuff, man. Yeah.

You know, Garrison, I should announce here when I run for president, I want to promise the American people one thing, which is that there will be a hog based scandal within my first year in office. I guarantee I haven't settled on the specific hog based scandal, but there will be a hog based scandal. I guarantee it.

I do think it is important to note like how all of these attacks on Gene's record, he's able to completely flip around and turn into like assets, right? Like he's, he's smart. All of the ways that people attack him as ways to make himself stronger. Well, yeah, it's, it's, it's the, it's the kind of thing Trump's able to do too. It's, it's political judo, right? It's like using the momentum of your enemy's attacks in order to advance. Yeah. It's, it's,

You hate – because it does seem to be there's a degree with both Trump and with Talmadge because there's not like a class on this. And you really don't get this – I don't even know what they would have been reading that would have taught them this. I mean there's bits of history where you get pieces of this. I always have the feeling with most of the guys who are good at this, it's instinctive to a significant degree. Yeah. No, it's like –

It has to be just kind of how their general demeanor is. It just has a degree of uncanny overlap. Now, Gene's supporters were also sometimes troublemakers. To quote Anderson, quote, Although they were never instructed by Gene to disrupt the opponent's speeches, the Talmadge plants could wreak havoc on the other candidates' houses.

Unquote.

So instead of like heckling the speaker, they would just start a fire to distract everybody, which is actually a pretty effective tactic. Yeah, it does work. People love running towards fires. Yeah.

Portland kids in 2020, Eugene Delmitch, demonstrative fires to distract from other actions. Yeah. Beautiful. Now, Gene was also obsessed with crowd size. He would intentionally book venues that were too small for the expected crowd. So that, so that reporting would say that there was an overflowing crowd at every event. So to newspaper readers, Gene would seem like he was just exceedingly popular and,

He would also ask local sheriffs to count how many people were in attendance, usually about 15,000, which was bigger than the size of like an average county, which would get the sheriff to proudly proclaim that each event was a record crowd size.

Again, it's very similar like overlap, right? There's no class that teaches you, you should really care about crowd size. It's just what these guys go for. Now, in less than two months, Gene made over 50 speeches and talked in front of more than 75,000 Georgians.

I'm going to quote a little anecdote from Anderson. Quote, so completely has he sold his image as one of the boys that in one small town, the big limousine in which he was riding was turned back because they thought that Talmadge would resent so much wealth being displayed at a speech.

Gene was not recognized in the back seat. So the driver turned around and drove outside town where a farmer driving an ox cart was hailed down. Gene climbed on board and in a more acceptable transportation was enthusiastically welcomed at the gate from which he had just been turned away. Unquote. So, yeah, this was all theater. This is this was all play acting for Gene. Theater, Garrison. You live in the South now. Talk like it.

Theater? Theater. Is that how you say it, Robert? I'm going to the theater tonight. That's not how people in Georgia talk. I often get made fun of for my Southern country lawyer accent. You Georgia Yankees just don't understand the truth, South.

which exists for roughly around two and a half hours around the small town I grew up in in Oklahoma. Texas and Oklahoma. Everything else is Yankees. Sure, sure, Robert. Fucking El Paso carpetbaggers. We got one page to go through, buddy. Let's wrap this up. Okay.

Now, as the race went on, Gene started pushing a conspiracy theory that all the other candidates were conspiring to split up the county unit vote, causing a runoff. Smart, smart. Anderson notes, quote, the picture of a sinister movement afoot had high appeal for the entertainment starved farmers who knew enemies had to be on the land, but could never identify them, unquote. Yeah.

Which is just a perfect, perfect insight into the mind of the conservative voter.

Now, although a runoff election was expected, as the results began coming in, it was clear that Gene had achieved a huge victory. He handily won the popular vote by 30,000, along with 246 county unit votes against all his opponents, combined total of 146. Now, there was only 240,000 votes in total. So that's the voting population of Georgia in 1932. Now,

Jean's wife, Mitt never moved to Atlanta while he served as commissioner. But after this election, she reluctantly moved to Atlanta with their kids and the Talmadge family turned to the governor's mansion in the upscale Ansley park into a sort of makeshift farm, but mostly as like a political gesture. Uh,

Mitt built a chicken coop in the backyard and they put an old cow on the front lawn. During cocktail parties, the cow would often escape to run off and chow down and tear up the nearby golf course, which is great because this area, I think this is now kind of like around like Piedmont Park. If there should be way more cows walking around this area of Atlanta, just ruining the golf courses, that would be fantastic.

Almost immediately, the Senate was not too fond of Gene and largely ignored his proposed programs. The legislature refused to pass his reduced tax and utility rates, his highway department reorganization bill, but most devastating to Gene, his promise for a $3 car tag, which was a staple of his election campaign.

Though he did get back pay for Confederate veterans passed. So there you go. The Georgia legislature is always, always coming through for what really matters. That's good. That's good. I'm sure there's still somebody in Georgia's legislature working on that bill. Oh, absolutely. We're just leaving checks on the graves.

Gene also vetoed his fair share of bills, I think around 40. And Anderson notes that a complete breakdown had occurred between the executive and legislative branches of government. Essentially, nothing was really getting done. But with this weakened legislature, Gene's dictatorial methods began to manifest.

Gene thought that there was a conspiracy against him by the former governor and his allies for Gene to fail. So as soon as the legislature adjourned, he began to utilize archaic executive power. Talmadge suspended all regular state taxes for two years.

Citing authority granted in a 1821 law. This is how he was able to force his three, his promised $3 license plate by ordering that all automotive tax be dropped to $3. Now, Gina had a lot of guys throughout his career who would just trawl through like really, really old, outdated laws to find like what loopholes of executive power like existed.

This is like one of his core tactics was finding like any way to exercise the fullest extent of executive power by often going through laws that were like over 100 years old.

To quote Anderson, quote, unquote.

Unquote. Now, even without him getting his bills passed, Gene would attempt to exert control by directly puppeteering state agencies. The first he needed to coup was the unwieldy highway department, which was taking 53 percent of the state budget. It was essentially the biggest political lever in the state because roads controlled where everyone went. And you could use road funds as like a bargain for like county county courthouse gangs and to get like election favors.

Gene bargained with the board to fire road engineers to cut down on costs, with Gene just refusing to approve budgets and issue payments until his demands were fulfilled.

At this time, Gene was also being pressured to call for a special session to legalize beer, an issue that Gene largely found inconsequential, saying beer. Why, this is hard liquor country. Beer is a fad. Unquote. If you find it weird that beer was ever illegal in Georgia, there's a documentary. Smokey and the Bandit that you can you can watch that will explain this to you.

Now, Gene mostly didn't want to call this extra session, mostly out of fear that they would strike down his $3 car tag and remove his ability to leverage power over the highway department. Now, during this spat, Gene was also picking a fight with the Public Service Commission over high utility rates, saying that there was a conspiracy between the five commissioners to charge high rates. And by alleging this, he was able to take action under Georgia code to remove state officials who were derelict in their duties and appoint their successors.

you can maybe notice a trend here that he often was convinced or at least claimed that there was all kinds of conspiracies against him. Always, no matter what, there was always a conspiracy against him. So as things were heating up in Atlanta,

Eugene Talmadge traveled to New York City in mid-June, accompanied by four National Guard bodyguards. Rumors circulated that Talmadge was undergoing a military occupation of the Capitol and the Treasury. To quote Anderson, quote,

Gene was questioned about these odd occurrences of moving money and armed men, to which he only smiled and replied...

military matters must necessarily be kept secret. Uncertain. Yeah, that scans. This whole sequence of events is extremely prophetic for what Gene's reign over Georgia would look like in the next 10 years. Now, look, if I'm in power, am I going to have the National Guard follow me around so that there's always a body of soldiers meeting me wherever I show up, like the emperor in Star Wars? Absolutely. But...

They're going to be dressed like those red guys, you know? You know the red guys from Star Wars Garrison? Oh, I'm very familiar. Yeah, yeah. With the Imperial Guard. Robert, excuse me. Excuse me. I'm retooling. We're selling all of the National Guard's tanks and weapons in order to buy screen-accurate Imperial Guard uniforms from Star Wars. You can get a pretty good one for about $1,000. I already know this. See? All we got to sell is like three or four MRAPs, you know?

We're good to go. That is where we're going to end our story today with Gene's kind of military coup. Yeah. And we will learn what he did with this military coup in the next episode. What a man. What a man. What a man. What a mighty not very good man.

No. Does that song ring a bell to you, Garrison? No. No. Anyway, I'm on Twitter at Henry Bowtie, still posting for The Void. Yeah. Yeah. I'm on Twitter too, but I don't really post that much anymore. No, you've been good. I've gotten it. I took it off my phone. I've been breaking the habit, just like that Linkin Park song, even though Linkin Park's been canceled. All right, I'm done. Tragic.

Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com. Or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com slash at Behind the Bastards.

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