ATLANTA — Herman Talmadge, the former governor and U.S. senator who directed Georgia's most potent political machine for more than 30 years and served on the Senate Watergate committee, died Thursday. He was 88.
Talmadge, who started his career as a staunch segregationist but later reached out to black voters, died at his home in Hampton, according to Haisten Funeral Home in McDonough.
He had undergone open heart surgery in 1997 to replace a defective heart valve, and in 1996, doctors removed a cancerous tumor from his throat.
Talmadge, a Democrat, served six years as governor, first elected in 1948, and 24 years in the Senate starting in 1957.
In that time, he skillfully rode the tide of Southern racial politics, evolving from segregationist to a powerful committee chairman who championed economic development in appealing to black and white voters.
When he won the Senate race in 1956, he became part of the Southern coalition that for a time obstructed civil rights legislation.
As the Supreme Court's integration ruling took effect, Talmadge withdrew his opposition. He said he had always believed only that the races would both benefit from segregation. When Leroy Johnson in 1962 became the first black elected to the Legislature since Reconstruction, Talmadge invited him to breakfast at his mansion. Still, he voted against the 1964 civil rights and the 1965 voting rights bills.
In 1980, after he was denounced by the Senate for financial irregularities and admitted to an alcohol problem, he was unseated by the first Republican to win a Georgia Senate race since Reconstruction.
In 1973, with the Watergate scandal consuming Washington, Talmadge served on a Senate committee whose investigation helped lead to President Nixon's resignation in 1974.
He was quizzing White House aide John Ehrlichman about the break-in at the office of Vietnam War critic Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist. Talmadge asked Ehrlichman if he remembered studying the ancient legal principle that "no matter how humble a man's cottage is, that even the King of England cannot enter without his consent."
"I am afraid that has been considerably eroded over the years, has it not?" Ehrlichman replied. Said Talmadge: "Down in my country we still think it is a pretty legitimate principle of law."
Talmadge's political career began and ended with landmarks.
In 1946-47, it was the "three governors" dispute, in which Talmadge seized the governor's office for two months.
The three governors dispute began with the death of Talmadge's father, Eugene, in December 1946, when he was governor-elect.
The Talmadge machine maintained that the Legislature, which it dominated, should pick the new governor from among the candidates who had lost in November. Conveniently, one of them was the younger Talmadge, who had received some write-in votes.
Herman Talmadge won the legislative vote but was kept from the governor's office by outgoing Gov. Ellis Arnall, who contended Lt. Gov.-elect M.E. Thompson was his rightful successor. When Arnall departed for the night, Talmadge's supporters took over the office at the Capitol as well as the governor's mansion, and Arnall found his way blocked by state troopers the next day.
The state Supreme Court eventually ruled in favor of Thompson, but Talmadge beat him in a special election in 1948 and won a four-year term in 1950.
Talmadge was less successful when he battled the Senate Ethics Committee in 1979 over his use of campaign money and Senate expense money.
His ex-wife Betty told the panel he kept large amounts of money in the pocket of an overcoat in a closet. The senator said the money was from supporters who knew he would spend it on personal expenses, but Talmadge ultimately was denounced by Senate members for mishandling his financial affairs.
Talmadge narrowly lost re-election in 1980 to Republican Mack Mattingly.
In his memoirs, published in 1987, Talmadge wrote, "In retrospect, I wish that I'd burned that damn overcoat." In 1992 he added, "Don't know what ever happened to that coat. I may still have it."
Herman Eugene Talmadge was born Aug. 9, 1913, to Eugene Talmadge, then a farmer and mule trader, and former telegraph operator Mattie Thurmond Talmadge in southern Georgia.
Like his father, Talmadge became a lawyer, but left the Navy at the end of World War II determined not to be a politician.
In his memoir, Talmadge wrote that he began having drinking problems after the drowning of his 29-year-old son, Robert, in 1975.
He and Betty divorced in 1977, and he was treated for alcohol abuse at a naval facility in 1979. In 1992, he said he had not touched alcohol since that time, and "I'm happier than I've ever been in my life."
After his 1980 defeat, Talmadge returned to his 2,500-acre farm in Henry County south of Atlanta.
In 1984, he married Lynda Pierce. He and his first wife, model Kathryn Williams, divorced three years after marrying in 1937.
In addition to his wife, survivors include son Herman Eugene Talmadge Jr.