Charlton Lyons

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Charlton Havard Lyons, Sr., (September 3, 1894 – August 8, 1973) was a Shreveport oilman who in 1964 waged the first well-organized Republican bid for the Louisiana governorship since Reconstruction. Lyons also made a strong but losing bid for the United States House of Representatives in a special election in 1961.

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[edit] From Abbeville to Shreveport

Lyons was born in Abbeville, the seat of Vermilion Parish, to Ernest John Lyons and the former Joyce Bentley Havard. He attended Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge but received his bachelor's degree from Tulane University in New Orleans. He also received a law degree from Tulane and was admitted to the Louisiana bar in 1916.

On August 28, 1917, Lyons married the former Marjorie Gladys Hall, an actress. Image:Mar Lyons scan FINAL 8x10.jpg In the spring of 1917, Maurice Fromkes painted this portrait of Marjorie Hall, hair of burnished gold. She was born in Eagle Point, Wisconsin, near Chippewa Falls in Chippewa County, on March 27, 1895, to Henry P. Hall and the former Laura O'Rourke. The marriage lasted until her death on July 11, 1971.

Lyons taught school for a time in Rapides Parish and in the community of Pollock, in southeastern Grant Parish. He opened a law practice in Winnfield, center of the Long dynasty, from 1918-1921, at the time that the legendary Huey Pierce Long, Jr., was rising to prominence.

Lyons relocated to Shreveport and went into the oil business as "C.H. Lyons Petroleum." In the 1950s, Lyons had become so successful in his field that he was named president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America. He was also a director of the Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, the National Petroleum Council, and the National Association of Manufacturers.

In 1969, Lyons was honored as "Humanitarian of the Year at" the Abbeville Dairy Festival in the town of his birth. His civic-mindedness led him to establish the popular Marjorie Lyons Playhouse on the campus of Methodist-affiliated Centenary College in Shreveport, which is named for his wife. He was considered by friend and political rival alike as a man of great optimism and impeccable character. Charlton and Marjorie Lyons were Episcopalians.

They had two sons, Charlton Havard Lyons, Jr. (born 1921), a prominent Shreveport businessman and civic leader, and Hall M. Lyons of Lafayette and later Grand Isle (1923-1998), a former candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. There was also a daughter, the late Mrs. T.H. Logan.

Lyons was a member of the Shreveport Country Club, the Masonic lodge, the American Legion, and the Kappa Alpha and Phi Delta Phi fraternities.

[edit] "Everybody Can Vote for Charlton Lyons"

Lyons officially switched to the Republican Party in 1960, when he supported Richard M. Nixon for president. He is best known for his pathbreaking gubernatorial campaign waged in the winter of 1964. He posted billboards which delared that "Everybody Can Vote for Charlton Lyons," for he had to inform Louisiana's Democratic voters, then more than 98 percent of the registrants, that they actually had a choice in the general election that year, a phenomenon unknown prior to 1964. Democratic nominee John McKeithen (1918-1999) noted that he, at forty-five, was a generation younger than the 69-year-old Lyons. It was a rare use of age as an issue in Louisiana politics.

Ronald W. Reagan came to Louisiana to campaign for Lyons: this was only a few months before Reagan delivered his October 27, 1964, "Rendezvous with Destiny" address on a national television hookup to promote Barry Goldwater's presidential bid, a speech credited with catapulting Reagan into the vanguard of national politics. Lyons, like Reagan, was a former Democrat who also had become disenchanted with the liberal drift of the party.

McKeithen was outraged over Reagan's visit and urged the veteran actor of film and television "to return to Hollywood and do something about the standing immorality and communism that flourishes in that city." McKeithen predicted that Louisiana Democrats would "repel this second invasion by the carpetbaggers." Two years later, Reagan was elected governor of California. McKeithen pictured Lyons as the beneficiary of "special interests" and "a group of millionaires." Lyons would "help the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer," wailed McKeithen. Lyons, however, denied that most of his supporters were even wealthy. "A Victory for Lyons Will Electrify the Nation," said one of the candidate's brochures.

McKeithen seemed to resent having to face a Republican challenger after he survived two Democratic primaries. He called for an end to two Democratic primaries to be followed by a general election with Republicans, but the process of three elections was barely getting underway.

The Louisiana media gave wide coverage to the McKeithen-Lyons battle. Adras LaBorde, managing editor of the Alexandria Daily Town Talk, took advantage of the state's first heated Democrat-Republican campaign for governor and covered the election widely in his column "The Talk of the Town". Both Shreveport papers, The Times and the now defunct Journal covered nearly every aspect possible of the campaign. Journal editor George W. Shannon endorsed Lyons.

Lyons designated George Joseph Despot (1927-1991), another Shreveport oilman, and Certified Public Accountant George A. Burton, Jr., as his gubernatorial campaign co-chairmen, mostly because it was Despot and Burton who pleaded with Lyons to enter the race. Burton (born 1926), a lifelong Louisiana Republican, described Lyons in glowing terms: "a great American. . . a friend of impeccable integrity." From Baton Rouge, Lyons appointed future state party chairman James H. Boyce as his campaign treasurer.

[edit] 37.5 percent was a record for a GOP candidate

Lyons lost to Democrat McKeithen in the March 3, 1964, general election, but his 297,753 ballots (37.5 percent), helped to pave the way for the victory in Louisiana that November of the Goldwater-Miller presidential electors. McKeithen polled 469,589 votes (60.7 percent). (The last of the States' Rights Party gubernatorial nominees in Louisiana history, Thomas S. Williams from the town of Ethel in East Feliciana Parish, received 6,048 votes, or 1.8 percent).

Lyons polled majorities in five parishes, Caddo, Bossier, Claiborne, Lincoln, and De Soto, all in north Louisiana. He polled more than 47 percent in East Baton Route Parish and in Webster Parish. In La Salle Parish, which had supported Richard Nixon in 1960 and Taylor W. O'Hearn for the U.S. Senate in 1962, Lyons drew less than 30 percent of the vote, a factor perhaps explained by the fact that the parish is located due south of McKeithen's Caldwell Parish.

In victory, the testy McKeithen was magnanimous toward his rival: "My opponent waged a tremendous campaign for a man of his age. I am glad I don't have to run against him again." The Shreveport Journal, which endorsed Lyons, observed that the Republican vote was "not so much a vote against John McKeithen, who had already taken the district in Democratic balloting, as it was an expression of endearment for a man who is regarded as one of our most outstanding citizens."

Billy J. Guin, later the Shreveport public utilities commissioner who had run for the state legislature from Caddo Parish on the Lyons ticket, described Lyons as "a good man who wanted to change the political complexion of Louisiana. He built the Republican Party in its present form. He was a great campaigner, and there was much grassroots fervor. When he began to make inroads, the sheriffs and other Democratic officeholders proceeded to block his election."

[edit] Supporting Barry Goldwater

During the gubernatorial race, McKeithen had accused Lyons of being precommitted to the 1964 Republican presidential candidate, and he incorrectly predicted that the nominee would be, not Senator Goldwater, but then New York Governor Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, considered the liberal, internationalist candidate. McKeithen said that he would keep his options open for the 1964 presidential election. As it turned out, he remained neutral in that race, but the state's two popular Democratic senators, Allen Ellender and Russell B. Long, both supported the Lyndon Johnson-Hubert Humphrey ticket.

No sooner had the gubernatorial race ended than Lyons resumed working for Goldwater's nomination as president. After the gubernatorial campaign, Lyons became the state GOP party chairman and led the state delegation to the national convention held in San Francisco's Cow Palace. His vice chairman was Harriet Belchic, a Shreveport civic and political leader who was also the first woman to have received both bachelor's and master's degrees from LSU in the field of geology.

Lyons worked to persuade several leading Louisiana Democrats to support Goldwater, including former Governors Sam Houston Jones and Robert F. Kennon and Lieutenant Governor Clarence C. "Taddy" Aycock of Franklin in St. Mary Parish.

Goldwater defeated Lyndon B. Johnson in Louisiana and won some parishes by 5-1 margins or better, particularly in the northern tier of parishes.

[edit] Lyons opposes Waggonner for Congress, 1961

Three years before his gubernatorial campaign, Lyons ran in a special election for the Louisiana Fourth Congressional District seat. A vacancy developed with the death of longterm Democratic Representative Thomas Overton Brooks of Shreveport. In the 1960 general election, Brooks had defeated Republican Fred C. McClanahan of Shreveport (born 1919) by a wide margin, 48,286 (74.2 percent) to 16,827 (25.8 percent).

Lyons made a much stronger showing in the northwest Louisiana district, but the seat went to Joseph David "Joe D." Waggonner, Jr., from Plain Dealing in Bossier Parish, a conservative Democrat who had once been president of the segregationist Louisiana Citizen's Council. Waggonner held the seat until he retired in 1979.

Lyons claimed that victory by Waggonner would be interpreted as support for policies of President Kennedy and Vice President Johnson, while Waggonner claimed that the election of Lyons would mean increased importance being placed on black bloc voting through the establishment of a two-party system. In the special election, Lyons won his own Caddo Parish with 58.7 percent, but district-wide the totals were 28,250 votes (45.5 percent) for Lyons and 33,892 (54.5 percent) for Waggonner. After the Lyons campaign of 1961, no other Republican opposed Waggonner, who was customarily reelected without opposition. In 1988, a Republican, James O. McCrery, III, a Shreveport native who grew up in Leesville in Vernon Parish, won the district in another special election created by the election of Congressman Charles Elson "Buddy" Roemer, III, as governor. McCrery has since held the seat with relatively little difficulty.

[edit] Lyons passes the GOP baton to Treen

Lyons had stepped down as party chairman in 1968 and was succeeded by his friend and fellow oilman Charles Camille de Gravelles, Jr, of Lafayette. Charles' wife, Virginia Wheadon de Gravelles had been the national committeewoman from 1964-1968 and was a great admirer of Charlton Lyons.

In 1972, Lyons supported the Republican gubernatorial candidate David C. Treen of suburban New Orleans, even though Lyons' son, Hall Lyons was running for governor on the American Independent Party ticket, an organization founded in 1968 by Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, Jr, (1963-1967; 1971-1979; 1983-1987). Hall Lyons withdrew from the race and endorsed Treen, who in turn lost the general election to Democrat Edwin Washington Edwards. In 1966, Hall Lyons had run for Congress in the Lafayette-based district, but he lost to veteran Democrat Edwin E. Willis (1904-1972), a supporter of President Johnson. Unlike his son, Charlton Lyons had opposed Wallace, who had won Louisiana in 1968. Charlton Lyons supported the Richard M. Nixon-Spiro T. Agnew elector slate, which fared poorly in the state.

[edit] The death of Lyons

Lyons died some eight months after Treen had been elected to the U.S. House from the reconfigured Third Congressional District, which included parts of suburban New Orleans. Lyons hence lived just long enough to witness the first glimpse of his dream of a two-party system for traditionally Democratic Louisiana. His die-hard backers thought of him as the "best governor Louisiana never had." His papers (covering 1942-1973) are at LSU.

The Lyonses are buried in the family plot in Forest Park Cemetery in Shreveport.

[edit] References

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