Lether Frazar - Earl Long Loyalist

Earl Long Loyalist

As lieutenant governor, Frazar was known for his steadfast loyalty to Earl Long. Barham, however, had often quarreled with certain policies of Governor Robert F. Kennon and had established the office of lieutenant governor independently of the governor.

In the-late summer of 1959, Long actually considered resigning as governor, a move which would have made Frazar the Louisiana chief executive for some seven months. Under the scenario, Long would then run for governor himself in the December 1959 Democratic primary and thereby avoid Louisiana's ban (at the time) on governors succeeding themselves.

Frazar did not seek a second term as lieutenant governor in the 1959 Democratic primary. Instead Long ran to succeed Frazar as lieutenant governor, but he fell far short of primary victory. Long ran on an intraparty "ticket" with former Governor James Albert Noe, Sr., with whom Long had once quarreled.

On one occasion as acting governor when Long was out of the state, Frazar signed death warrants for two New Orleans blacks, Edgar Labat and Clifton Poret, who were on Death Row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola in West Feliciana Parish for the aggravated rape of a white woman on November 12, 1950. They were scheduled to have been executed on September 20, 1957. The executions were never implemented—the night before the new court-appointed attorneys for the men obtained a stay of execution from a federal judge. The men declared their innocence, and their cases remained in the federal courts until Louisiana stopped executions between 1961 and 1983.

Frazar died the same month that Clarence C. "Taddy" Aycock of Franklin, the seat of St. Mary Parish, a conservative Democrat succeeded him as lieutenant governor. Some four months later, Earl Long himself was dead after having won the Democratic nomination in the now defunct Eighth Congressional District.