Calhoun Allen - Republican Campaign For Congress, 1956

Republican Campaign For Congress, 1956

In 1956, Calhoun Allen was a 34-year-old Republican, a supporter of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's reelection, and his party's candidate for the Fourth Congressional District seat long held by the popular Democrat Overton Brooks.

Allen's campaign was directed by his friend, Shreveport businessman and civic leader Charles T. Beaird (1922–2006), who earlier in the year had been elected as a Republican on the Caddo Parish Police Jury (later the Caddo Parish Commission). Political advertising showed World War II veterans Eisenhower and Allen shaking hands and outlined their points of similarity. Allen stressed the need for two-party politics and said that the one-party South could benefit from an infusion of Republicanism. He attacked Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson, as "radical" in nature, while Eisenhower, he said, was "moderate on civil rights."

Congressman Brooks, who had served since 1937, endorsed Stevenson. Brooks told voters that he had "always been a Democrat and am too old to change now." Allen questioned Brooks' constituent services. He asked why there was inadequate postal service in Springhill in northern Webster Parish. Roy Fish, a Springhill attorney and then the chairman of the Webster Parish Republican Party, said that Brooks appeared to be attempting to coast to victory "on the coattails of both parties." Clem S. Clarke, the Shreveport Republican oilman who had challenged the election of Democrat Russell B. Long to the U.S. Senate in 1948, declared in an Allen advertisement: "We need a Southern Republican." Allen also won some Democratic support but not nearly at the level needed to win the election.

In addition to the Allen campaign, Louisiana Republicans in 1956 offered a congressional candidate in the Second District, which then encompassed parts of Orleans and Jefferson parishes. He was George R. Blue, an attorney. Attracted to Blue's candidacy but still a Democrat was a young Metairie attorney, David C. Treen, who would later become the first Louisiana Republican to win a seat in Congress and to hold the governorship as well.

Eisenhower easily won Louisiana in 1956, the first Republican presidential victory in the state since the disputed election of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876. He led in 43 parishes and polled 329,047 votes (53.2 percent) to Stevenson's 243,977 (39.5 percent). The States Rights Party received 44,520 votes (7.2 percent). Stevenson ran nearly 100,000 votes behind his showing in Louisiana four years earlier.

In the Fourth District House race, Brooks won every parish and defeated Allen easily, 40,583 (68.1 percent) to 19,041 (31.9 percent). Allen's strongest support was in his native Caddo and in neighboring De Soto Parish, where he received 34.6 and 34.5 percent, respectively. Brooks' margins were even greater in the parishes of Bienville, Claiborne, Red River, Bossier, and Webster.

In the Second District, popular incumbent Thomas Hale Boggs, Sr., defeated George Blue, 69,715 (64.5 percent) to 38,344 (35.5 percent). Like Allen, Blue would later switch to the Democratic Party. Whereas Allen became a city commissioner and then mayor and even later city council member, Blue was elected in 1964 to an at-large seat in the Louisiana House of Representatives from Jefferson Parish.