Charlton Lyons - "Everybody Can Vote For Charlton Lyons"

"Everybody Can Vote For Charlton Lyons"

Lyons registered to vote as a Democrat in 1915 at the age of twenty-one. In 1952, he had headed the "Democrats for Eisenhower" organization and welcomed future U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower during Eisenhower's visit to the newly-constructed Shreveport Regional Airport. Lyons officially switched to the Republican Party in 1960, when he supported Richard M. Nixon for the presidency, rather than the Democrat John F. Kennedy. At the time of his party switch, Lyons said, "I am not leaving the Democratic Party -- for it had already deserted me." He called the 1960 Democratic platform "socialism" and proclaimed that Kennedy/Johnson could not be the representative of the party of Thomas Jefferson because Jefferson believed in limited government. As a new member of the party, Lyons was soon named to succeed George W. Reese, Jr., of New Orleans as the Louisiana Republican national committeeman when Reese became the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate that year against Allen J. Ellender.

Lyons is best known for his gubernatorial campaign waged in the winter of 1964, running as a strong segregationist. The Republican nominee posted billboards which declared 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 had a choice in the general election that year-—a phenomenon widely unknown in Louisiana since Reconstruction. The party's 1960 nominee, Francis Grevemberg, also a former Democrat, had finished with only 17 percent of the vote.

Democratic nominee John McKeithen at first warned voters that they were required to vote for him as the party standard-bearer because their participation in a party primary carried with it a loyalty oath to the eventual nominee. Lyons, however, cited Section 671, Title 18 of Louisiana Revised Statutes which states that voters are free to support any candidate of their choice in a general election.

McKeithen noted that he, at 45, was a generation younger than the 69-year-old Lyons. McKeithen claimed that the GOP consisted of "a handful of men who are attempting to take over this state government are counting on your staying home on March 3." Lyons said that his gubernatorial candidacy was predicated on "preserving for the young people the same opportunities I had to start with nothing ... and build success for themselves ..."

In February 1964, two Alabama Republicans, James D. Martin of Gadsden, who had made a particularly strong U.S. Senate bid in 1962, and state party chairman John Grenier of Birmingham, attended a Lyons fund-raising dinner held in Shreveport. Martin's claim that a Republican governor would provide regular inter-party competition proved premature. Numerous Republicans who won southern governorships after 1966, including Winthrop Rockefeller in Arkansas and Claude R. Kirk, Jr., in Florida lost reelection bids, and none then established GOP majorities of significant duration in their legislatures.

Lyons also received backing from Ronald W. Reagan, former host of CBS's General Electric Theater. At the time, Reagan did not fly and came to Louisiana by train, a trip that required several days. He was accompanied by his wife, Nancy. The stops for Lyons occurred ten months before Reagan delivered his address, "A Time for Choosing", on national television on October 27, 1964, to promote Barry Goldwater's presidential bid against President Lyndon B. Johnson. The speech was credited with catapulting Reagan into the vanguard of national politics. Like Lyons, Reagan was a former Democrat who had switched party allegiance in 1962. Charlton Lyons, Jr., said he cannot recall how his father met Reagan but believes the two had been friends for several years before the 1964 campaign.

Reagan's support of the segregationist Lyons would later be used to attack him, including, famously, by Gore Vidal in his famous 1968 televised debate with William F. Buckley, Jr.

McKeithen was outraged over Reagan's visit and urged the actor "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." McKeithen portrayed Lyons as the beneficiary of "special interests" and "a group of millionaires" who would "help the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer." 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. Two years later, Reagan was elected governor of California and hence became a gubernatorial colleague of McKeithen's.

McKeithen resented having to face a Republican challenger after he survived two Democratic primaries. He called for an end to two Democratic primaries followed by a general election with a Republican opponent. A similar reaction by 1971 Democratic gubernatorial nominee Edwin Edwards evoked the state's switch to a nonpartisan blanket primary, which as of 2012 the state continues to use.

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, owned by Douglas F. Attaway and edited by the conservative journalist George W. Shannon, covered nearly every aspect of the campaign. Both papers endorsed Lyons and later in the year Goldwater.

Lyons developed a cadre of young followers in the Republican Party. He designated George Joseph Despot, 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, a lifelong Louisiana Republican, described Lyons in glowing terms: "a great American. . . a friend of impeccable integrity." Lloyd E. Lenard, later a Republican member of the Caddo Parish Commission (formerly called Police Jury) from 1984-1996 and an author, flew around the state with "Papa" Lyons, as he called him, and interviewed Lyons for radio and newspapers.