Charlton Lyons - Supporting Barry Goldwater

Supporting Barry Goldwater

In 1963, Charlton Lyons and the Baton Rouge businessman James H. Boyce, then a nominal Democrat, went with a group of mostly Republican conservatives to urge Goldwater to seek the presidency. Goldwater was at first reluctant to take on the challenge but nevertheless declared his candidacy early in 1964, when the Democrat Lyndon Johnson had been president for less than two months and the heavy favorite for a full term of his own.

Boyce thereafter switched parties and became the campaign treasurer for the Lyons gubernatorial bid. He would serve as state party chairman from 1972-1976. In that campaign, McKeithen had accused Lyons of being pre-committed to the 1964 Republican presidential candidate, and he incorrectly predicted that the nominee would be, not Senator Goldwater, but then Governor Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller of New York, 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 Johnson-Humphrey ticket.

No sooner had the gubernatorial race ended than Lyons resumed working for Goldwater's nomination as president. As state party chairman, Lyons headed the state delegation to the national convention held in San Francisco's Cow Palace. At twenty-five, Morton Blackwell of Baton Rouge was the youngest elected delegate to the 1964 convention. Lyons's party vice chairman was Harriet Belchic, a Shreveport civic and political leader reared in Winnfield who was the first woman to have received both bachelor's and master's degrees from LSU in the field of geology. Her husband, Dr. George Belchic was also active in state Republican causes.

Lyons also recruited congressional candidates in 1964: David C. Treen of New Orleans, in a second race against Hale Boggs; William Stewart Walker of Winnfield, in a challenge to Speedy O. Long in the since defunct 8th district; Robert Angers of Lafayette, who opposed Edwin E. Willis of St. Martinville in the 3rd district, and Floyd O. Crawford of Baton Rouge, making a race against James H. Morrison. While Goldwater defeated Johnson in Louisiana and won some parishes by 5-1 margins or better, particularly in the northern tier, none of the congressional candidates fared better than Walker's 46 percent showing against Speedy Long.