Morley A. Hudson - Running For Lieutenant Governor, 1972

Running For Lieutenant Governor, 1972

In 1972, Hudson was a candidate for lieutenant governor on the Republican ticket with gubernatorial hopeful David C. Treen, then of Jefferson Parish. He spent some $40,000 on his race, with no assistance forthcoming from the Republican National Committee. Hudson polled only 218,169 votes (20.5 percent) to 815,794 (76.8 percent) for the successful Democrat, James E. "Jimmy" Fitzmorris, Jr., of New Orleans, a former city councilman and an executive for Kansas City Southern Railroad. Hudson failed to win a single parish. He fared best in his home base of Caddo Parish, where he drew 43.6 percent. (A third candidate in the race, Gertrude L. Taylor, also of Shreveport, nominee of George Wallace's former American Independent Party, received 2.7 percent of the vote.) Treen, running for governor for the first time, polled 42.8 percent, more than twice the number of votes obtained by Hudson. While Caddo Parish supported Fitzmorris over Hudson, it gave majorities to three Republican statewide candidates, Treen for governor, Tom Stagg of Shreveport for attorney general against the Democrat William J. Guste, and for Robert L. Frye, a native of Webster Parish, who ran unsuccessfully for state education superintendent against the Democrat Louis J. Michot of Lafayette.

In the lieutenant governor's campaign, Hudson wore a friend's red-white-and-blue shoes. According to the Shreveport Times, Hudson repeated the patriotic color scheme in a 1976 visit to the White House, wearing a red-white-and-blue tie that made him stand out among dozens of other people in gray suits, prompting U.S. President Gerald R. Ford, Jr., to remark, "It's so good to see someone here in Washington with the bicentennial spirit!"