William Allain - Biography

Biography

Allain was born in Washington, Mississippi. He attended the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, and received his law degree from the University of Mississippi School of Law at Oxford. Allain served in the United States infantry in the Korean War. He was a member of the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars. After the war, he practiced law in Natchez, Mississippi, until his appointment as assistant state attorney general in 1962.

Allain was elected state attorney general in 1979, having defeated the Republican State Senator Charles W. Pickering of Laurel. Allain earned a reputation as a consumer advocate, fighting utility rate increases and stopping the storage of nuclear waste in Mississippi. State labor president Claude Ramsay sought to broker an agreement between the Democratic Party presidential candidate Walter F. Mondale and the subject when the latter sought a veto over the federal storage of nuclear waste in Mississippi as a condition for his political support of Mondale. He also fought the powerful Mississippi Legislature, which for decades had diluted executive branch power by appointing legislators to executive department boards and commissions. The Mississippi Supreme Court, at Allain's insistence, struck the practice as a violation of the constitutional principle of separation of powers. The resulting decision, Allain v. Alexander, is sometimes referred to as "Mississippi's Marbury vs. Madison," after the landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court which delineated the powers of the three branches of the federal government. Allain's efforts strengthened the Mississippi executive and streamlined Mississippi's political processes.

In 1983, while running for the post of governor against Republican candidate Leon Bramlett, Rex Armistead helped spread rumors that Allain had sexual intercourse with two African-American male transvestites. Although he was divorced from his wife, he denied the charges. Both men went on the record with a lie detector; however, when he did too, his rebuttal was still adamant. Then in 1984 the men claimed they had never met Allain and were paid for their testimony.