Hummon got busy. On election day, 675 hastily coached Talmadge backers scratched Old Gene’s name off their ballots and wrote in Hummon’s. This placed him second to Gene’s 143,279.

In 1942, the “boy wonder” flashed into national prominence when he beat the late Gene Talmadge for the governorship. Governor Arnall cleaned up the state educational system, ended the pardon ...