A member of the Democratic Party, he was known for promoting racial segregation and white supremacy,[1] and for advocating for racism in the University System of Georgia.

He was criticized for paying himself and family members more than $40,000 in salaries and expenses, and using department funds to make trips to the Kentucky Derby.

Accused of "stealing" $20,000 in order to raise the price of hogs, Talmadge told one group of farmers, "Sure, I stole it!

When Governor Richard B. Russell Jr. referred the suit to the state attorney general, however, the request to sue Talmadge was rejected.

"[13] He made twelve campaign promises, the most controversial of which was to lower the price of an automobile license to $3, putting them within reach of the poorest farmers.

[16] In 1933, one sharecropper wrote to Talmadge: "I wound't [wouldn't] plow nobody's mule from sunrise to sunset for 50 cents a day when I could get $1.30 for pretending to work on a DITCH".

Roosevelt wrote back: "Somehow I cannot get into my head that wages on such a scale make possible a reasonable American standard of living".

[18] For all his populism and his self-image as the defender of the small white farmers of Georgia, Talmadge tended to side with the interests of the wealthier land-owning families of the state.

When the Public Service Commission, a body elected by the voters, refused to lower utility rates, he appointed a new board to get it done.

In December 1934, when Roosevelt decided to spend Christmas at Warm Springs, Georgia, Talmadge sent a note requesting a private meeting with the president.

His staff responded by a note apologizing for Roosevelt not having the time to see the governor, and vaguely promising him a private meeting at the White House sometime in 1935.

[20] By early 1935, Talmadge was working on an alliance with US Senator Huey Long (D-Louisiana), who was planning on running against Roosevelt in 1936.

Talmadge's main allies were the Reverend Gerald L. K. Smith, who had been the principal organizer of Long's Share Our Wealth Clubs; John Henry Kirby, a wealthy Texas businessman who had been a leading Long supporter; and novelist Thomas Dixon Jr., a white supremacist whose books glorifying the Ku Klux Klan were very popular at the time.

Talmadge's bid was being financed with some $41,000 contributed by Alfred Sloan, CEO of General Motors, together with money from the Raskob and du Pont families.

[27] His Southern Committee to Uphold the Constitution organized a convention in Macon, Georgia, in January 1936 that brought together fragments of the old Huey P. Long coalition.

[31][page needed] Talmadge's handpicked candidate for governor, Charles Redwine, lost the 1936 Georgia gubernatorial election to pro-New Deal Democrat Eurith D. Rivers by an overwhelming margin.

[30] In 1936, according to a United Press (UP) article printed in the Atlanta Constitution on August 21, 1936, titled "Gene Selects Hitler as Favorite 'Author'", Talmadge reportedly told a Los Angeles newspaper that while he didn't have time to read many books, he read Adolf Hitler's book Mein Kampf ("My Struggle") seven times.

[citation needed] This intervention into academic affairs caused the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to remove accreditation from the Georgia state universities.

Some commentators felt that Talmadge was merely naive, a man who knew nothing about the affairs of Europe and Asia, while others charged that his authoritarian style of leadership made him naturally sympathetic towards fascist regimes.

[37] The students at Georgia's universities and colleges campaigned vigorously against Talmadge, putting on skits that mocked the governor as a power-crazed buffoon just before football games.

[40] This message was intended to appeal to the white farmers who traditionally supported Talmadge, but may have inadvertently hurt him as even many of Talmadge's rural supporters knew that a better education represented their children's best hope of escaping poverty, and did not appreciate the implied message that the best thing that could happen to their children would be to follow their parents in lives of drudgery and poverty.

[citation needed] As was always the case, Talmadge presented himself as an aggressive defender of white supremacy, arguing that keeping the black people disfranchised and segregated was far more important than education, a message that appealed to his core supporters, but to nobody else.

At one campaign rally, Talmadge stated: "We in the South love the Negro in his place-but his place is at the back door".

[46] Talmadge convinced himself that Roosevelt had deliberately engineered the United States's entry into World War II because he wanted to create the social changes that would end white supremacy, causing him to engage in long tirades against Roosevelt, the New Deal, World War II and black Americans.

So easily had his people succumbed to the siren call of change that Gene found himself with one hoary root left, one last undeniable link to yesterday-the black.

Talmadge ran for governor and used the Smith v. Allwright decision, ruling that the closed white primary was unconstitutional, as his main red flag issue.

Though Talmadge was unpopular in the more populous urban areas, his relative popularity in rural areas gave him a fighting chance of still winning the Democratic nomination under the "county unit votes" system in which (essentially) the candidate who won the most counties, not the most popular votes, would receive the nomination.

Several witnesses stated that they overheard Talmadge speaking to George Hester, the brother of a white man stabbed by a black man named Roger Malcolm, outside of the courthouse in Monroe, Georgia, promising he would "take care of the Negro" in exchange for the Hester family using their influence to help win Walton County.

On July 25, 1946, the car carrying Malcolm, who had been bailed out of jail, was stopped by a group of about 30 white men at Moore's Ford.

[51] While the General Assembly elected Herman Talmadge to take his father's place, Thompson claimed his right to succeed to the governorship, and also Arnall refused to leave office.