None the less he ran third in a three-man first primary. In view of the fact that he had no organized backing it must be conceded that it was a close third, an amazing achievement the credit for which must be given to his wide acquaintance among the farm population and the matchless fire of his eloquence. A number of factors contributed to his defeat. One of them undeniably was his refusal, or inability, to recognize that he “could not hold his liquor.” After a convivial evening at a lake-front resort in New Orleans, he drove back to town with his campaign manager at a wildly illicit speed and was promptly halted by a motorcycle officer. His campaign manager hastily explained to the patrolman that the car was his, and that his chauffeur, one Harold Swan, had merely acted under orders. But the fact that Huey Long and Harold Swan in this instance were one and the same came out later, along with accounts of how Huey had gone tipsily from table to table at the Moulin Rouge inviting all and sundry to be his personal guests at his inaugural ball. Ordinarily, this might have won him votes in tolerant south Louisiana, where prohibition was regarded as the figment of sick imaginations, like the _loup garou_. But in south Louisiana he had few backers in that campaign to begin with, being a north Louisiana hillman; and in north Louisiana, where drinking had to be done in secret even before the Volstead Act became nominally the law of the land, such reports were sheer poison. Finally, the weather on election day turned foul. The wretched dirt roads of the hinterlands where Huey’s voting strength was concentrated became impassable, so that many of his supporters could not reach their polling places. But four years later, when he once more ran for governor in yet another three-man race, he barely missed a majority in the first primary. No run-off was held, however, because one of his opponents announced he would throw his support to Long, pulling with him many followers, including a young St. Landry parish physician, Dr. F. Octave Pavy, who had run for lieutenant governor. Under the circumstances a second primary would have been merely an empty gesture of defiance. As governor, he rode roughshod over all opposition to his proposal to furnish free textbooks to every school child, not merely in the public schools, but in the Catholic parochial schools and the posh private academies as well; for a highway-improvement program which he proposed to finance out of increased gasoline taxes. Nor was he one to hide his light under a bushel in pretended modesty. On the contrary, after each success he rang the changes on Jack Horner’s classic “What a good [in the sense of great] boy am I.” Moreover, it made little difference to his devotees whether his promises of still greater benefits for the future, or boasts about the wonders he had already achieved, were based on fact or fiction.