Louisiana Political Ephemera in the
Special Collections Vertical Files

P.S. Your vote will be positively secret

To punish New Orleans for rejecting Huey Long’s 1934 mayoral primary slate, the state legislature transferred many local functions to state agencies and stripped the city of independent economic power. New Orleans was subsequently unable to meet its 1935 budget and went effectively bankrupt.

actual size 4.5x 7.5

The large red "V" was a World War II reference to "V for Victory," an attempt by Racivitch to tie his campaign to the war effort. Actual size, 5 x 8

This paper handout was perhaps meant to be pinned to a lapel. Actual size 5.5 x 9.5.

Governor Richard W. Leche (1898-1965; governor 1936-1939) hinted that he might restore the municipal government’s power if city leaders rejected the anti-Long faction and its leader, New Orleans Mayor T. Semmes Walmsley, resigned. Walmsley did so in March 1936. The Long bloc anointed Robert S. Maestri (1899-1974), then Louisiana Conservation Commissioner, as their candidate for mayor. Such was their power that no one ran against him. The state’s registrar of voters declared Maestri the winner, and he became mayor without an election.

The state legislature responded to Maestri’s ascension by passing several measures reversing its earlier policy toward New Orleans. It restored city authority, increased the mayor’s power, and cancelled the mayoralty election of 1938, allowing Maestri to serve for six years without receiving a single vote.

In 1940, reform candidate Sam Jones was elected governor. Jones pushed through the legislature a voting machine bill as a "good government," anti-voter fraud measure. Voting machines were considered a progressive solution to ballot tampering.

Maestri finally faced voters in 1942. Despite the overtly corrupt manner in which he rose to office, Maestri had a productive and almost progressive five-year record to run on. In particular, Maestri had overhauled the city’s financial structure and put New Orleans on a sound financial footing. The anti-Long element in New Orleans could not find a strong candidate to oppose him and ultimately settled on attorney Herve Racivitch.

As part of Racivitch's "get out the vote" effort, he stressed in his campaign literature that the new voting machines would help ensure a fair election:

As you know, the Voting Machine Law was upheld by the Supreme Court of Louisiana, and therefore the independent citizenry of New Orleans can rest assured that for the first time in history, their vote will be counted exactly as cast.

P.S. Your Vote Will Be Positively Secret

Historian Edward Haas described Racivitch's campaign as "fierce but futile," and Maestri had an unprecedented margin of victory. Racivitch carried only two of the seventeen wards in the city, the fourteenth and the sixteenth ward in the exclusive uptown New Orleans.

1968	1879	1938
1942	1954

SPECIAL COLLECTIONS
Howard-Tilton Memorial Library | Tulane University

Sunday, August 07, 2005 04:27 PM
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