In Louisiana: We Got the Hook in 'Em Now, Bubba

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The last time we saw Paris, we saw Sam Thomas, who is as native to Louisiana as a muskrat, dancing at Regine's, whither he had ventured from the George V, where he had a suite that he used as an office to organize a dinner at Versailles for 300 Cajuns, to make reservations at the Lido and the Crazy Horse, and to book the whole mob on planes and buses for a gambling sortie to Monte Carlo (he could have been doing all this at once; it is hard to say with Sam). When we caught up with him again this summer, he was on a train bound for glory, he hoped, rushing a gubernatorial candidate through 29 whistle- stops, roughly circumscribing the state of Louisiana in four days. Sam's wife Nita wishes he would take it a little easier.

Since that trip to France, three years ago this past winter, a degree of change has visited Louisiana as well as Sam. The oil and gas economy, crumbling badly then, is all but bust now. The man in whose name the fund- raising Parisian expedition had been made, Edwin Edwards, the Governor, has suffered two bruising trials on charges of making a small fortune through influence peddling, basically, and has been acquitted. Nonetheless, when looking at a possible fourth term, Edwards told Sam that maybe he should sit this one out. Sam agreed, thinking, "Ever since we carried him to Versailles, he's been acting like a king," and switched his support to Congressman Billy Tauzin of Thibodaux. Edwards eventually decided to run all the same. That is about where things stand now, except Sam had a heart attack a little while ago -- he is 57 years old -- and his wife wants him to slow down. And that is why we went to Louisiana to board Sam's train, to look in on his health.

In 1959, covering Earl Long's last race for Governor, the great A.J. Liebling wrote, "Politics is to the conversation of Louisiana what horse racing is to England's. In London, anyone from the Queen to a dustman will talk horses; in Louisiana, anyone from a society woman to a bellhop will talk + politics. Louisiana politics is of an intensity and complexity that are matched, in my experience, only in the republic of Lebanon." 1959 was the year Sam was working for Jimmie Davis, who wrote You Are My Sunshine and whose motto was "I Never Done Nobody No Harm," and who won. Sam, at 29, was made vice chairman of the commerce and industry board.

Sam Thomas Jr. has been a political junkie since he was a kid working for his father, who ran Sam Thomas Mercantile Co. ("The Poor Man's Friend") in Quitman. Nita first met him when he was 16, driving a yellow pickup, racing voters down dusty roads to the polls. They were married in 1950, and from there they went on to build a comfortable, prosperous life, largely through Sam's property dealings, and to have four children. One of them, Patti Harper, picked us up at the Shreveport airport with her own two offspring corralled in the back of her car, snarling for soft drinks. "We just had to do something about Edwin," Patti said, speaking of the incumbent Governor. "We were all tired of the jokes." Edwards' flamboyance, his taste for shooting craps and kissing pretty women, are legend. "There is such a thing as too much flair," Patti went on. "Anyway, Billy Tauzin is a solid family man."