the same time, the Cocking Affair had badly damaged Talmadge's reputation. Arnall was a supporter of segregation, whose views on race were essentially the same as Talmadge's, but he presented himself as a supporter of better education for Georgians. Arnall noted that nobody could beat Talmadge in what he cynically called the "nigger-hating contest", and argued that the issue in the "Cocking Affair" was not white supremacy, as Talmadge claimed, but education. Arnall charged that Georgia's universities losing their accreditation, which Talmadge presented as an achievement on his part, put at risk the futures of all the students attending the universities. At a time when most Georgians were living in poverty and few attended higher education, the possibility that those young people who were lucky enough to attend university or might be would lose their chances to escape lives of poverty was widely regarded as unacceptable. Those Georgians whose children were attending the university were outraged that the futures of their children had been at risk, and those whose children were not attending university had hopes that someday they might. 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. They were disproportionately over-represented as volunteers in the Arnall campaign. When Talmadge held campaign rallies, students showed up to chant "To Hell with Talmadge!" At one Talmadge campaign rally on 2 July 1942, a Talmadge supporter threw a canister of tear gas at the students, an incident that attracted much negative comment and led to demands that Talmadge discipline his "hoodlums" who always patrolled his rallies. Talmadge was so unpopular with students that his campaign workers in the university town of Athens urged him not to hold a campaign rally there, predicting that more people would come out to boo him than cheer him. Realizing that Arnall had cast himself as stronger on the education issue, Talmadge changed tactics and announced simply that the loss of accreditation to Georgia's universities did not matter, saying at one rally in a rural area: "They talk about education. It ain't never taught a man how to plant cotton. It ain't made a garden bloom. It ain't never taught the experience necessary to raise cows and chickens. You gotta git out and do them things, and no school education is going to help ya". This message was intended