In the summer of 1952, Brooks defeated another young conservative intraparty rival, attorney Lawrence L. May, Jr. (1921–1995), of Vivian in Caddo Parish, who in an advertisement criticized the mounting casualties of the Korean War and the excesses of federal bureaucracy. May declared himself "an anti-Truman, anti-New Deal, anti-communist Democrat." He decried inflated home prices and large federal withholding rates from paychecks so that many could "barely buy groceries." "Little by little Congress has voted this socialism into our laws," May claimed. He charged that Congress had followed the blueprint of "The Communist Manifesto". May claimed that the federal debt then equaled the value of all assessed property, real and personal, in the nation: "Did not Mr. Brooks vote for every item of the New Deal, Fair Deal, and Truman programs which he says have brought the nation to the brink of disaster?" May claimed that Brooks had given tacit support of a "Marxist" foreign policy: We cannot return sanity in foreign affaris by returning to Congress the same men who got us into this mess."