George Wallace 1968 presidential campaign
Former Governor of Alabama George Wallace ran in the 1968 United States presidential election as the candidate for the American Independent Party against Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey. Wallace's pro-segregation policies during his term as Governor of Alabama were rejected by most. The impact of the Wallace campaign was substantial, winning the electoral votes of several states in the Deep South. Although Wallace did not expect to win the election, his strategy was to prevent either major party candidate from winning a majority in the Electoral College. This would throw the election into the House of Representatives, where Wallace would have bargaining power sufficient to determine, or at least strongly influence, the selection of a winner.
George Wallace for President 1968
George Wallace
Governor of Alabama
(1963–1967, 1971–1979, 1983–1987)
First Gentleman of Alabama
(1967–1968)
Gen. Curtis LeMay
Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force
(1961–1965)
Announced: February 8, 1968
Lost election: November 5, 1968
Stand Up for America
Although Nixon ultimately won a majority of 301 electoral votes (270 being a majority), Wallace's effort put the chance of a brokered electoral college relatively close. For example, had Wallace won South Carolina or Tennessee (falling less than 50,000 votes short) and had the Democratic ticket won either Illinois or Ohio (trailing the Republican one by around 100,000 votes in both cases) Nixon would have ended up with a plurality but not a majority, and the election would have been – for the first time since 1824 – brought before to the House of Representatives.
Campaign development[edit]
When George Wallace ran for President in 1968, it was not as a Democrat – which he had done in the 1964 Democratic primaries and would again in the 1972 Democratic primaries – but as a candidate of the American Independent Party. The American Independent Party was formed by Wallace,[1] whose pro-segregation policies as governor had been rejected by the mainstream of the Democratic Party. In 1968 he ran on the idea that "there's not a dime's worth of difference between the two major parties". Wallace's strategy was essentially the same as that of Dixiecrat candidate Strom Thurmond in 1948 in that the campaign was run without any realistic chance of winning the election outright, but instead with the hope of receiving enough electoral votes to force the House of Representatives and the Senate decide the election, something many observers thought might happen.[2] This would presumably give him the role of a power broker; Wallace hoped that southern states could use their clout to end federal efforts toward desegregation.
Wallace ran a campaign supporting law and order and states' rights on racial segregation. This strongly appealed to rural white Southerners and blue-collar union workers in the North. Wallace was leading the three-way race in the Old Confederacy with 45% of the vote in mid-September. Wallace's appeal to blue-collar workers and union members (who usually voted Democratic) hurt Hubert Humphrey in Northern states like Ohio, Illinois, New Jersey, Michigan, and Wisconsin. A mid-September AFL–CIO internal poll showed that one in three union members supported Wallace, and a Chicago Sun-Times poll showed that Wallace had a plurality of 44% of white steelworkers in Chicago.
However, both Humphrey and Richard Nixon were able to peel back some Wallace support by November; the unions highlighted the flow of Northern union jobs to Wallace's Alabama, a right-to-work state (although Wallace publicly opposed right-to-work laws), and Nixon persuaded enough Southerners that a "divided vote" would give the election to Humphrey. From October 13–20, Wallace's support fell from 20% to 15% nationally. In the North, the former Wallace vote split evenly between Humphrey and Nixon. In the border South, Wallace defectors were choosing Nixon over Humphrey by three to one.[3] In the South, Nixon had the support of Wallace defectors over Humphrey, four to one.
Wallace's foreign policy positions set him apart from the other candidates in the field. "If the Vietnam War was not winnable within 90 days of his taking office, Wallace pledged an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops ... Wallace also called foreign-aid money 'poured down a rat hole' and demanded that European and Asian allies pay more for their defense."[4] These stances were overshadowed by Wallace's running mate, retired Air Force general Curtis LeMay, who implied he would use nuclear weapons to win the war.[5]
The executive director of Wallace's 1968 campaign, Tom Turnipseed, a Mobile native, was later a member of the South Carolina State Senate and an attorney in Columbia, South Carolina. Not long after the 1968 campaign, Turnipseed began moving to the political left, joined the Americans for Democratic Action, and became active in the civil rights and environmental movements.[6]
Vice presidential selection[edit]
Former Georgia governor Marvin Griffin was a temporary running mate in order to get the Wallace candidacy on the ballot in several states. The Wallace campaign considered former Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, KFC founder Harland Sanders, retired Air Force General Curtis LeMay, Hollywood actor John Wayne, and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as possible running mates. Benson and LeMay expressed interest, and Hoover did not even respond. In June, the campaign looked into several members of Congress, all of whom were unwilling to attach themselves to the Wallace ticket. Wallace's aides came to favor Happy Chandler, the former baseball commissioner and governor of Kentucky. It was hoped that Chandler could help put Wallace over the top in Tennessee, South Carolina, and Florida, where he was narrowly behind Nixon, and solidify support in Arkansas, Georgia, and North Carolina, where Wallace was leading. Wallace was cautious: Chandler had supported the hiring of Jackie Robinson by the Brooklyn Dodgers, and was now more of a mainstream liberal Democratic politician. Wallace was persuaded by early September; as one of Wallace's aides put it, "We have all the nuts in the country, we could get some decent people– you working one side of the street and he working the other side." When the "done deal" was leaked to the press, Wallace's supporters objected; Wallace's Kentucky campaign chair resigned, and influential donor Nelson Bunker Hunt demanded that Chandler be dropped from the ticket. Wallace retracted the invitation. Hunt's first choice for the second slot was Benson. Benson was barred by several leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from joining a Wallace ticket; Benson's membership in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles would have caused an image problem for the church had he joined the Wallace ticket.[7]
Wallace ended up persuading Curtis LeMay, who feared being labeled a racist, to join the campaign. LeMay was chairman of the board of an electronics company, and the company would dismiss him if he spent his time running for vice president; Hunt set up a million-dollar fund to reimburse him for any losses.[8]
Curtis LeMay was an enthusiast for the use of nuclear weapons. Wallace's aides tried to persuade him to avoid questions relating to the topic, but when asked about it at his first interview, he attempted to dispel American "phobias about nuclear weapons" and discussed radioactive landcrabs at Bikini atoll. LeMay again embarrassed Wallace's campaign in the fall by suggesting that nuclear weapons could be used in the Vietnam War, which led Humphrey to dub Wallace and LeMay the "Bombsey Twins". The selection of LeMay proved a disastrous drag on the campaign and was dubbed the "LeMay fiasco" internally. The selection reinforced Wallace's gender gap: in late September, Wallace's support stood at 50% in the Old Confederacy among men, and 40% among women. In the North, Wallace had 20% support among men, but less than half that among women.[9]