Historical Figures Series: The Presidential Campaigns of George Wallace
Part 4: The 1976 Campaign That Ended Wallace’s Political Life — But Was Only the Start of the Long-Term Effects on America
In August of 1974 Richard Nixon had resigned and Gerald Ford was President. The long term ramifications would be felt for decades but in the short-term, many assumptions were made, several of which would be considered faulty.
One of such person who has an assumption was a man named Richard Viguerie. Viguerie had been a right-wing fundraiser for decades and in 1974, he had raised more than $1.4 million for Wallace’s 1974 campaign for governor. With the help of a man named Howard Philips, they founded what was known as the Conservative Caucus. In the aftermath of Watergate, many men such as Viguerie believed that the Republican party as they knew it was dead and that there only hope was a brand new third party. Their intention in the lead-up to the 1976 Presidential campaign was to hold a convention following the Democratic Convention that July and possibly select a Presidential candidate. George Wallace was the man that they had in mind. (He was their second choice, but we’ll be dealing with both in this article and eventually his own series.)
Viguerie was a dedicated fundraiser and while new campaign finance laws were making it very difficult for other prospective candidate to raise money the way they had, Wallace’s campaign was having no trouble. Through his efforts, mostly involving direct mail, he built a special ‘Wallace list’ that would eventually add up to around 600,000 names that would produce nearly seven million dollars. Furthermore because most of the contributions he received were well below the $1000 maximum allowed by newly formed campaign finance laws, and indeed many were below the $250 amount to qualify for federal matching funds, Wallace was flush with cash well before he announced his campaign for President.
More impressively, the Wallace campaign was taking dead-aim at the delegate selection process at the Democratic convention. Mickey Griffin, Wallace’s representative on the executive committee on the DNC, gleefully anticipated the primaries in April of 1975, referring to it as ‘schedule luck’ thinking that Wallace might not just serve as spoiler, but maybe even the eventual nominee.
This was not misplaced optimism. The 1976 Democratic Primary schedule had been expanded to thirty states as well as the District of Columbia. Five of those states were Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi — all states that Wallace had carried in 1968. Furthermore, between March and May were a host of states Wallace had either won or finished second in — Florida, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Indiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, Maryland and Michigan.
And its worth noting that the rest of the country and the rapidly expanding Democratic field of Presidential candidates all believed that Wallace was a genuine threat. At the end of March of 1975, 22 percent of all polled Democrats believed that Wallace would be the Democratic nominee.
Only one Democratic candidacy operated under the belief that Wallace was done as a political force. But no one was taking Jimmy Carter seriously. By that point he had already declared his run for the Presidency, but that same poll had him listed at 2%. And indeed the only people who seemed to consider him at all only saw him as someone who could counteract George Wallace.
In the summer of 1975, two influential Florida Democrats began visiting Democrats who had either declared to run for the nomination or were about too. Mike Abrams and Sergio Bendixen were two twenty-ish former McGovern campaigners would visit Birch Bayh, Fred Harris, Henry Jackson and Congressman Mo Udall of Arizona. Their message was simple: they wanted all of them to stay out of the Florida primary and let it come down to a two man race between Carter and Wallace.
They knew Wallace was a clear threat to the Democratic Party’s future and could not be the nominee. More importantly, they saw Carter as harmless with no real chance at becoming President.
The only person to tell them to take a hike was Henry Jackson. Udall agreed to it fundamentally because he could not see the party nominating Jimmy Carter. He would later say that was his biggest mistake of the campaign.
Much has been written about how Jimmy Carter’s campaign in Iowa essentially transformed the political landscape forever. Generally forgotten is that Carter did not win the caucuses in the sense we considered. Officially, the plurality of the vote went to an uncommitted slate of delegates — Carter finished second with 27%. Rather it was the fact that this literally unknown candidate had managed to do so well over so many established candidates that the media focused on, and that helped propel Carter forward.
There were in fact four other caucuses scheduled before the New Hampshire Primary on February 25th and his track record up to that point wasn’t particularly extraordinary. Wallace would swamp him in Mississippi, getting nearly 45 % of the vote to Carter’s 14%, he would manage a victory over the moribund Sargent Shriver’s campaign in Maine, and emerge with what amounted to a tie with Fred Harris in Oklahoma, which the media cared more about because it showcased Harris’ weakness in his home state than Carter’s strength.
By the time Carter had managed to win the New Hampshire primary, he was slowly becoming a phenomena. However, between then and the Florida primary came the Massachusetts primary. And while the outcome could have destroyed Carter’s candidacy, ironically Wallace’s impulses would lay the groundwork for his own defeat — and Carter’s eventual victory.
Wallace’s campaign staff had wanted him to start his campaign in Florida where had trounced the field four years earlier. Wallace was on the ballot there but his campaign hadn’t wanted to contest it — he’d been flattened there four years earlier. Wallace thought he could make mischief with the issues of busing that had become a major flashpoint in Boston. He paid a visit there in what would be his first endeavor in national politics since his shooting.
Charles Snider, his campaign manager, admitted it was a bold move and if he could’ve won, it might have reactivated his campaign.
Starting on New Year’s 1976, Wallace was making trips to the state. In the early weeks he drew large crowds, particularly around Boston and Springfield. But as Jules Witcover wrote “while the words and the music were the same…there was a distinct and glaring difference this time around. George Wallace himself. In the past he had…come into an arena liked a robed prizefighter eager for the opening bell; now his very entrance reminded the audience immediately of his incapacity. Going to a Wallace rally was (now) half-like going…to a sideshow at a traveling circus, and people being the way they are, quite a few admitted they were there out of curiosity.”
It also did not help matters for Wallace that the other candidates in the race were more focused in bringing down Carter than they were him, and while Carter was still deflecting, he was certain he would emerge victorious in the end.
March 2nd was a disappointing day for both Carter and Wallace, though in honesty Wallace could walk away with a more positive look at things. Henry Jackson, a most conservative Senator had ended up the winner in Massachusetts with 23% of the vote. Mo Udall finished second with 18%, Wallace a close third with 17% and Carter was a distant fourth with 14%. Wallace took away from this the fact that ‘he carried Boston.” Carter had nothing to cheer about. He had managed to win over Shriver in Vermont, but the media paid no attention to that. Carter had been certain that he would win in Massachusetts; the fact that he had been beaten so badly — and that they had fallen behind Wallace as well, now made a victory in Florida essential for the Carter campaign. They knew that the political elites viewed him with skepticism at best (many would never think highly of even after he was elected President, and if Wallace beat him in Florida his campaign would almost certainly disintegrate.
By this point, Udall and Jackson were the only serious candidates left on the ballot in Florida besides Wallace and Carter. Udall kept his promise and did not actively campaign, even though his strong finish did indicate he might have had a chance. “Clearly I could have pulled enough votes away from Carter to give Wallace the win.”
By this point, however, the Wallace campaign no longer had the power it did in Florida. In 1972, Wallace had campaigned on the slogan: “Send Them A Message.” Carter turned this on its ear in Florida when he told them that Southerners had a real chance not only to do that, but to ‘send them a President.”
Wallace himself had been slow to realize how much of a setback his condition would be to his cause. His first Florida rally was half empty, and he began to hold rallies in smaller halls than usual. He tried to campaign on a heavier schedule, but the media continued to play him as a brittle man.
Carter’s margin of victory in Florida was very small on primary day: he managed just 34% to Wallace’s 31% while Jackson had managed 24%. But he had still popped the Wallace bubble in the South, and Wallace knew it.
The next primary was Illinois but Snider had told him even he was campaigning there that he had to go to North Carolina on March 23rd. There was no optimism there as Witcover reported during an Illinois conversation:
Snider: “You’re going to lose North Carolina, too.”
Wallace: “Well, why leave here and go on.”
Snider: “To minimize the loss in North Carolina.”
Wallace: “You don’t think we can pull it out in North Carolina?”
Snider: “Governor, if you’ve got any chance at all, you’d have to go now, like right now.”
Wallace knew the writing was on the wall. In an appearance on ABC that week, he said he would finish out his commitments this year and then his political career would be over. Wallace did not quit the campaign even after he lost in North Carolina — he would even win the Alabama primary a month later — but it was more out of a determination not to quit than any chance of winning.
Indeed on the day of Carter defeating Wallace resoundingly in North Carolina, the media was more focused on the Republican Primary than the Democratic one. Ronald Reagan had been challenging Gerald Ford for the Presidential nomination, but his once promising campaign was in free fall. In the first five primaries of the schedule, he had not defeated Ford once and he had been humiliated in Illinois, his birthplace. Now in North Carolina, he managed to defeat Ford with 52 percent of the vote. Reagan’s moribund campaign had been given life again — and the demise of Wallace as a force would put him back in control.
The Reagan campaign eventually decided to bypass several Northern states — including big delegate hauls New York and Pennsylvania — in favor of the Texas primary on May 1st. This was the first time Texas had ever held a presidential primary and like many of the primaries of the era, it was essentially a crossover primary where members of either party could vote for whatever candidate they like.
Prior to the Conservative Caucus being formed, Richard Viguerie had mentioned George Wallace as one of two men he might consider a worthy nominee for that caucus’ nomination. His first choice had been Ronald Reagan. After Wallace’s defeat by Jimmy Carter in Florida, thousands of Wallace voters had been cut adrift — and the Reagan campaign immediately went to lure them in.
This has never been a secret of the Reagan campaign. In fact, Reagan campaigned in Wallace country reciting his old themes. A Wallaceite voter was recruited by a Reagan media man saying that he had been a conservative Democrat all his life who had been going to vote for Wallace but because Reagan could be nominated, he was going to vote in the Republican primary. Aides passed out fliers that had caricatures of an elephant saying: “I’m for Reagan” and a donkey adding: “Me too!”
The result was record turnout for a Republican statewide primary which lead to Reagan taking all 96 delegates at state and putting him back into contention for the nomination. It was probably not a coincidence that three nights later Reagan swept all 85 delegates at state in the Alabama and Georgia primaries as well as a near sweep in Indiana, a state Wallace had historically done well.
Paradoxically the Wallace vote would end up being one of the factors that turned the campaign around for Gerald Ford. Four years earlier, Wallace had received nearly 50 percent of the vote in the primary there and Michigan was, like Texas, a crossover primary. Would the Democrats that had voted for Wallace in record numbers four years earlier turn out for Reagan now? Reagan himself certainly thought so and the Ford campaign knew that if this were the case and Ford were to lose his home state, his campaign would collapse. In the end, while thousands of Democrats did crossover and vote for Reagan, far more thousands of Republicans who had voted for Wallace four years earlier, came out for Gerald Ford who won by a nearly two-to-one margin over Reagan. As a result (Ford also won the Maryland primary, which Reagan didn’t contest) Ford would begin to mount a comeback of his own. I intend to write another series on Reagan, suffice to say, Ford would eventually manage to win the nomination in large part because the crossover primaries — which had been as valuable for Reagan in 1976 as they had been for Wallace throughout his career — were over and he did far poorer in Republican only primaries.
Wallace’s political life was over after the Democratic Convention — but the effects of his presence were still not fully felt electorally. That November Carter, who started the summer campaign with a thirty-three percent lead over Ford in the polls, would narrowly end up beating him by little more than two percent of the vote. With the exception of Virginia, he would be the last Democratic President to win election to the White House by sweeping the South. Four years later, Ronald Reagan won election to the white house in a landslide. The only Southern states Carter would carry were West Virginia and Georgia. Not even Bill Clinton would be able win the White House with a clean sweep of Dixie; the South has been almost uniformly Republican with only a few purple states ever since.
Conservative pundit George Will has famously been on record by saying that Barry Goldwater actually won the Presidency in 1964 “it just took sixteen years to count the votes.” His argument has essentially been based in the idea that Reagan essentially modeled his run on Goldwater’s methods and build on his carrying the Southern states that Goldwater won. What else that might imply he never states.
In a vague sense Will is correct. What he will never mention — and certainly none of the conservative media ever will — is that the main reason that it took so long to ‘count the votes’ was because of the shadow of George Wallace
. In 1972, Richard Nixon had his biggest margins of victory in many of the Southern states that Wallace had carried but because Nixon had won 49 states, few paid any mind to it. When Carter had swept Dixie four years later, Nixon’s sweep of the South was basically considered an aberration. Reagan’s landslide four years later might be seen as a victory of conservative principles — but those principles had been essentially blocked by the figure of Wallace, standing in the doorway.