Historical Figures Series: The Presidential Campaigns Of George Wallace, Part 3: The 1972 Primary Campaign And The Attempt on Wallace Life

 

Lurleen Wallace had passed away from cancer in May of 1968. George had spent much of his presidential campaign in the space of mourning her. Not long after the campaign ended, he would resume both his public life in Alabama and begin to court the woman who would eventually become his third wife Cornelia Snively, who would not be 25 when they got married in January of 1971.

By that time, Wallace was running for Governor of Alabama for the second time. The campaign against incumbent Albert Brewer is considered by many, including Jimmy Carter, the most racist campaign in modern southern political history. During the primary Brewer received the most votes but not a majority and as is the case in Alabama state law, it went to a run-off. Wallace, who had already proven himself to be a nasty campaigner, was even more so in this campaign.

Brewer had unveiled a progressive platform and had worked to build an alliance between blacks and the white working class. Wallace turned on this using slogans such as: “Do you want the black bloc electing your governor?” and an ad showing a white girl surrounding by black boys with the slogan: “Wake up Alabama! Blacks vow to take over Alabama. He personally maligned both Brewer and his family. His tactics were effective: he narrowly won the Democratic nomination and won the general election in the landslide.

Brewer had used Wallace’s ambitions against him, saying that ‘Alabama needed a full-time governor.” Wallace had promised not to run for President, but the day after the election flew to Wisconsin on a campaign trip. The sole purpose of his run for governor was to maintain his Presidential prospects.

After the 1970 midterms, Nixon’s prospects for reelection looked grim, and while events in 1971 would improve them nationally – his recognition of China, taking the country off the Gold standard, the start of détente with the Soviets –  he still faced a quagmire in Vietnam, and a sharp recession -  and the fact that he had to negotiate with a heavily Democratic Congress not inclined to like him. Considering how narrow his victory had been two years earlier, Nixon knew his chances of reelection were remote if the Democrats could unite around a strong candidate, something that the party had no shortage of. And he was well aware of the threat a strong candidate could be.

Nixon was convinced early on that his greatest threat would be Ted Kennedy, even after the events at Chappaquiddick two years earlier. This thought remains high in his thinking well after Kennedy ruled himself out early in 1971. By that point George McGovern, who had taken up the banner of Robert Kennedy’s campaign, at the Democratic Convention in 1968 had declared his candidacy. But no one was taking him seriously. The favorite of the establishment was Edmund Muskie, a moderate Senator from the once reliably Republican state of Maine, and Humphrey’s running mate in 1968. He had proven himself an able campaigner during that stretch, and in August of 1971 lead Nixon in preferential polls.

A dozen candidates would declared for the nomination, including the groundbreaking run of Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American of either gender to run for the White House. Eugene McCarthy also made a run that ended up going nowhere. Eventually the campaign would come down to six men, McGovern, Muskie, Senator Henry Jackson of Washington, Hubert Humphrey, John Lindsay, the Republican Mayor of New York who had switched parties to run for President and George Wallace.

The primary rules would change the campaign strategies for everybody but few would feel the benefits more than McGovern and Wallace. It is worth noting that, with the exception of Muskie, no candidate planned to campaign in all twenty-two primaries. Indeed Muskie has chosen to run such a campaign because he believed it would prove his national appeal. This idea would break down very quickly.

McGovern would plan what amounted to a targeted strategy of certain states over others. Wallace’s would benefit from two critical factors: first the existence of crossover primaries, which would allow Republicans to vote in Democratic primaries. It also helped that the state of Florida, which had basically been a non-factor in Presidential primaries to that point, elected to have its primary surpass New Hampshire to be the first in the nation. It ended up being second, but that would be good enough to help Wallace’s prospects.

Prior to his campaign Wallace had announced that he was no longer in favor of segregation and his campaign slogan for 1972 was somewhat more moderate: ‘Send them a message.” Underlying this was the fact that his previous campaigns had sent the nation a message and it was one that they were all aware of.

Wallace knew even with the new primary system, gaining the Democratic nomination would be a longshot at best. His best hope was to have enough delegates when the primaries were over so that if there was a brokered convention (a very real possibility) he could negotiate getting the nomination on perhaps the second or third ballot. Few thought this possible, and there is every indication that if this failed, Wallace was planning to run as a third party candidate yet again. Nixon was more concerned by this prospect than him getting the nomination: Wallace’s third party campaign had hurt his ‘Southern Strategy’ and nearly cost him the White House. There was no reason for anyone to suspect it would not do so again.

Wallace’s campaign would also get a boost from an outside factor in January of 1972. In Richmond Federal Judge Robert Merhige had ruled a decision that had to do with the busing of African-American students from predominantly African-American public schools to predominantly white schools until the percentage was proven correct. This decision would be overturned by June, but its message would resonate throughout the Democratic campaign.

Most contenders would follow a middle ground, even McGovern favored an amendment before the Senate that favored moderating the issue. Only Lindsay favored it with no restrictions at all. By contrast, this position perhaps more than anything else would electrify Wallace’s primary campaign.

After Muskie stumbled in New Hampshire, given life to the McGovern campaign the nation’s attention turned to Florida. Both Wallace and Lindsay had determined that this would be the state where they launched their campaigns to national prominence. During much of the leadup, everyone believe that Wallace would probably win but no one thought that he would get more than twenty percent of the vote. The most prominent figures thought that he would barely be able to make an edge between Humphrey and Muskie.

All of them were proven wrong on March 14^th. Wallace swept the state with more than 41% of the vote taking 75 of the 81 available delegates. Lindsay, who finished with less than eight percent of the vote, was dead in the water. Humphrey, hoping to start off strong, finished a distant second with less than nineteen percent of the vote, Muskie’s at 9% was officially sinking, and other candidates like Jackson and Chisholm were running on empty. McGovern had campaigned solely to serve as spoiler and take votes away from Lindsay. He finished with seven percent of the vote and was dismissed. No one seemed to notice at the time.

Though Muskie would try to hold on for a few more weeks, by April he was essentially finished as a candidate. The race dropped to three men: McGovern, Humphrey and Wallace. Wallace’s organization was strong on the ground but not when it came to organizing at the delegate level. In many states where he had strong showings, his failure to file for delegate slates would keep hurting him. In Wisconsin, where he managed to upset Humphrey for second place, he got no delegates. In Pennsylvania, he would finish a surprise second to Hubert Humphrey but would only end up two of the 137 delegates in play. (McGovern who finished third got 37 and Muskie who was effective out of the race, got 29.) On May 16^th Wallace was leading all candidates in the total number of votes with more than 3.3 million. By contrast, McGovern had only gotten 2.1 million and was in third trailing Humphrey who’d managed 2.6 million. But because McGovern’s campaign had been better organized, his campaign had already amassed 560 delegates to that point while Wallace only had 324.

Still it was clear that Wallace had national appeal, he had narrowly lost to Humphrey in Indiana while winning big in Tennessee and North Carolina. And May 16 loomed like a huge day for him: the Maryland and Michigan primaries were that day. He had nearly upset Lyndon Johnson there in 1964 and Michigan was a crossover primary where more than 300,000 had voted for him four years earlier.

On May 15^th Wallace was staging a rally in Laurel, Maryland. Not long after he finished it, he took off his jacket and started to shake hands with the crowds. What he did not know was that a man named Arthur Bremer was in that crowd. The previous November, Bremer had been arrested for carrying a concealed weapon. A court appointed psychiatrist had declared him mentally ill, but stable enough to continue to live in the community. That January he went to a gun shop in Milwaukee and purchased a snub-nose.

In March, he wrote in a diary that he planned to assassination either Richard Nixon or George Wallace when he campaigned in the Wisconsin primary. He attended two Wallace rallies during that period, then traveled to Ottawa where Nixon was visiting. After realizing that the security was too tight to get to Nixon, he wrote that it was his fate to kill Wallace, though it should be noted he never seemed as enthusiastic for as for Nixon. “I won’t even rate a TV interruption in Russia or Europe when the news breaks,” he wrote. Despite his lack of enthusiasm, he went to Michigan and visited the campaign headquarters in Silver Lake. The Kalamazoo police would receive an anonymous call telling them of a suspicious character sitting in a car near the National Guard Armory. He would be questioned but released. He had a clear opportunity to shoot his target but children were nearby and he did not wish to wound him.

Bremer had been at a previous rally in Wheaton which had turned rowdy. When Wallace refused to shake hands with the crowd, Bremer aborted his plan.

After he finished speaking, against the advice of his Secret Service agents, Wallace began to shake his hands. Bremer pushed his way forward and opening fire, hitting Wallace four times. One bullet would lodge in Wallace’s spinal cord, the others him in abdomen in chest. Three others were unintentionally wounded. Bremer would be tried and convicted in August of 1972. He would be sentenced to 53 years in prison.

Wallace would be in surgery for five hours and had to receive several units of blood to survive. He would be visited by his political rivals Humphrey McGovern, Kennedy and even Shirley Chisholm, who despite the opposition of her constituents in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, believed it was the only humane thing to do. It remains to be known if sympathy was a factor, but the next day Wallace triumphed in both Maryland and Michigan, receiving a remarkable 800,000 votes in the latter state. Despite that, his near assassination effectively ended his campaign.

It is hard to know how Wallace’s campaign could have progressed even had he not been shot. Most of the states that remained were not the kind that contained ‘Wallace voters’ and it was only in New Mexico that he would receive any delegates any all. That said, it is likely much of the South would have been loyal to him had he gone to convention, certainly the five states that he had managed to carry in 1968 – Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Georgia – and perhaps he could have managed to get states like Kentucky and Missouri on his side. Combined with the 324 delegates he’d already won; he could very well have gone to the convention with anywhere between 450 and 500 delegates – more than enough to negotiate if a brokered convention had indeed happened. Considering the anti-McGovern feeling that would pervade the DNC well beyond his actual nomination, one could see him being at the very least a power-broker and perhaps being able to win a spot on the ticket if that had been the case. McGovern had made it clear he would strike no deals with Wallace; Humphrey had not been far vaguer.

And its worth noting that McGovern’s prospective path to victory had included Wallace as a factor. He had been depending that Wallace, when he was inevitably turned away, would run as a third party candidate and therefore draw votes away from Nixon in the South. Nixon was certain who could beat McGovern in a two-man race, but he knew given Wallace’s strength in the south – and just as importantly, the Northeast -   he could very well lose states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania, which Humphrey had taken four years earlier, and struggle in New Jersey, Illinois and Ohio. When Wallace was shot on May 15^th, the Nixon campaign was certain they would win a landslide against any candidate. McGovern was still focused on winning the Democratic nomination so it did not enter into his thinking. There would be far too many factors that worked against McGovern’s eventual landslide defeat that November, but any remote chance he had of winning was demolished with Wallace’s shooting in Laurel.

Wallace would live but would end up being confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. But initially his supporters were not convinced that his political life was over. The night he was undergoing his surgery, Jules Witcover remember the vigil held by members of Wallace’s entourage: “alternating between the yet unidentified ‘they’ who had gotten their leader, and almost gleefully anticipating the political future.” When word came down Wallace would live, Witcover heard one supporter say to another: “Now we got us a candidate!”

Indeed, not long after Wallace’s speech at the DNC that July, many were certain that not only Wallace would rise again but that in four years the political landscape would be such that the presidency would be a certainty. Indeed, the political tides would undergo an earthquake in the next two years, enough to make many on both sides think this was inevitable.

In the final entry, I will cover the lead up to the 1976 election, the preparation for the Wallace campaign, the actual run and how it a very indirect way affected the futures of both political parties for that election and perhaps beyond in ways not even he could have imagined.