Lurleen Wallace - The 1966 Gubernatorial Campaign

The 1966 Gubernatorial Campaign

With George Wallace ineligible to seek reelection in 1966, Lurleen Wallace dispatched a primary gubernatorial field that included two former governors, John Malcolm Patterson and James E. Folsom, Sr., Congressman Carl Elliott of Jasper, and Attorney General Richmond Flowers, Sr. She then faced one-term Republican U.S. Representative James D. Martin of Gadsden, who had received national attention four years earlier when he mounted a serious challenge to U.S. Senator J. Lister Hill.

The general election campaign focused on whether Mrs. Wallace would be governor in her own right or a "caretaker" with her husband as a "dollar-a-year-advisor" making all the major decisions. The decision to run Mrs. Wallace crippled the Alabama GOP. Nearly overnight its fortunes vanished, for most expected George Wallace to succeed in electing his wife, who was running not as the former "Lurleen Burns" but as "Mrs. George C. Wallace."

Neither Martin nor Mrs. Wallace openly sought support from the increasing number of African American voters, many of whom had been registered only since the passage a year earlier of the Voting Rights Act, approved in the political environment of the Selma-to-Montgomery march. George Wallace kept the racial issue alive when he signed state legislation to nullify desegregation guidelines between Alabama cities and counties and the former United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Wallace claimed that the law would thwart the national government from intervening in schools. Critics denounced Wallace's "political trickery" and expressed alarm at the potential forfeiture of federal funds. Martin accused the Democrats of "playing politics with your children" and "neglecting academic excellence."

False reports of Republican strength in Alabama abounded. The New York Times predicted that Martin "not only has a chance to win the governorship, but at least for the moment must be rated as the favorite." Political writer Theodore H. White incorrectly predicted that Alabama, instead of Arkansas and Florida as it developed, would in 1966 become the first former Confederate state to elect a Republican governor. Briefly, a consensus developed that Martin might even lend coattails to Republican candidates in legislative, county, and municipal elections though there was no GOP nominee for lieutenant governor. The defections of three legislators and a member of the Democratic State Executive Committee reinforced such possibilities. The New York Times explained that Alabama Democrats had denounced the national party for so long that it became "no longer popular in many quarters to be a Democrat." Martin claimed that the South must "break away from the one-party system just as we broke away from a one-crop economy." He vowed to make Alabama "first in opportunity, jobs, and education."

Keener insight at the time would have revealed that Martin was pursuing the one office essentially off limits to the GOP that year. No Republican had served as governor of Alabama since David Peter Lewis vacated the office in 1874, and George Wallace's organization proved insurmountable despite an early poll that placed Martin within range of victory.

Jim Martin proclaimed that Lurleen Wallace was a "proxy" candidate, a manifestation of her husband's "insatiable appetite for power." Mrs. Wallace used the slogan "Two Governors, One Cause" and proclaimed the words Alabama and freedom to be synonyms. Martin bemoaned having to campaign against a woman, a position that would soon become anachronistic. Though he was running for state office, Martin focused much attention on U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, unpopular with many in Alabama because of the Vietnam War, inflation, and urban unrest. "We want to see this war ended, and it's going to take a change of administration to do it," Martin said.

At the state level, Martin questioned a $500,000 school book depository contract awarded to Wallace supporter Elton B. Stephens of Ebsco Investment Company. Martin challenged "secret deals" regarding the construction of highways or schools" and "conspiracies between the state house and the White House."

At her general election campaign kickoff in Birmingham, Lurleen Wallace pledged "progress without compromise" and "accomplishment without surrender ... George will continue to speak up and stand up for Alabama." She continued: "Contrary to what the liberals preach, progress can be made without sacrificing the free enterprise system and ... the Constitution." It was during this 1966 campaign that George Wallace coined his famous line: "There's not a dime's worth of difference" between the two national parties." Wallace likened such Republicans as the then House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford, Jr.. of Michigan, later the president from 1974 to 1977, and Chief Justice Earl Warren, who supported civil rights legislation, to "vultures" who presided over the destruction of the U.S. Constitution.

Former U.S. Senators Barry M. Goldwater, the 1964 Republican presidential nominee and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina campaigned on behalf of Martin and GOP Senate nominee John Grenier of Birmingham. Thurmond, who had carried Alabama in 1948 as the nominee of the Dixiecrats addressed an all-white GOP state convention, where he denounced the national Democratic leadership as "the most dangerous people in the country" and urged a "return to constitutional government." George Wallace was so irritated over Goldwater's appearance on Martin's behalf that he questioned why Goldwater could win only six states in the 1964 race against Lyndon Johnson. "Where were the Republicans when I was fighting LBJ?" Wallace asked. Goldwater shunned personal criticism of Wallace but repudiated Wallace's talk of a third party in the 1968 presidential election.

Lurleen Wallace carried all Alabama counties except for the predominantly Republican Winston County in north Alabama. She drew 537,505 votes (63.4 percent). Martin trailed with 262,943 votes (31 percent). A third candidate running to the political left of the major candidates, Dr. Carl Robinson, received 47,655 (5.6 percent). Jim Martin even ran eight percentage points behind his ticket mate, John Grenier, who was defeated for the Senate by the incumbent Democrat John Sparkman.