The 1966 Election
Arnall's last campaign was for governor was in 1966. His principal opponent for the nomination was Lester Maddox, an Atlanta businessman who had hoisted ax handles as a symbol of his opposition to desegregation. Maddox shelled Arnall as "the granddaddy of forced racial integration ... a candidate who would never raise his voice or a finger - much less an ax handle - to protect the liberty of Georgia." Arnall practically ignored Maddox and concentrated his fire on Republican Howard Callaway, on whom Arnall had compiled a dossier which he said would guarantee Republican defeat in the general election. Arnall won a plurality of the vote in the primary but was denied the required majority because of support for future U.S. President Jimmy Carter, then an obscure state senator from Plains, Georgia. Arnall barely campaigned in the run-off election, and the result was a surprising victory for Maddox. After his own elimination, Carter refused to endorse Arnall, but he did formally support Maddox in the general election against the Callaway.
Maddox defeated Arnall in the runoff, 443,055 to 373,004. The civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr., denounced what he called "a corroding cancer in the Georgia body politic. Georgia is a sick state produced by the diseases of a sick nation. This election revealed that Georgia is desperately competitng with Mississippi for the bottom." Mayor Ivan Allen, Jr., of Atlanta, who once worked for Arnall's law firm, blamed Arnall's loss on the "combined forces of ignorance, prejudice, reactionism, and the duplicity of many Republican voters," many of whom are believed to have voted for Maddox in the Democratic runoff on the theory that Maddox would be a weaker opponent for Callaway than would have been Arnall. Stunned Arnall backers announced a write-in candidacy for the general election, a move which impacted Callaway more than it did Maddox. In the general election, Callaway finished in the tabulation with a slight plurality over Maddox. Arnall received more than 52,000 write-in ballots and led the field in one county, Liberty County in the southeastern portion of the state. Under the election rules then in effect, the state legislature was required to select a governor from the two candidates with the highest number of votes. With the legislature overwhelmingly dominated by Democrats and despite court challenges, Maddox became governor early in 1967.
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