John Grenier - The Split With James Martin

The Split With James Martin

Jim Martin and John Grenier initially planned a Goldwater-style campaign, but when polls showed certain victory for Lurleen Wallace, Grenier tried to steer independently of Martin. He spoke warmly of the Wallaces and told conservative Democrats: "there are deep differences between John Sparkman and George Wallace."Sparkman's hometown daily, The Huntsville Times, questioned Grenier's attempt to attach himself to the Wallace coattails" even while Grenier affirmed backing for Martin for governor. Grenier's attempt to court Wallace voters drew the private outrage of Martin. The liberal Republican Ripon Society termed the Grenier campaign "an echo of Democratic racism." The tensions between Martin and Grenier accelerated. When Martin leaders asked to switch races again with Grenier, the Senate nominee flatly refused.

Perry O. Hooper, Sr., a former probate and circuit judge from Montgomery and later the first Republican elected to the Alabama Supreme Court, reflected on the Martin-Grenier rivalry, having noted that Martin defeated Grenier in 1968 in a race for Republican national committeeman, a position that Hooper himself subsequently held:

The year 1966 was a disaster ... nobody could imagine a governor's wife running for office and winning. I began to realize it in January, but nobody else seemed to understand. Once we made that mistake, it was all downhill . It was felt that if we were going to really build a party we needed a governor, and Jim Martin was a hot item. He wanted to switch over to the senatorial nomination, but he wouldn't take a leadership position and let it be known.... He hoped the convention would take over, but John Grenier was too well organized to make the switch. Neither Martin nor Grenier has ever gotten over the 1966 races. Martin ran against Grenier to serve on the national committee in 1968 and blew him away. Hopefully, a lot of these things are in the past. All we can do is learn from 1966.

Journalist Ray Jenkins of the Montgomery Advertiser recalled Martin as having been:

in the vanguard of what promised to be a period of profound political change. Then something dreadful happened to the Republicans on the way to 1966. They picked a fight with George Wallace. The bubble burst and once again the Republicans were relegated to their humble status as a mere facade of patronage....Martin came out of political isolation to spread the faith yet once again, even though the odds were clearly against him.... When told by friends he should become a Democrat, Martin said "If ever there is to be a healthy two-party system in Alabama, someone must keep the faith, someone must keep principle above self interest."...

Perry Hooper, however, disputes Jenkins' analysis. Hooper said that George Wallace may have inadvertently aided the Republican Party by fostering opposition to the national Democrats within Alabama. Hooper said that he had, despite their partisan difference, "always gotten along quite well" with Wallace, whom he remembers as "a southern gentleman who likes people, and it shows." To Hooper, the difficulty of establishing the two-party system came from within the Republican Party itself. Jim Martin, he said, was the party's "finest candidate" but "time just slipped by, and it's difficult to overcome problems like we had in 1966."