Defeat
In the general election, Busbee was the winner, 646,777 (69.1 percent) to Thompson's 289,113 (30.9 percent). Thompson ran nearly 10 percentage points below Carter's 1970 Republican opponent, the late Hal Suit, a former Atlanta-area broadcaster who had opposed capital punishment. Thompson had considered filing as a write-in candidate in the 1970 general election against both Carter and Suit, whom he considered a liberal Republican, but did not follow through. His undermining of Suit's candidacy subsequently led to hostility to Thompson within the party's largely Atlanta-centered Republican establishment.
Thompson claimed that the Republican leadership which repudiated him was more concerned with control of the party apparatus than in electing a governor. The GOP hierarchy, while it could not win many elections, could still influence federal grants and appointments. Thompson said that he could "never fit into that organization" and because he was "threatening the power structure", the leadership turned on him. Newt Gingrich, the future Speaker of the United States House of Representatives who made his maiden but unsuccessful congressional race in 1974, supported Thompson and hailed the nominee for refusing to adhere to the wishes of the "big shots" in the party. Still, many observers thought that Thompson's intraparty conflicts made him appear unstable and unwilling to accommodate minor differences. The party schism was discussed in Washington, D.C. All state gubernatorial nominees except Thompson were invited to the White House for a meeting with new President Gerald Ford.
On election night, disgruntled Thompson supporters attacked chairman Shaw at the candidate's state headquarters in Atlanta. Shaw, who denied that he had ever undermined Thompson's candidacy and had indeed voted for him, sustained a deep gash in his forehead. Thompson said that he would "reconstruct" the GOP, vowed to tour the state to revive the party's sagging fortunes, but he never did so. Thompson did work to replace Shaw as chairman with Mack Mattingly, who six years later in 1980 would win election to the U.S. Senate from Georgia in the same election in which the state voted once again for native Jimmy Carter as president, rather than the national winner, Ronald Reagan.
Read more about this topic: Ronnie Thompson (Georgia Politician)
Famous quotes containing the word defeat:
“The daily arguments over putting away the toys or practicing the piano defeat us so easily. We see them coming yet they frustrate us time and time again. In many cases, we are mothers and fathers who have managed budgets and unruly bosses and done difficult jobs well through sheer tenacity and dogged preparation. So why are we unable to persuade someone three feet tall to step into six inches of water at bathtime?”
—Cathy Rindner Tempelsman (20th century)
“History by apprising them [students] of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“An army without culture is a dull-witted army, and a dull-witted army cannot defeat the enemy.”
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976)