Rubel Phillips - 1963 Election Results

1963 Election Results

In a 64 percent turnout, Johnson defeated Phillips, 225,456 votes (62 percent) to 138,515 (38 percent). Gartin received 258,857 (74 percent) to Stanford Morse's 90,948 (26 percent) in the race for lieutenant governor. Phillips carried seven counties, ranging from Washington (61 percent) to Jones (50.6 percent). Phillips received 53 percent in Harrison County and 44.7 percent in both his native Alcorn and in Hinds County, which includes the capital city of Jackson, where he spent the major part of his life.

The Clarion-Ledger declared prematurely that "the handwriting is plain for all to see -- the Magnolia State wants nothing to do with the two-party system." Ungracious in victory, Adam telegraphed Yerger that since the GOP had been "electrocuted, will you please advise the date and place you will deliver the funeral oration?" Phillips in defeat said his new party had "lost a battle ... we have not lost the war. We now know that we have a strong two-party system." Years later, chairman Wirt Yerger said that Phillips might have run stronger had he endorsed legalized liquor sales. A 1963 poll found that 75 percent of Mississippi voters wanted to end statewide prohibition, something not achieved until 1966. Mississippi was the last state with prohibition. Yerger said that the validity of the survey was unclear.

The Greenville Delta Democrat-Times urged Republicans to run candidates in all future elections. "Within the next decade, the Republicans ... will be on par with the Democrats. When that day arrives, the GOP will look back on this election as the real starting point." The paper claimed that Phillips faced the opposition of "virtually every Democratic officeholder as well as the crushing weight of the state's one-party tradition. In the face of these odds, the showing was even more amazing."

Goldwater's 87 percent victory in Missississippi, accomplished the year prior to passage of the Voting Rights Act, was accompanied by the upset victory of Prentiss Walker to Congress. In 1965, Republicans won mayoral positions in Hattiesburg and Columbus and lost narrowly in Laurel and Clarksdale. The gains from 1964 and 1965 were halted in 1966 and 1967. The Democrat G. V. "Sonny" Montgomery reclaimed Walker's House seat and held it for thirty years. Phillips ran again for governor in 1967 as a moderate candidate against the more conservative Democratic nominee John Bell Williams, who along with Albert W. Watson of South Carolina had been stripped of congressional seniority in 1965 for having endorsed Goldwater for president. Williams specifically was denied the chairmanship of the House Interstate and Foreign Affairs Committee.

Phillips opposed the since ended two-year residency requirement for voter registration, the longest of any state in the nation, having claimed that the rule was an impediment to industrial development. Phillips proposed a freeze on state employment, but Williams countered that such a move would limit the opportunities of young people.

Some four months after Phillips' defeat, Louisiana Republican figure Charlton Lyons of Shreveport waged a similar campaign with nearly equal results in his state against the successful Democratic gubernatorial nominee, John J. McKeithen of Columbia, Louisiana.