Third Parties: George Wallace and the American Independence Party
In 1968 a third party candidate would win more electoral college votes than any candidate in a presidential election since Theodore Roosevelt in 1968. Former Alabama Governor George Wallace ran in the 1968 United States presidential election as the candidate for the American Independent Party. His pro-segregation policies during his term as Governor of Alabama made his selection as the candidate the Democratic Party highly unlikely. Wallace did not expect to win the Presidency, but he hoped to prevent either major party candidate from winning a majority in the Electoral College. This would have resulted in the election being decided by the House of Representatives, where Wallace would have bargaining power sufficient to strongly influence who was selected as President.
Wallace had served as Governor of Alabama from 1963 to 1967. In 1964 he ran as a candidate for the Democratic Party nomination. In 1968 he chose to run as the candidate of the American Independent Party, a party that he had formed. Wallace told his supporters that "there's not a dime's difference between the two major parties". He realized that he did not have any realistic chance of winning the election outright, but many people believed that he might win enough electoral votes to force the House of Representatives to decide the election, giving him the role of a power broker. Wallace hoped that southern states could use their clout to end federal efforts toward desegregation.
The issues that Wallace placed at the forefront of his campaign were law and order, and states' rights on racial segregation. His message strongly appealed to rural white Southerners and as well as blue-collar union workers in the North. By September, Wallace was leading the three-way race in the states for the former Confederacy with 45% of the vote. His appeal to blue-collar workers and union members, who usually voted Democratic, hurt Hubert Humphrey in Northern states like Ohio, Illinois, New Jersey, Michigan, and Wisconsin. A mid-September AFL-CIO internal poll showed that one in three union members supported Wallace. A Chicago Sun-Times poll showed that Wallace had the support of 44% of white steelworkers in that city.
Wallace had a simple response to how he would deal with the war in Vietnam. He told his audience that if the Vietnam War was not winnable within 90 days of his taking office, Wallace pledged to immediately withdraw all U.S. troops.
Wallace's campaign was hurt by his choice of a running mate. He had considered former Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, Kentucky Fried Chicken founder Harland Sanders, and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as possible running mates. Benson and LeMay expressed interest, and but Hoover did not even respond. Wallace's campaign aides proposed the selection of Happy Chandler, the former baseball commissioner and governor of Kentucky. It was hoped that Chandler could help put Wallace over the top in a number of southern states such as Tennessee, South Carolina, and Florida, where Wallace was narrowly trailing Nixon in the polls. But Wallace rejected Chandler, who had supported the hiring of Jackie Robinson by the Brooklyn Dodgers when Chandler was Commissioner of Baseball. Chandler was now seen as a mainstream liberal Democratic politician.
Instead, Wallace chose former Air Force General Curtis LeMay of California. LeMay had been instrumental in the establishment of the United States Air Force in 1947. He was a four-star General with experience at Strategic Air Command. He had advised President John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. His military credentials were considered important foreign-policy assets to the Wallace campaign. LeMay was now retired and was serving as chairman of the board of an electronics company. The company threatened to dismiss LeMay if he took a leave of absence to run for vice president. To keep LeMay on the ticket, Texas oil tycoon H. L. Hunt, a Wallace supporter, set up a million-dollar fund to reimburse LeMay for any income lost in the campaign. Campaign aides tried to persuade LeMay to avoid questions relating to nuclear weapons, but LeMay refused to be "handled". When reporters asked if he thought that nuclear weapons could be used to win the Vietnam War, he first said that America can win in Vietnam without them. But he went on to add, "we have a phobia about nuclear weapons. I think there may be times when it would be most efficient to use nuclear weapons." The remark was hurtful to the Wallace campaign.
Wallace's campaign rhetoric made for good quotes for the news media. He was widely quoted during the campaign when he told a crowd, "If any anarchists lie down in front of my automobile, it will be the last automobile they ever lie down in front of". He also said that the only four letter words that hippies did not know "were w-o-r-k and s-o-a-p." As to Humphrey and Nixon, he said "There's not a dime's worth of difference between the Democrat and Republican parties." When protesters called him a Nazi, he replied, "I was killing fascists when you punks were in diapers."
Most mainstream media editorials expressed opposition to the Wallace campaign, but some southern newspapers backed him. George W. Shannon of the Shreveport Journal wrote numerous editorials supporting Wallace. Pete Hamill of the New Left magazine Ramparts wrote that "In this year’s election, the only one of the three major candidates who is a true radical is Wallace."
The Wallace campaign was comfortably ahead in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Wallace's campaign focused on winning the Carolinas, Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee. But Wallace himself said that he was running a "national campaign." He gave speeches across the country, traveling from Boston to San Diego in the campaign. There were rallies in 33 cities in the North, while Wallace stopped only one time each in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia.
On October 24, 1968, Wallace spoke at Madison Square Garden to a crowd over 20,000 people, It was dubbed as "the largest political rally held in New York City since Franklin Roosevelt in 1936". Pro- and anti-Wallace protesters clashed with more than 1,000 police across the street.
Wallace had a message that appealed to many blue collar voters. He said, "What are the real issues that exist today in these United States? It is the trend of the pseudo-intellectual government, where a select, elite group have written guidelines in bureaus and court decisions, have spoken from some pulpits, some college campuses, some newspaper offices, looking down their noses at the average man on the street."
But by election day, both Humphrey and Richard Nixon were recover some Wallace voters. Unions were upset by the flow of Northern union jobs to Alabama, a right-to-work state. Nixon warned Southerners that a "divided vote" would give the election to Humphrey. From October 13–20, Wallace's support fell from 20% to 15% nationally. In the North, the former Wallace vote split evenly between Humphrey and Nixon. In the border South, Wallace defectors chose Nixon over Humphrey by three to one. When the ballots were counted, Wallace won 9,901,118 popular votes (out of a total of 73,199,998), 13.53% of votes cast nationally. He carried five Southern states:- Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi, for a total of 45 electoral votes, and he received another from a faithless elector, a North Carolina elector who was pledged to Nixon. Hubert Humphrey believed that among blue-collar workers in the North and Midwest, Wallace took many votes which might have otherwise gone to the Democrats. Nixon won the Carolinas and Tennessee with less than 40% of the vote, with Wallace close behind. Had Wallace won these states, Nixon would still have won the election, but with only 270 votes, the minimum required to win.
Wallace had served as Governor of Alabama from 1963 to 1967. In 1964 he ran as a candidate for the Democratic Party nomination. In 1968 he chose to run as the candidate of the American Independent Party, a party that he had formed. Wallace told his supporters that "there's not a dime's difference between the two major parties". He realized that he did not have any realistic chance of winning the election outright, but many people believed that he might win enough electoral votes to force the House of Representatives to decide the election, giving him the role of a power broker. Wallace hoped that southern states could use their clout to end federal efforts toward desegregation.
The issues that Wallace placed at the forefront of his campaign were law and order, and states' rights on racial segregation. His message strongly appealed to rural white Southerners and as well as blue-collar union workers in the North. By September, Wallace was leading the three-way race in the states for the former Confederacy with 45% of the vote. His appeal to blue-collar workers and union members, who usually voted Democratic, hurt Hubert Humphrey in Northern states like Ohio, Illinois, New Jersey, Michigan, and Wisconsin. A mid-September AFL-CIO internal poll showed that one in three union members supported Wallace. A Chicago Sun-Times poll showed that Wallace had the support of 44% of white steelworkers in that city.
Wallace had a simple response to how he would deal with the war in Vietnam. He told his audience that if the Vietnam War was not winnable within 90 days of his taking office, Wallace pledged to immediately withdraw all U.S. troops.
Wallace's campaign was hurt by his choice of a running mate. He had considered former Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, Kentucky Fried Chicken founder Harland Sanders, and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as possible running mates. Benson and LeMay expressed interest, and but Hoover did not even respond. Wallace's campaign aides proposed the selection of Happy Chandler, the former baseball commissioner and governor of Kentucky. It was hoped that Chandler could help put Wallace over the top in a number of southern states such as Tennessee, South Carolina, and Florida, where Wallace was narrowly trailing Nixon in the polls. But Wallace rejected Chandler, who had supported the hiring of Jackie Robinson by the Brooklyn Dodgers when Chandler was Commissioner of Baseball. Chandler was now seen as a mainstream liberal Democratic politician.
Instead, Wallace chose former Air Force General Curtis LeMay of California. LeMay had been instrumental in the establishment of the United States Air Force in 1947. He was a four-star General with experience at Strategic Air Command. He had advised President John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. His military credentials were considered important foreign-policy assets to the Wallace campaign. LeMay was now retired and was serving as chairman of the board of an electronics company. The company threatened to dismiss LeMay if he took a leave of absence to run for vice president. To keep LeMay on the ticket, Texas oil tycoon H. L. Hunt, a Wallace supporter, set up a million-dollar fund to reimburse LeMay for any income lost in the campaign. Campaign aides tried to persuade LeMay to avoid questions relating to nuclear weapons, but LeMay refused to be "handled". When reporters asked if he thought that nuclear weapons could be used to win the Vietnam War, he first said that America can win in Vietnam without them. But he went on to add, "we have a phobia about nuclear weapons. I think there may be times when it would be most efficient to use nuclear weapons." The remark was hurtful to the Wallace campaign.
Wallace's campaign rhetoric made for good quotes for the news media. He was widely quoted during the campaign when he told a crowd, "If any anarchists lie down in front of my automobile, it will be the last automobile they ever lie down in front of". He also said that the only four letter words that hippies did not know "were w-o-r-k and s-o-a-p." As to Humphrey and Nixon, he said "There's not a dime's worth of difference between the Democrat and Republican parties." When protesters called him a Nazi, he replied, "I was killing fascists when you punks were in diapers."
Most mainstream media editorials expressed opposition to the Wallace campaign, but some southern newspapers backed him. George W. Shannon of the Shreveport Journal wrote numerous editorials supporting Wallace. Pete Hamill of the New Left magazine Ramparts wrote that "In this year’s election, the only one of the three major candidates who is a true radical is Wallace."
The Wallace campaign was comfortably ahead in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Wallace's campaign focused on winning the Carolinas, Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee. But Wallace himself said that he was running a "national campaign." He gave speeches across the country, traveling from Boston to San Diego in the campaign. There were rallies in 33 cities in the North, while Wallace stopped only one time each in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia.
On October 24, 1968, Wallace spoke at Madison Square Garden to a crowd over 20,000 people, It was dubbed as "the largest political rally held in New York City since Franklin Roosevelt in 1936". Pro- and anti-Wallace protesters clashed with more than 1,000 police across the street.
Wallace had a message that appealed to many blue collar voters. He said, "What are the real issues that exist today in these United States? It is the trend of the pseudo-intellectual government, where a select, elite group have written guidelines in bureaus and court decisions, have spoken from some pulpits, some college campuses, some newspaper offices, looking down their noses at the average man on the street."
But by election day, both Humphrey and Richard Nixon were recover some Wallace voters. Unions were upset by the flow of Northern union jobs to Alabama, a right-to-work state. Nixon warned Southerners that a "divided vote" would give the election to Humphrey. From October 13–20, Wallace's support fell from 20% to 15% nationally. In the North, the former Wallace vote split evenly between Humphrey and Nixon. In the border South, Wallace defectors chose Nixon over Humphrey by three to one. When the ballots were counted, Wallace won 9,901,118 popular votes (out of a total of 73,199,998), 13.53% of votes cast nationally. He carried five Southern states:- Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi, for a total of 45 electoral votes, and he received another from a faithless elector, a North Carolina elector who was pledged to Nixon. Hubert Humphrey believed that among blue-collar workers in the North and Midwest, Wallace took many votes which might have otherwise gone to the Democrats. Nixon won the Carolinas and Tennessee with less than 40% of the vote, with Wallace close behind. Had Wallace won these states, Nixon would still have won the election, but with only 270 votes, the minimum required to win.