POLITICS OF SUBNATIONAL DEMOCRATIC CONSOLIDATION AND STATE PARTY ELITE ADAPTATION IN THE , 1964-1980

by Ayako Hiramatsu

A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Baltimore, Maryland July 2016

© 2016 Ayako Hiramatsu All Rights Reserved

ABSTRACT

How do subnational authoritarian enclaves get reinstituted into national democracy and achieve democratic consolidation without a forceful purge of authoritarian holdovers from the seats of power after democratization? This dissertation investigates the democratic consolidation experiences of former segregationist one-party states of , and from 1964 to 1980. Prior to democratization, the authoritarian enclaves had endured under three Democratic Party institutions: the national party conventions that nominated non-interventionist and enclave-outsider presidential candidates, the seniority rule for the congressional committee chairmanship and the state party disorganization. After 1964, the same state party elites who had defended the enclave autonomy sought to stay in power by influencing the national parties and the presidential elections.

Combining the national party records, materials from the presidential libraries, state party leaders’ personal papers and other published sources, this dissertation examines the political adaptations of the state party elites in four phases of subnational democratic consolidation: the 1966 elections of the reactionary governors and their last defense of the enclave autonomy at the Democratic National Convention in 1968; the state level compliance of McGovern-Fraser Commission guidelines on the Democratic delegate selection process and party structure; the national Republican leaders’ interventions in the state politics during President ’s first term; and Jimmy

Carter’s pre-presidential party reform in the Democratic National Committee and his presidential campaigns.

The state parties constructed upon the legacies of the authoritarian enclaves in

ii this period were, by and large, more closely incorporated into the respective national

parties. The governors and party elites in the three states demonstrated their political will

to follow the national party instructions only when compliance improved their prospect

for holding onto power and seeking higher office, including their long foregone bid for the White House. Where authoritarian holdovers remained in power, they sought post-democratization political careers through other political parties. Carter was nominated and elected as the first twentieth century Democratic president whose political career in public office had originated in the enclave regime prior to democratization, with

the endorsements of mayors and governors as opposed to the congressional supporters.

THE READERS

Adam Sheingate

Richard Katz

Daniel Schlozman

Ronald Walters

Angus Burgin

iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I owe debt to the following people who generously rendered helping hands

throughout the course of research and writing. First in the order are my dissertation

committee advisors at the political science department of Johns Hopkins University.

Adam Sheingate has been a steadfast, generous and patient mentor. Adam valued

creativity and clarity in the work: if there were any way to pay back the debt I incurred

from his graduate seminars and the countless office hours he has spared for me, it would

only be by continually trying to uphold these values in the future works of mine and

others. Richard Katz’s dictum, “But there is no there there!” in American political parties

– in other words that they lack organizational robustness comparable to the western

European labor party cousins of the previous century and such difference matters – still resonates in my head. It started my interests in how the American southern parties have actually operated in any tangible forms, if at all, as statewide two party competition emerged. I thank Daniel Schlozman for joining the committee in the later phase of the dissertation project, Ronald Walters and Angus Burgin for the comments and the critiques at the oral defense exam.

Besides the discussions I have had with Adam and Dick, there were graduate seminars that brought about the germination of this dissertation’s ideas. Steven Teles made me to think in depth about organizations and policy failures. Mimi Keck’s contentious politics seminar and Mike Hanchard’s discussion on state theory prepared me to become a better comparative Americanist. The American dreams seminar with Jane

Bennett and Jennifer Culbert explored many jewels of the American literature that enlightened me in writing this dissertation. Nathan Connolly kindly spared time to advise

iv on the works on the history of southern political economy.

As a graduate student, I was given opportunities to teach undergraduate classes

on American politics. While leading the discussion sections for Benjamin Ginsberg’s

Intro AP and Danny Schlozman’s American Congress, I learned from their pedagogical styles, reading assignments, as well as what the students had to say about the subject.

With the Dean’s Teaching Fellowship, I taught my first seminar on contemporary

American political parties. I am again thankful for the students.

Outside of Hopkins faculty, Robert Mickey’s encouragement that I have the freedom to write a story of my own has literally served as both a lifesaver and a compass onto which I at times clung, as I tried to swim in the vast sea of southern politics literature and oriented myself in the mountain ranges of the archival boxes.

I was lucky to have Daisy Kim, Nicole Thornton and Lauren Foley as friends.

Conversations with their families also helped me place many facets of America into perspective in ways no books could. Daisy and Karyn Wang offered me kind support when, albeit momentarily, the earthquakes at home seemed to upend life in the spring semester of my second year. Nobutaka Otobe’s wit dispelled many of my initial worries about the new graduate school life at Hopkins. Special thanks go to Mary Otterbein and

Lisa Williams, for their administrative support in the department. Without their help, I could not have navigated through the graduate program.

The microcosm in the city of Baltimore helped this newcomer grapple with what America has been made of and what it aspires to become tomorrow. The city’s many heritages, ranging from the patriotic glory of Fort McHenry, to the wealth of the nineteenth century philanthropists in Mount Vernon, to the checkered blocks of the row

v houses, to the subdued conversation on the Ferguson protest overheard in a packed evening MARC train, to the curious gaze of the onlookers on my face on North Avenue, they all mesmerized me. The juxtapositions of orange, purple, black, white, green and brown in the city have challenged my naïve imagination and at the same time gave me many warm embraces. Though this dissertation is not about Baltimore, this particular space and the time shaped and tested my scholarly growth.

Of the generation of Japan’s Americanists that went into graduate school training in the around the same time as I did, I specifically want to thank

Masako Hattori for her practical advice on research funding, and Yukako Otori for much needed outings in the midst of solitary dissertation writing during the final year.

The numerous trips to the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the presidential libraries, and the local archives in the south were funded by the generous research grants from the following organizations: the America-Japan Society, Sheridan

Libraries of Johns Hopkins University, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation, and

Suntory Foundation. In addition, the Japan-U.S. Educational Commission and the

Institute of International Education provided me the fellowship in the Fulbright Program for Graduate Study, which enabled the first two years of study in the PhD program.

Randall Conrad and Sally Lawton proofread the manuscript in the very last phase of writing. I am responsible for all the errors in the pages to follow.

Half a globe away from Baltimore, there have been people who supported my study in the United States. Professor Fumiaki Kubo of the University of Tokyo had first opened the door of the graduate school and then gave me opportunities to walk across the bridge that connects the two countries.

vi My parents, Nobuyasu and Fumiko Hiramatsu, have provided constant love and

support, even though I have ventured to see an America that may seem foreign to their

beloved memories of the land from more than thirty years ago. My sisters, Midori and

Tomoko, have sent me cheers the moments I needed them most. My husband, Taketo

Fushimi, and his side of parents, have firmly believed in and supported the endeavor to

which I have committed myself. To my family this dissertation is dedicated.

vii TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1. Introduction: Southern Political Elites and Subnational Democratic Consolidation ……………………………………………………………… 1

Chapter 2. The Authoritarian Enclave Rulers’ One Last Defense, 1964-1968 ………. 54

Chapter 3. The State Democratic Party Elites’ Responses to the Nationally Mandated Party Reform, 1968-1972 …………………………………………………. 98

Chapter 4. National Interventions in the State Party: Nixon’s Southern Strategy as Regime Boundary Negotiation, 1969-1972 ……………………………… 143

Chapter 5. The Visions and Limits of ’s Democratic Party in Georgia and Nation, 1972-1980 ……………………………………………………….. 191

Chapter 6. Subnational Democratic Consolidation in the Late Twentieth Century American Political Development ………………………………………... 233

References and Bibliography ………………………………………………………… 246

Curriculum Vitae ……………………………………………………………………... 251

viii LIST OF TABLES

Table 1.1 Proportion of Black Office-Holding in the State Legislatures (Two Houses Combined) ………………………………………………………………………. 19

Table 1.2 Proportion of Black Office-Holding in Local Governments ……………… 19

Table 1.3 Summary of Democratic Consolidation Process ………………………….. 50

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1.1 Proportions of Southern Democratic Delegate Vote and Electoral College Vote to the Nation ……………………………………………………….……… 10

Figure 1.2 Voter Turnout in Presidential General Elections, 1916-2012 …………….. 47

Figure 1.3 Proportion of State Black Population, 1910-2010 ………………………… 48

Figure 1.4 Ratio of Employees in Non-Agricultural Establishments to State Population, 1950-2010 ………………………………………………………………………. 49

ix Chapter One. Introduction: Southern Political Elites and Subnational Democratic Consolidation

This dissertation pursues a critical question of subnational democratic

consolidation and change in political institutions: absent an immediate purge of local rulers from subnational authoritarian regimes after democratization, how do these regimes get reinstituted into the national democracy and achieve democratic consolidation? Subnational authoritarianism is found across continents and historical times. But more than in any other places and times, the twentieth century American political development was defined by its endurance, breakdown and later democratic consolidation. This dissertation examines the democratic consolidation experiences of former authoritarian enclaves of Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina from 1964 to

1980, as they provide variant cases of changes in party institutions that resulted in the problematic reinstitution of these former authoritarian subnational regimes into the national democracy.

There are two premises on which this dissertation is based. The first is that the

United States did not have a prospect for full-fledged democracy until the middle of the

1960s. Contrary to the popular identification that America was the world’s first

democracy, the United States at last bade farewell to its subnational authoritarianism only

half a century ago.1 Attempts at American democratic governance across races and sections began only around the same time as the so-called second wave of

democratization subsided.2 Second, even though the enactments of the 1964 Civil Rights

Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act removed one of the pillars of authoritarian rule in the

1 For other expositions resonant of this view, see Desmond S. King, ed. Democratization in America: A Comparative-Historical Analysis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). 2 Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).

1 south, i.e., local denial of black political rights, democracy did not get readily etched in stone. Rather, as of the mid-1960s it was far from certain that the democratized subnational regimes would be consolidated into the national democracy.

The uncertainty of subnational democratic consolidation came in large part from the prolonged political ambitions of authoritarian holdovers in the state government.

The enactment of the 1965 law enabled turnover of power in the local governments, particularly in the region’s Black Belt counties, where local black residents outnumbered whites. However, in statewide elections the scope of democratization was limited for two reasons. For one thing, the state party apparatus continued for a few more years to prohibit the effective participation of black voters in party affairs. For another, statewide black voter population was never numerous enough to form an electoral majority of its own. Thus many authoritarian holdovers enjoyed a continued hold on power in statewide offices that had important decision making authority over the state party, allowing the state party elites to reorganize themselves in relation to the national parties. Without state level reforms further demanded by the local democratizers, assisted by their national allies and implemented by the pro-reform state party elites, the subnational authoritarian enclaves would not have completed democratization. The democratic consolidation of the

enclaves, in other words, took a prolonged and complex turn.

Prior to democratization, the authoritarian enclaves secured their regime

autonomy through a set of Democratic Party institutions and shielded themselves from

national political interventions. After democratization, presidents and the national party

leaders on the one hand, and the state party elites, most notably the governors, on the other, built new relations in the variant processes of adjusting themselves to the newly

2 expanded electorate. By 1980, the enclave democratic consolidation was complete with

the exit from power of a president whose political career had started in the enclave regime. This dissertation examines how and why these authoritarian enclaves’ transitions

to consolidated democracy took place. Commonly understood as a period during which

the traditional party organizations declined in strength, such a shift presents puzzles on

the relatively undiminished roles of the southern governors who reconstructed the party

institutions. Subsequently the dissertation aims to provide new interpretations on the

formation of nationalized political parties.

i. Authoritarian Enclaves and Their Constrained National Ambitions

An authoritarian enclave is a subnational jurisdiction of government that has

enduring undemocratic regime characteristics despite being located in a national

democracy.3 The political community in the enclave territory is highly restricted by the

authoritarian rule, such as extensive disenfranchisement, demobilization, one-party

domination, despotic treatment of its populace that is sanctioned or condoned by the

public authority, and suppression of free association in the society. The undemocratic

local government differs in its authoritarian mode of governance from the rest of the

country’s subnational jurisdictions, and it stands in stark contrast to the democracy the

country enjoys at the national level. In the following pages, the terms “authoritarian

enclaves” and “subnational authoritarian regimes” are used interchangeably to denote

3 The concept of subnational regime boundary control in comparative politics literature was theoretically articulated by Edward Gibson, and it opened a new field of inquiry in the democratization and regime transition literatures which previously tended to focus on regime transitions on the national scale. Edward L. Gibson, Boundary Control: Subnational Authoritarianism in Federal Democracies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); See also Guillermo A. O'Donnell, "On the State, Democratization and Some Conceptual Problems: A Latin American View with Glances at Some Post-Communist Countries," in Counterpoints: Selected Essays on Authoritarianism and Democratization. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999).

3 enduring governing authorities that control a segment of national territories by

undemocratic means even though they are located within a nationally democratic regime.

The authoritarian enclaves coexist with the national government: for enclave

rulers, secession is not a political reality so long as they can keep the enclave sovereignty

within the nation. This juxtaposition of two distinct polities within a country’s territory,

that is, democracy at the national level and authoritarian rule in its subnational units,

necessitates what Edward Gibson calls the politics of boundary control. 4 For a

subnational authoritarian enclave to form and endure within a national democracy, the

enclave rulers must not only construct and govern their regime in the home territory, but

also defend their regimes against interventions from the nation’s democratic center in

order to retain their enclave sovereignty. The enclave rulers project their influence onto the national institutions of representation so as to thwart possibilities of interference from the central government. The means of regime boundary control for the authoritarian rulers are, for instance, wielding positions of power in the national representative institutions, such as the national legislature and the national party, to veto legislations and candidates that could possibly encroach upon the enclave sovereignty. The national

leaders, in contrast, turn a blind eye to the authoritarian regimes even though these

subnational governments contradict the liberal democratic tenets of the national

constitution. National leaders tolerate these practices so long as they can count on the

electoral and legislative support of the enclave rulers, usually through the institutions of

political parties.

Two points need to be noted with regard to the enclaves’ relations with the

national democracy. One is that enclaves could regularly hold procedural elections for the

4 Gibson, Boundary Control.

4 selection of political leadership at various levels of government and still be authoritarian.

These procedural elections do not correctly gauge the popular will if the enclave regimes suppress mass political participation, free association, and local political contestation.

The electoral contestations are limited so that the local elections produce predictable outcomes, such as continued domination of one party over another and election of rulers who regularly defend enclave sovereignty against the central government. The predictability of the enclaves’ electoral outcomes strengthens the entrenchment of authoritarian rulers in the national democracy, in that the enclaves would deliver the vote to the national coalition in exchange for the national promise that the central government would not intervene in the affairs of enclave government.

The other characteristic is more consequential for the theorization of subnational democratic consolidation. It is that there are constraints placed on enclave rulers’ ambitions for the national executive office. Because boundary control politics is a balancing act between local authoritarian rule and national nonintervention, it binds enclave rulers’ political career possibilities so long as they continue enclave defense.

While authoritarian rulers exert considerable influence in the selection processes of candidates for the national executive office, the authoritarian rulers themselves are precluded from directly seizing the national executive office. If they were to hold power in the national executive authority, the national democracy would no longer hold. In such instances, the national democracy regresses back into national authoritarianism: enclaves cease to be a distinct part of the whole and become instead the center of the whole.

Granted that the authoritarian enclaves have only minority votes in the national party institutions, the enclave aspirants to national executive office need not only the enclave

5 vote but also other votes from non-enclave democrats to win the nomination and election.

Yet the nomination and election of the enclave candidate is the last scenario that

democrats from the outside of the enclaves wish to see, so the outsiders will avoid at all

costs such direct authoritarian control of the national executive office. Once enclave aspirants’ candidacies are blocked due to the shortage of additional supportive votes from enclave outsiders, the national democrats expect the enclave rulers to support the candidate who is also backed by the national democrats, because the authoritarian enclaves can provide the national democrats with stable blocs of electoral and legislative

vote.

Thus, for the authoritarian enclaves to endure in national democracy, their national representatives must defend their home regimes’ autonomy against interventions from the national executive, and in theory they cannot control the national executive office themselves. While the political insularity of authoritarian enclaves is guaranteed by the enclave rulers’ control in the national representative institutions, the enclave rulers are by institutional design precluded from seizing the national executive office. These two enduring characteristics of authoritarian enclaves’ relations with the national democracy – that is, regularly held procedural elections and the enclaves’ preclusion from directly controlling the national executive office – call for a new look into subnational regime transition and democratic consolidation. As this dissertation demonstrates, even when the authoritarian holdovers in the state government remain in power after democratization, the authoritarian enclaves can complete democratic consolidation by overcoming the preexisting party preclusions on the presidential aspirants of enclave origin from seeking party nomination.

6

ii. The National Party Institutions that Enabled the Endurance of American

Authoritarian Enclaves

The authoritarian enclaves in the former confederate states of America began to

emerge at the end of the nineteenth century when the southern reconstruction from the

Civil War ended and the local and state laws gradually instituted the .5

Under Jim Crow rule, the states gradually robbed the local black citizens of the political rights, and demobilized the electorate as the Democratic Party gained one-party control.

For nearly seven decades starting from the late nineteenth century and lasting until the

mid twentieth, the authoritarian enclaves were ruled by oligarchic cliques of local white

political and economic elites who regularly pursued and held power of public office

through the Democratic Party.

By the mid-1930s, the rulers of the southern authoritarian enclaves were an

important segment of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition. The southern

Democrats provided the Depression-era president much needed stable blocs of votes in

Congress, enabling enactments of New Deal legislations and allowing the president to

recast the nineteenth century provincial American government into a centralized and

expansive federal bureaucratic administration. The expansion of federal government

agencies was an unprecedented experiment in the political history of this nation, as the

locally based parties of the nineteenth century in the state government and Congress had

long tended to check and restrain assertive roles of the national administrative

government over the American economy and society.6 The New Deal’s departure from

5 C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (: Oxford University Press, 2002). 6 As Stephen Skowronek argues, the nineteenth century American government was the state of parties and

7 the previous century’s decentralized government and the construction of a centralized

federal administrative state, however, were ushered in by a tacit political understanding

between the president and the southern enclave rulers, that the federal government would

refrain from interfering with the sovereignty of the authoritarian enclaves and leave their

racial caste system in place.

There had been three political institutions that cemented the support of southern

Democrats to the New Deal president and in return let the authoritarian enclaves endure

within the national democracy. One was the collective power of the

leaders to negotiate the choice of presidential nominee at the national Democratic

convention, and if necessary to veto unwanted candidates. Until 1936, a winning nominee

of the Democratic national convention needed approval of two thirds of the convention

votes. The two-thirds rule was instituted over a century before in 1832 with pressure from

the southern Jeffersonian delegates who argued that the rule would safeguard the

democracy against the tyranny of majority rule. With the rule, the southern votes in collectivity could form a group that impeded formation of the two-thirds majority in case the party considered a candidate who could potentially undermine enclave sovereignty.

This southern veto power in the hall of the presidential nomination convention was abolished in 1936 during the renomination campaign of Franklin Roosevelt and was replaced by a simple majority requirement for candidate nomination.7 In return for the repeal of the two-thirds rule, some of the southern delegates requested increased

the courts, where the governing authorities resided in the hands of party politicians in the state and local governments whose national representatives controlled the U.S. Congress. Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877-1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). 7 Sidney M. Milkis, The President and the Parties: The Transformation of the American Party System since the New Deal (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 69-71.

8 representation at the 1940 national convention. But as Figure 1.1 shows, the eleven

southern states’ Democratic Party delegate vote at the national convention increased only

by a margin of less than two percent over the next two decades.8 After 1956, the

proportion of delegate votes allocated to the southern states at the national convention fell

even further before it bounced back in 1980.

[Insert Figure 1.1 here.]

Even as the collective vote of southern party delegates in the Democratic national convention gradually diminished in strength relative to the rest of the national

convention delegate vote after the repeal of the two-thirds rule in 1936, the national

Democratic Party left the enclaves largely shielded from national interventions. One of the two rare exceptions to federal nonintervention was when President Roosevelt made a failed attempt to oust anti-New Deal Democratic congressmen from the southern states in the 1938 primary. The purge effort did not bear fruit, however, as the local electorate reelected these southern congressmen.9 On another occasion in 1948, the enclave regime

autonomy was threatened. When the national Democratic Party convention adopted a

civil rights plank in the party platform following the policy recommendations proposed

by President Harry Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights, the enclave rulers of the Deep

South states revolted: they formed a third party that got their own state rights presidential candidate, , then South Carolina Governor, elected for president in four out of the five Deep South states.10 Once the 1948 election was over, however, the

8 See also Robert W. Mickey, Paths out of Dixie: The Democratization of Authoritarian Enclaves in America's Deep South, 1944-1972 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), 135-6. 9 Milkis, The President and the Parties, 97. 10 Joseph Crespino, Strom Thurmond's America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2012), 61-82; V. O. Key and Alexander Heard, Southern Politics in State and Nation, New ed. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, [1949] 1984), 329-44.

9

Figure 1.1

Proportions of Southern Democratic Party Delegate Vote and Electoral College Vote, 1928-2000 .28 .26 .24 .22 .2

1928 1936 1944 1952 1960 1968 1976 1984 1992 2000 Years

Democratic Electoral College

The ratios are southern votes to the national total, and the south is defined as the eleven confederate states: Alabama, Arkansas, , Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, , South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. Because the Democratic National Conventions in 1936 and 1964 nominated the presidential candidates by voice vote, the total delegate votes from these years are missing. Source: National Party Conventions, 1831-2000. CQ Press. 2001

10 national Democratic Party reembraced the renegade Thurmond supporters in the local

and state Democratic Party without punishing them.11

The second of the three political institutions that shielded the authoritarian enclaves from the national democracy lasted longer than the other two and left significant imprints in the enactment of federal government programs. This was the seniority rule of the standing committee chairmanship in the United States Congress. Because the local

Democratic one-party dominance in the enclaves resulted in little electoral competition in the congressional districts and Senatorial elections, the southern members of the

Congress were continually reelected for longer periods of time than non-southern members from competitive two-party districts outside of the south. This allowed the southern lawmakers in the United States House of Representatives and Senate to accumulate seniority in the congressional committee ranks, and it bestowed upon them the influential chairmanship of important standing committees, such as the Ways and

Means, Armed Services, and Agriculture. As chairs of policy and budget committees that decided the federal resource distribution to their constituencies, the southern enclave rulers controlled the legislative process in Congress. Until 1975, this institution served as the main fulcrum with which enclave rulers wielded power in Congress.

Bolstered by the southern control of the congressional committees, the southern enclaves’ congressional representatives instituted the administrative structures and the coverage of major New Deal labor and welfare legislations in ways that would preserve the racial, economic and social orders at home. For instance, agricultural laborers and domestic servants, the two occupational categories that were manned predominantly by black labor in the south, were exempted from the coverage of the National Labor

11 Mickey, Paths out of Dixie, 145-67.

11 Relations Act, the landmark New Deal labor law passed in 1935 that strengthened the

unions’ right to organize in other industries.12 Aid to Dependent Children in the Social

Security Act was another example of strengthened enclave rule within the national

democracy: enacted in the same year as the NLRA, ADC was structured at the behest of

to let the local officials administer the benefit distribution, giving

them wide discretion to decide who was to receive the welfare check. In the south this

resulted in racially discriminatory distribution of welfare assistance, as eligible African

American families were discouraged to approach white ADC administrators to apply for

benefits, and enclave rulers tried to keep the local blacks off the welfare rolls.13 Thus

even though the government guarantees of individual economic rights were expanded by

congressional legislations during the New Deal, these federal programs did not serve

equally for every member of the American citizenry: laden with the racialized labor divisions and social relations of the south, New Deal programs preserved, rather than

undermined, the southern authoritarian enclave rule.14

Finally, the third political institution that allowed the seven-decade endurance

of southern enclaves was the disorganized yet electorally dominant local and state

Democratic Party. As V. O. Key observed in the late 1940s, “the Democratic party in

most parts of the South is merely a holding-company for a congeries of transient

12 Sean Farhang and Ira Katznelson, "The Southern Imposition: Congress and Labor in the New Deal and Fair Deal," Studies in American Political Development 19, no. 1 (2005); Ira Katznelson, Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time, 1st ed. (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2013); Ira Katznelson, Geiger Kim, and Daniel Kryder, "Limiting Liberalism: The Sourthern Veto in Congress, 1933-1950," Political Science Quarterly 108, no. 2 (1993). 13 Robert C. Lieberman, Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 127-30. 14 Desmond King and Rogers Smith have described such dynamics as a competition between “white supremacist” orders and “transformative egalitarian” orders that have defined the development of American politics since the inception of the nation. Desmond S. King and Rogers M. Smith, "Racial Orders in American Political Development," American Political Science Review 99, no. 1 (2005).

12 squabbling factions, most of which fail by far to meet the standards of permanence,

cohesiveness, and responsibility that characterize the political party.”15 Local political disorganization was an “arrangement for national affairs,” as these contending

Democratic factions in the enclaves would form a united front once every four years during the presidential election campaigns to elect a Democratic candidate who would preserve the enclave rule.16 The southern Democratic unity in the presidential elections worked to forestall a Republican White House that could change the enclave rulers’ calculations of the boundary control. But otherwise, in the election campaigns for the U.S.

Senate seats, governorship and other state and local public offices, the field of

Democratic Party primary elections was highly factionalized, as each candidate led his

own personal followers and divided the party primary vote.

Political disorganization in the state Democratic Party hindered the

development of an effective opposition party within the enclaves, as the local faction

leaders contested for popular support through the Democratic Party primaries and not

between the two parties in the general elections. The intra-party factional competition in

the Democratic primaries confounded the clarity of political alternatives offered to the

small number of electorates, since the choices of political leadership were limited only to

the personalities and not to competing principles of government. This resulted in the

neglect of government programs for the economically and socially disadvantaged from

serious political debate. Key observes, “The independence of candidacies in an atomized

politics makes it possible to elect a fire-eating governor who promises great

accomplishments and simultaneously elect a legislature a majority of whose members are

15 Key and Heard, Southern Politics, 16. 16 Ibid.

13 committed to inaction.”17 Included in this destitute class of southerners were the vast majority of the disenfranchised southern blacks who had yet secured the political rights.

Besides the lack of political leadership in the state, factionalized intra-party competition, combined with one-party dominance, served as a safeguard against regime boundary breach from the national administration in the first half of the twentieth century.

Internal political disorganization among enclave rulers allowed their continued hold onto power through one-party domination in the state governments. Had viable local

Republican Party organizations in the states emerged, they could have resulted in the enfranchisement and electoral mobilization of in the state and federal elections, destabilizing and weakening the hold of enclave rulers in the state governments.

These three institutions, which had developed independently of one another in the Democratic Party, nonetheless reinforced the autonomy of the southern authoritarian enclaves within the national democracy. Each of these institutions interlocked and enabled the enclave rulers’ control of the boundary between the authoritarian subnational regimes and national democracy. The institutional authority that the enclave rulers wielded within the national representational institutions of party conventions and

Congress in turn shielded the enclaves from external political interventions in the enclave party, particularly from the national party and the office of the presidency. Seen from the other side of the national-enclave relations, the presidents refrained from interfering in the authoritarian enclave regimes and condoned the enclaves’ violations of the national constitution, so long as the enclave rulers provided the Democratic presidents with endorsements for nomination at the national party conventions, popular votes for the

17 Ibid., 308.

14 Electors in general elections, and legislative votes for policy enactments in the Congress.

As a result of the configuration of these partisan institutions, the authoritarian

enclave rulers had been selective endorsers of the Democratic presidential candidates, but not the party’s eventual presidential nominee themselves.18 Until the 1964 Democratic

National Convention, that was the nature of the dual regime relations between the

national democracy and the authoritarian south. When Vice President Lyndon Johnson

unexpectedly inherited the presidency from his assassinated predecessor in November

1963, he became the first president who had served in the public office of the southern enclave regime over a century. Though Johnson’s presidential succession was an accidental turn of history, the Democratic presidential nomination that overwhelmingly supported Johnson in 1964 took place only after the Civil Rights Act was enacted. His nomination broke the rule of authoritarian enclave preclusion from the national executive office.

iii. The Insular Authoritarian Enclaves Discover Their “Paths Out of Dixie”

The idea of identifying the southern enclave rulers’ roles in the New Deal political order and the subsequent rise of the in the context of enclave democratization is neither new nor entirely original to this dissertation. As

18 Some readers may question why , who was born, raised and educated in the south, is not included here as a president of enclave origin. While Wilson’s tacit support for segregation and his southern identity are noteworthy, he had not defended the enclave autonomy as a holder of enclave public office prior to his election to the White House. Because he lacked prior service in the elective office of the southern enclave regime, Wilson is not counted in this dissertation as a southern president. From 1948 to 1960, prominent enclave rulers in Congress such as Georgia Senator Richard Russell and then Texas Senator Lyndon Johnson offered themselves as the leading southern presidential candidates among the enclave delegates at the national convention. Their candidacies did not garner enough non-southern support to secure nomination, however. Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson had , U.S. Senator from Alabama, as the vice presidential nominee in the 1952 ticket, and , Senator from Tennessee, four years later. Though these southern names were placed on the ticket, neither of them was the national Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.

15 Robert Mickey’s masterful account of enclave democratizations in Paths out of Dixie

illustrates, the enclave rulers of the three Democratic one-party states, in his case South

Carolina, Mississippi and Georgia, controlled the paces and modes of democratization as these state elites saw fit for their own enclaves’ transitions in three earlier phases of national democratization pressures: the 1944 United States Supreme Court’s invalidation of white-only Democratic primaries in Smith v. Allwright; President Harry Truman’s embrace of his civil rights agenda at the end of his inherited first term in 1947; and the

Supreme Court’s school desegregation decision in Brown v. Board of Education in

1954.19 In Mickey’s explication, the state party elites’ varied responses to these incipient

national calls for enclave democratization prepared the later paths of regime transition in the 1960s.

Mickey identifies the state law enforcement apparatus as one of the critical governing instruments that the enclave rulers furnished and deployed throughout the processes of racial integration in the state university campuses from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s. According to his explanation, where the state’s policing capacity was centralized and effective in mitigating the breakout of mass racial violence and social disorder, as was the case with South Carolina’s Law Enforcement Division, the regime transition went smoothly. South Carolina’s “harnessed revolution” assured future outside industrial investors of the stability of the statewide social order, and contributed to the early and rapid growth of the state Republican Party. Mississippi presents a story in stark contrast to South Carolina, as the state law enforcement failed to contain racial violence incited by white supremacists in the campus desegregation crisis. Mickey argues that its ineffectual state police prolonged the social disorder, and diminished the state’s industrial

19 Mickey, Paths out of Dixie, Chapters Four through Eight.

16 investment attractiveness and the prospect of economic growth in the decades to come.

As a result, the growth of the Republican Party was delayed in Mississippi. Lastly,

Georgia underwent “bifurcated” democratic transition, as the enclave rulers in the

northern half of the state succeeded in harnessing the revolution by quickly incorporating

the black elites and reconciling with the national party, while the Black Belt white elites

in the southern half of the state prolonged the social disorder by defying the federal civil

rights directives. Mickey contends that because of the reputation of the northern half of the state, including , which promptly complied with the federal directives, most of the Black Belt counties of southern Georgia managed to escape the oversight of federally dispatched election examiners despite the continued local defiance and estrangement from the national Democratic Party.

As the above recapitulation makes clear, Mickey foregrounds the varying capacities of state law enforcement agencies in maintaining social order during the relatively early phases of regime democratization processes that began in 1944, and the resultant transition to competitive two-party systems and local industrial development in each state in the next three decades. In doing so, Mickey treats the three enclave regimes as independent of one another, and isolated from the national democracy: the local political elites in the insular enclaves explored and controlled their own trajectories of enclave democratization. Such insularity of autonomous enclaves defined the enclave-national relations before 1964. The premier contribution of Mickey’s work to the preceding literature of American political parties lies in pointing out the enclaves’ political isolation from the national democracy and how that isolation came to an end in each state as the federal court made a series of desegregation rulings. The enclave rulers,

17 particularly the legislators and the governors who controlled the state party apparatus,

remained highly isolated from the national parties in this earlier period of democratic

transition.

iv. The Civil Rights Revolution’s Limited Effects on Black Statewide Representation

When the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act were enacted into law in

1964 and 1965, local black disenfranchisement, the one core pillar of authoritarian enclave regime rule, was permanently dismantled. This was certainly a revolutionary victory for the civil rights movement: after three decades of black political activism that was undeterred by federal laxity or inaction, local economic reprisals, terrorist violence and gruesome casualties in the hands of enclave rulers and their local supporters, African

Americans could now exercise their political right to vote and run for public office.

Under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the federal Justice Department’s registrars and election examiners were sent to monitor voter registration and the conduct of elections in the enclaves, in order to ensure that black political will would be part of the representative and majoritarian decision making processes. The voting rights of African

Americans, as proclaimed in President Johnson’s own speech at the signing of the 1965

Act, were meant as “the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice.”20

To an extent, these Acts enabled such a transition to take place. As the rate of

black voter registration grew, the number of African American officials in state

legislatures and local governments increased in the decades after 1964. Tables 1 and 2

20 Lyndon Johnson. August 6, 1965. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1966.) Volume II, entry 394, 811-815.

18 demonstrate the growth of black office holding in state and local governments from

various years between 1964 and 1993, in contrast to the proportion of the statewide black voting-age population.

Table 1.1. Proportion of black office holding in the state legislatures (two houses combined) Alabama Georgia South Carolina Registered State legisl. Registered State legisl. Registered State legisl. black voters seats held black voters seats held black voters seats held (%) by black (%) by black (%) by black reps. (%) reps. (%) reps. (%) 1964 9 0 16.2 1.2 17 0 1966 17 0 17.4 4.7 21 0 1990 - - 21.9 14.8 26 12 1992 22 16.4 - - - - Table combined from Chandler Davidson and Bernard Grofman, eds., Quiet Revolution in the South: The Impact of the Voting Rights Act, 1965-1990 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), Tables 2.10, 3.10 and 7.10.

Table 1.2. Proportion of black office holding in local governments Alabama Georgia South Carolina Black Black Black Black Black Black voting-age elected voting-age elected voting-age elected popul. (%) officials popul. (%) officials popul. (%) officials (%) (%) (%) 1974 23 4.2 22.9 2.9 26.4 5.8 1984 23 8.6 24 5.9 27 12.6 1993 22.7 20.6 24 10.3 26.9 14.5 Table adapted from Richard Valelly, The Two Reconstructions: The Struggle for Black Enfranchisement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), p. 219, Table 9.3. The local offices counted to calculate the black office holding proportions are: county commissioners, members of municipal government bodies, sheriffs, and school board members.

The Civil Rights Acts enabled the elections of African Americans to public office in the

local jurisdictions where the black residents outnumbered whites. In the enclaves’ Black

Belt counties, the transition of power was immediately set: the local elective public

offices, state legislature seats and United States congressional districts now belonged to

those who directly represented the majority interests of the local residents.

However, in the statewide elections and the national contests, particularly for

19 the offices of governors and the United States Senators, and in the national party

convention delegate selection process, all of which had institutionally enabled the endurance of authoritarian enclaves in the federal democracy in the previous decades, black voter mobilization fell short of making immediate impacts.21 Obstacles for their

effective political participation were many. Besides the statewide numeric minority status

of the black voting age population, which required them to form statewide coalitions with

the moderate white voters for electing moderate candidates, the state and local

organization of the Democratic Party were slow to accommodate voluntary black

participation in the party organizations until 1968. Outside of the Democratic Party, the

black political leadership explored possibilities of forming independent parties and

challenging the statewide Democratic primary winners in the general election, but these

independent parties hardly made inroads in the statewide general elections. The

Republican Party of was revived for a moment, yet soon the Goldwater

conservatives ousted the black Republicans from key positions for good. Local black

civil rights leaders needed to make their voices further heard at the national level to gain

representation in statewide and national politics, even after the 1965 Voting Rights Act

was enacted.

v. Southern Party Elites’ Party Reforms and Responses to the National Interventions

from the Party and Presidents

Beginning in 1964, the seven-decade political isolation of the enclaves from the

21 To this day in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, there has not been a governor, lieutenant governor or United States Senator of African American descent elected in the three states since the end of Reconstruction, except for South Carolina’s Tim Scott, a black Republican U.S. Senator who was first appointed to fill a vacant seat in 2013.

20 national politics that Mickey discusses began to disappear as mass democracy took root

in the three states. The demise of the authoritarian enclaves did not mean that the enclave

rulers, particularly those in the statewide offices of government, were altogether

displaced from power. These southern party elites whose political careers had commenced in the old days of authoritarian regimes sought ways of holding onto power even after the enclaves democratized, and their varied adaptations to the changed electoral landscape and party institutions, in both the state and nation, defined the processes of democratic consolidation.

For authoritarian holdovers in the immediate years after 1964, the state party organizations and their varied responses to the national interventions provided them with opportunities to continue their hold on power in public office. It was through these years immediately following the civil rights democratization that the state governors began to

actively reestablish relations with the national parties and the presidents as they sought

first to remain in power in the state government. The governors, while they took control of the democratic transition in the enclave territories, began to react increasingly differently to the political interventions of the national parties and presidents so that the governors, particularly those incumbent authoritarian holdovers from the pre-1964 segregationist regimes, could hold onto power in the state government. The incumbent presidents and their national party leaders, on the other hand, intervened in the state parties as they tried to secure the presidents’ renomination and reelection. Only when the interventions worked to improve the state party elites’ prospect of holding onto power in the state government, did the southern elites respond to the national interventions in ways the national party leaders intended.

21 Thus, as much as this dissertation is indebted to Mickey’s many insights on divergent modes of enclave democratization across the three states, it newly builds on his

account by attending to the distinct and new politics that followed democratization: the

state party elites’ political adaptations to hold onto power after the incipient mass

democracy and the frequent national interventions changed the state elites’ prospect for

political survival.

Besides the time periods, there are two notable differences that separate this

dissertation from the isolated and therefore divergent enclave regime transitions that

Mickey demonstrates. First, this dissertation places critical importance upon the various

ways the southern elites sought influence in the national parties after 1964. Instead of

positing the three states as enclaves isolated from the national party leaders, I contend

that in the years following democratization the three state elites interacted with the

national parties for their own political survival. The southern political elites’ newly

gained modes of influence in the national parties, which now included a chance of

presidential nomination by the party, determined the degree to which the state

Democratic Party held onto power in the state government and the subsequent transition

to a two-party system. These increased national-state political interactions started a new

period of the nationalized and professionalized major political parties, and defined the

processes of subnational democratic consolidation. The direct interventions of the

national parties and presidents into the three states’ party nomination politics were both

causes and results of the state party elites’ reactions to democratization.

It should be noted that Mickey does take into account the tensions between

state and national parties in terms of which side collectively controls the party reputation,

22 or the party brand, in the perception of the electorate. He writes, notably: “In the United

States, given the distribution of voter preferences, a state party may seek to narrow or widen any perceived difference between the state party’s brand and the brand of the national party. The party brand is thus double-edged. Politicians constantly confront their incomplete control over the brand.” 22 In Mickey’s explication, South Carolina’s

Democratic Party relinquished its reputation for being a white supremacist organization

by incorporating the enfranchised blacks into its coalition, and this, in combination with

the successful maintenance of social order by the state police department, gave way to the

early rise of the racially conservative and business friendly Republican Party. On the other hand, in Mississippi the state Democratic Party succeeded in isolating itself from the national party by continuing to harbor the staunch racist carryovers. White supremacist Democrats’ success at controlling the local reputation among the state white voters curtailed the voters’ exodus to, and subsequently arrested the growth of, the

Republican opposition.

In this interpretation, only the conservative white Democratic enclave rulers appear to have had party reputation control as an electioneering resource vis-à-vis the white voters. Democratizers and new electoral competitors, including black voters and black candidates, their national and local allies, and Republicans, appear to have had little agency in the party reputation control. I consider this line of Mickey’s extrapolation to be incomplete. Not only the white conservatives, but also all of these newly entering contestants in the subnational polities have negotiated and redefined the political order of the post-democratization south. Rather than just focusing on the reputation of the national

Democratic Party being the defender of civil rights, and the success of the local white

22 Mickey, Paths out of Dixie, 340.

23 former enclave rulers at isolating themselves from the national counterpart, this dissertation attends to the negotiative and sometimes contingent processes that took place among southern elites of both parties, democratizers and their national supporters.

My second point of departure from Mickey concerns the definition of the democratic consolidation. Mickey argues that the dismantlement of the enclaves was complete by 1972 for three reasons: the collapse of southern Democrats’ opposition to the national party; reelection of Strom Thurmond in the Senate race that year; and the diminishment of regional differences across the nation as bussing for public school desegregation began outside of the south.23 While I too recognize that 1972 marked the completion of authoritarian enclave dismantlement, I also argue that party institutions that embedded authoritarian enclaves in national democracy had not yet fully been replaced by 1972, rendering the southern party elites susceptible to choosing other developmental trajectories for the state party institutions. As this dissertation demonstrates, it took eight more years for new party institutions to be rebuilt. Until then, there were a few alternative possibilities for institutional configurations of political parties to the one explicated in the present dissertation.

For instance, had an assassin’s gun bullets not constricted Alabama Governor

Wallace permanently to a wheelchair in January 1972, Wallace would have continued to run presidential campaigns through a regionally based third party throughout much of the decade. In such a counterfactual situation, both Jimmy Carter’s political career plans and the national Republican strategy towards the southern states in the mid-1970s would have been greatly affected, if not entirely changed.

Such a conjecture is not a mere delusion when one examines the state party

23 Ibid., 334.

24 compliance processes of McGovern-Fraser Commission reform guidelines. The

McGovern-Fraser reform was a major rupture in the state party institutions that had

embedded authoritarian enclaves into the national democracy and that for some years

appeared to withstand and contain the immediate impact of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

While McGovern-Fraser reform upended the governors’ monopolistic control over state

delegates at the national convention, the governors’ commitment to the state party reform

guideline compliance process were varied among the three states. As Chapter Three

demonstrates, their responses ranged from and ’s utter

absence from the reform implementation process to Robert McNair’s institutionalized

vocal opposition to Jimmy Carter’s belated yet full commitment. 24 These varied

responses of the governors arose from their different prospects for holding onto the state

government and their future political careers.

In the aforementioned counterfactual situation, Carter would have had much

harder time making the political career transition from the Georgia governorship to the

national stage because his home state could have continued to elect Wallace on the third

party ticket in the presidential elections through the 1970s. In reality, Wallace’s

presidential ambitions came to an end in 1972. As the fall of 1972 wore on and the

McGovern candidacy in the presidential election faltered in face of Nixon’s landslide

victory, it was Carter, of all the three governors, who began to actively oust McGovern

and his close associates from the Democratic National Committee. Carter and other

24 Mickey’s north-south split explanation for Georgia is confusing when one considers where the state’s two Democratic Party governors, with stark differences in their relations with the national party, hailed from – the reactionary Lester Maddox of the Atlanta area, and Jimmy Carter of Plains in southwestern Georgia. Carter was a reformer yet did not hesitate to pursue the support of reactionary conservative white voters as he did, for example in the 1970 gubernatorial race. The confusion on bifurcated democratization thesis can be clarified when these two governors’ political adaptation to hold onto power and their varied efforts to construct new presidential party coalitions are taken into account.

25 anti-McGovern forces demanded to restructure the center of the national party to a

coalition of governors and mayors, which would later endorse Carter’s own presidential

candidacy.

vi. Defining the Subnational Democratic Consolidation and Research Questions

Up to this point, I have described subnational democratic consolidation without fully defining it. In addition to the free and popular elections in the enclave territories, there should be certain institutional configurations of power between national and subnational governments that enable reinstitution of former authoritarian enclaves into the national democracy and prevent the former from backsliding into local authoritarianism. I propose that the institutional configuration of national-subnational regime relations should satisfy all of the following three conditions. First, the subnational regimes should implement the internal reform toward democratization and make the political process open to participatory decision making. The 1965 Voting Rights Acts fulfilled this condition. Second, there must be more than one party effectively competing for power of public office in the procedural elections. Third, preexisting regime boundary control politics should no longer work in defense of enclave sovereignty, thereby safeguarding the subnational regimes from authoritarian backsliding. This includes the removal of national constraints that had been placed on the political ambitions of enclave rulers and their successors for controlling the national executive office. Once the enclave successors capture the power of the national executive, their exit from power should also take place through undisputed procedural elections, just as their entry to power did. These three conditions – enclave regime reform, formation of local opposition parties, the

26 enclave successor’s entry to the national executive office and their peaceful exit – should

be the institutional requirements for subnational democratic consolidation.

When subnational democratic consolidation is measured by these three

conditions, one obtains the following research questions. First is the question of enclave

reform. Whether or not, and to what extent, the authoritarian incumbents lose power as a

result of democratization pose important questions for the process of democratic

consolidation. Are they ousted from power, or do they linger on, grudgingly accepting the

democratization process while remaining in the seat of power? Forceful purge of authoritarian incumbents by local democratizers themselves or external forces, such as an occupation army after defeat in war, opens possibilities for the promulgation of new

regime structures. If, on the other hand, the authoritarian incumbents are not purged

forcibly, the authoritarian successors will soon regroup themselves to accommodate the

impact of democratization and plan their political survival. Because the retention of authoritarian rulers in the enclave regime significantly complicates the process of democratic consolidation – as was the case in the American Deep South – the first

research question to be answered is: of the authoritarian holdovers still in power, who

takes the lead in subnational party and regime reform and why do they do it?

Second, the enclave’s one-party dominant regime could also be reformed from

outside as well. For those enclave holdovers who resist subnational regime reform, there

is an option for abandoning the regime and forming an opposition party. The exodus

allows them to reassemble themselves from outside the reform coalition and seek support

and resources elsewhere. The national opposition party provides an easy haven for the

enclave defectors as they seek to form a local opposition party so as to gain electoral

27 footing in the former enclaves. When the national opposition party assists the formation

of a local opposition party and intervenes in that process, what kind of political

calculation do they make when they select the locales and the particular defectors?

The southern elites’ overcoming of existing constraints on authoritarian

enclaves’ national executive ambitions is the third problem. For the enclaves to achieve full democratization, rulers with direct enclave origins would not only get elected to the federal executive office, but would govern the nation without constitutional problems. At

the end of the term, the executive authority would have to be turned over to an opposition

force through election. How do the enclave successors possibly overcome the

institutional constraints that had been placed on their ambitions for the national executive

office? What are the institutional pitfalls that hamper the enclave successors who control

the national executive office after enclave democratization? These questions, formulated

from the three conditions for completed subnational democratic transition, dovetail with

the study of American contemporary political parties, which is reviewed in the next

section.

vii. Contemporary American Political Parties: Party Decline Thesis and the Various

Forms of Nationalized Parties

The preceding discussion on subnational democratic consolidation and

resultant reconfigurations of party institutions presents a puzzle that neither the decline of

American political parties thesis, nor the recent theoretical reappraisals of political parties,

have quite solved. The puzzle is why enclave successors – particularly the governors –

not only broke the party’s regime boundary control institutions that had curbed their

28 predecessors’ national executive ambitions but actively led the reconstruction of

presidential party coalitions of governors and mayors from the mid-1960s to 1980,

despite the purported decline of local party bosses around at the same time. The party decline thesis has claimed that since the 1960s, particularly after the McGovern-Fraser reform of the Democratic Party’s national delegate selection processes, American political parties lost their organizational robustness in local politics and presidential nomination contests, as the party bosses no longer could control the delegate selection processes in the party conventions. In place of the closed-door deals on candidate selection in smoke filled rooms, individual candidates, assisted by paid pollsters and political consultants, began to manage their own campaigns and secure party nominations through primaries and caucuses that were opened to popular vote. Combined with the

weakening of partisan identification among the American electorate, the traditional party

organizations of the mold have supposedly lost their power. However,

as far as the governors and state party leaders of the three states are concerned, their

authority in political parties appears not to have lost traction in the course of subnational

democratic consolidation.

In response to the party decline thesis, recent reevaluations of contemporary

American political parties have pointed out that in actuality the contemporary parties are

alive and well, but in forms different from the mass party in which the local party bosses

ruled. Examined in the subsections below are three strands of contemporary party

theories that affirm the revival of parties: party in service to its candidates; party as

network of party elites and intense policy demanders; and party organizations built by

presidents and reformed by national party committees when out of power. Despite the

29 differences in analytical frameworks and the type of evidence each study uses, these

reappraisals all claim that the contemporary American parties have become nationalized

institutions. I examine what each study means by nationalization of parties, what their

insights have to offer to this dissertation’s analysis, and clarify the significant area of inquiry that these theories have nevertheless left untouched.

a. Resource-Rich National Party Institutions Serving the Election Needs of the Congressional Candidates

As the modern mass party controlled by local party bosses went into decline in the 1960s, so did the proportion of voters with strong partisan identifications. Yet by

other measurements, political parties resurged around the same time. For example, while

many American voters no longer identify themselves with either one of the parties, public

perceptions on the ideological reputations of the parties became quite distinct in the latter

half of the twentieth century. In other words, the Republican Party increasingly began to

be known to the electorate as the party of conservatives, the Democrats as that of the

liberals. According to John Aldrich, the parties successfully established their “brand

names” or “reputations” so that, based on the names of the parties, the voters can save the

information cost of identifying the policy orientations of even the little known candidates

running for public office. The ideological partisanship became profound also in the

congressional parties, as the two legislative parties became more internally cohesive and

ideologically distant under the strengthened legislative party leadership.25 Aldrich argues that such seeming incoherence among different measurements of parties – local party organizations in decline, weakened partisan identifications among the electorate, and at

25 David W. Rohde, Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); Gary W. Cox and Mathew D. McCubbins, Setting the Agenda: Responsible Party Government in the U.S. House of Representatives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Sean M. Theriault, Party Polarization in Congress (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

30 the same time distinct ideological reputations of the partisan office seekers and heightened polarization of the legislative parties – call for a new conceptualization of parties, that is, “highly resource rich national party organizations” serving the needs of candidates through election campaign resource distribution.26

What he means by nationalization of parties are two things: first, the

standardization of party rules and procedures for the local and state Democratic Party

following its adoption of McGovern-Fraser Commission reforms; and second, professionalization and strengthened financial and personnel resource bases of the national party, especially in the Republican National Committee, which have enabled it to provide candidates with professional and technical expertise for their election campaigns.27 Aldrich claims that each of the two major parties adopted some reforms of

the other and the two are now reasonably similar in structure and functions: the close

symmetry between the two parties is documented in the growth of financial campaign

contributions the nationalized parties have provided to congressional candidates since

1976.28

Aldrich’s emphasis on congressional campaign resource distribution as evidence of party nationalization is understandable because he makes the theoretical connections among national legislative party leadership discipline, reinforcement of a party’s ideological brand signaled to the public, and national parties’ service provision to the congressional candidates. However, the United States Congress is only one of the constitutional government branches, though an important one, where party institutions are

26 John H. Aldrich, Why Parties?: The Origin and Transformation of Political Parties in America (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995); Why Parties?: A Second Look (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), Chapters Six to Eight, see particularly 260. 27 Aldrich, Why Parties?: A Second Look, 269-74. 28 Ibid., 289-91. See Figures 8.6, 8.7 and 8.8.

31 at work. Elections to other branches and levels of government, such as the presidential campaigns and gubernatorial races, do not receive sufficient attention in Aldrich’s theory.

The omission is critical because his theory fails to clarify how several independent political developments, specifically political transformations in the south, development of nationalized party institutions, and professionalized candidate campaigns for the White

House and the governorship, were linked to one another.29 Even though he writes that southern party realignment in the Republican presidential elections from the middle to late 1960s as critical, his theory does not explain why national organs of the two parties, other than the congressional parties, also had to be built in certain ways. Also, party organization scholars, including Aldrich, have pointed that since the 1980s the national parties’ resources were distributed to the state and local party organizations for technological update, staff professionalization and expansion, but their explanations as to why this happened is not immediately clear.30 This dissertation provides an answer to the puzzle of the rise of national party organizations led by the governors by focusing on the three cases of the Deep South states: Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. Though

29 Aldrich is cautious about identifying the causes that made the national parties take up the candidate service provision role when he writes the following: “The critical era itself did not create a new institutional form of party; it simply meant the death of the old. Over time, however, the parties as organizations have adapted to the changing circumstances, and a new form of party has emerged, one that is ‘in service’ to its ambitious politicians but not ‘in control’ of them as the mass party sought to be.” Ibid., 285; see also, "Southern Parties in State and Nation," Journal of Politics 62, no. 3 (2000). 30 Aldrich, Why Parties?: A Second Look, 287-8. See also the result of mail surveys other researchers conducted in the 1980s and on which Aldrich conducted a follow-up survey in the late 1990s: Cornelius P. Cotter and John F. Bibby, "Institutional Development of Parties and the Thesis of Party Decline," Political Science Quarterly 95 (1980); James L. Gibson et al., "Assessing Party Organizational Strength," American Journal of Political Science 27, no. 2 (1983); Robert J. Huckshorn and John F. Bibby, "National Party Rules and Delegate Selection in the Republican Party," PS 16, no. 4 (1983); Cornelius P. Cotter et al., Party Organizations in American Politics (New York: Praeger, 1984); James L. Gibson et al., "Whither the Local Parties?: A Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Analysis of the Strength of Party Organizations," American Journal of Political Science 29, no. 1 (1985); Robert J. Huckshorn, James L. Gibson, and Cornelius P. Cotter, "Party Integration and Party Organizational Strength," Journal of Politics 48 (1986); John F. Bibby, "Political Party Trends in 1985: The Continuing but Constrained Advance of the National Party," Publius 16, no. 3 (1986); James L. Gibson, John P. Frendreis, and Laura L. Vertz, "Party Dynamics in the 1980s: Change in Country Party Organization Strength, 1980-1984," American Journal of Political Science 33, no. 1 (1989).

32 these three states are hardly standard and comparable to other states outside the south,

their subnational democratization experiences provide some important evidence on the formation of nationalized political parties. So how exactly have presidents and presidential candidates contributed to the nationalization of parties? The next two subsections review the existent studies on presidential nomination, presidents, and their relations with the national parties.

b. Invisible Primaries as Quadrennial Reconstruction of Presidential Party Coalitions

Although the national party conventions no longer choose the presidential candidates and merely ratify the popular vote winners of the state-by-state primaries and caucuses, other scholars have argued that the eclipse of national party conventions does

not equal party decline. By defining parties not just as collective institutions created by

holders and seekers of public office, but as networks of intense policy demanders, interest groups, social movements, donors, as well as elected politicians, the authors of The Party

Decides argue that the parties are doing their essential job: candidate nomination. Such network parties are primarily at work in the year prior to the presidential election year, before the popular votes are cast in the first caucuses and primaries in Iowa and New

Hampshire. The authors call this process “invisible primaries,” as the party network’s insiders coordinate and unify their support behind a single candidate who would easily win the party’s nomination and still be most electable in the general election. The unified support of the party insiders enables the chosen candidate to amass campaign resources, such as finance, campaign labor and endorsements, before the popular vote nomination

contest begins, so that the candidate pre-screened by the party network would sweep the

33 popular vote in the state-by-state primaries.31 Written as a theoretical amendment to

Aldrich’s institutionally based definition of political parties, the authors offer new ways

of conceptualizing party strength: a party is strong when the network of intense policy

demanders can unite behind a candidate who has the highest prospect for general election

victory, while a weak party would fail to unify its insider support for the most electable candidate.32

The authors of The Party Decides portray invisible primaries as if the party insiders’ support converges behind a candidate based solely on the party insiders’

ideological preferences. The authors do so presumably in an effort to highlight the

group-centered, Tocquevillian nature of presidential nominating party coalition formation

and to deemphasize the institutional aspect of the political parties. However, the

presidential endorsements of party actors, particularly those of the elected party officials,

are often path dependent on the endorsers’ institutional positions and their established relations with the national party. For clarification, an account of invisible primaries from an institutional standpoint is in order.

This dissertation proposes that a theory of political party should posit presidential nomination contests as attempts to recast the national party’s central authority through the collection of party elite endorsements. Presidential nomination politics not only selects a party’s certified candidate for the national executive office, but also effectively reconfigures the institutional arrangements of power within the national political party. The quadrennial invisible primaries force the two major political parties’

31 Marty Cohen et al., The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations before and after Reform (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 11; Kathleen Bawn et al., "A Theory of Political Parties: Groups, Policy Demands and Nominations in American Politics," Perspectives on Politics 10, no. 03 (2012). 32 See Chapter 4, Cohen et al., The Party Decides.

34 disparate coalitions to unite behind a candidate in ways that no other elections to federal offices do. It is only in the presidential nomination contests that the parties must successfully unify internal support behind a single candidate who has the best prospect for winning in the general election. No other party nomination contests for public office besides that for the presidency require such momentum for national party unification.

This early phase of the presidential candidate selection process by the party elites, donors, organized interest groups and partisan activists generates the institutional alignment of partisan support, which, upon winning the general election, forms the basis of the presidential party coalition. The collective acts of unifying network party actor support behind a presidential party nominee recast the core members of the national party committees every four or eight years. Thus, presidential nomination contests are not just ad hoc realignments of party insider support around ideological policies alone; rather, the national party institutions are reconfigured by the contests. The invisible presidential primary is the only mechanism to induce institutional order and support for a national party candidate across this geographically extended republic with such diverse local communities and varied policy interests.

As the authors of The Party Decides acknowledge in their study, one difficulty of giving empirical proof to their party concept lies in documenting the empirical evidence of invisible primaries, particularly the processes of intense policy demanders’ endorsement coordination. While the endorsements of elected officials are relatively easy to collect from publicly available sources such as newspaper reports and archival records, the intense policy demanders’ presidential candidate support does not always leave clear and complete paper trails. This dissertation considers, by the design of its research

35 methodology, that elected politicians are the primary makers of presidential candidate endorsements, thereby inducing institutionalized order within the national party, while they also take their own electoral prospects into consideration regarding the reactions of the party activists and intense policy demanders. Therefore the elected officials’ endorsements are the primary institutional authority for the presidential party coalition.

The realignment of the presidential party coalition in the former enclaves and the changed relations between the state party elites and the national party leaders were critical to the process of subnational democratic consolidation. Before democratization, the authoritarian enclaves collectively chose, at the national party convention, presidential candidates who would not interfere with the enclave sovereignty. As authoritarian enclaves democratized, the preceding boundary control politics between the enclave rulers and the national democrats have frayed and the insularity of the state parties began to diminish. The invisible primaries of national executive candidate nomination contests tested the enclave successors’ relations with the national party leadership because the authoritarian holdovers could no longer defend their enclave sovereignty against the national governments. Therefore, the state party elite endorsements in the quadrennial presidential candidate nomination contests reveal the extent of former enclaves’ reinstitution into the national democracy.

c. The Two Not-so-compatible Party Incentives of the Presidents: Construction of the Party Coalition and Pursuit of Popular Support for the Office

Upon getting elected to the White House by the party coalition forged through invisible primaries, the presidents subsequently must pursue two incentives that are not always compatible. One is to strengthen and institutionalize the party insider support in

36 the national party committees so that the presidential policy initiatives will have their

input and approval. The party insiders’ commitment to the presidential coalition must be

secured so that they will offer support for the president’s reelection effort in four years.

The other incentive of the president is to widen the public support for the office of

presidency. These two impetuses do not always complement each other: the party

insiders of the invisible primaries, particularly intense policy demanders, would consider

the expansion of popular support for the presidency problematic, as such support could

mean ideological compromise and the weakening of partisan institutional orders that the invisible primary endorsers tried to form.

Therefore, the party leadership of the presidents is in conflict with the constitutional duty of the office. Sidney Milkis points out that this tension arose with the

construction of expanded national administrative state under the New Deal, well before

the onset of the tumultuous 1960s. Calling the tension “inverted Hamiltonianism,” Milkis

argues that every president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has had to govern the nation

through the national administrative state, or the institutional coalition of bureaucratic

agencies, interest groups, courts and congressional sub-committees, which enabled the

president to circumvent and eventually displace the intermediary political organizations

of traditional Jeffersonian parties. Much to Milkis’s consternation, the rise of

administrative presidency and the withering of local parties have displaced the

representative government, and subsequently the major policy decisions have

increasingly been made by the administrative agencies and the court.33

By focusing just on the Jeffersonian traditional party organizations and

juxtaposing their demise to the president’s executive leadership, however, Milkis gives

33 Milkis, The President and the Parties.

37 the readers an impression that the party, at least on the Democratic Party side, is altogether dead. In response to Cohen and others, Milkis would dismiss the intense policy demanders’ active candidate endorsements in the invisible primaries as prime indication of the organized interests taking over the traditional party organization to secure access to the administrative state. However, as the other authors cited above argue, the political parties have been resurgent in different forms and institutional configurations than the decentralized traditional organizations: in the polarized congressional parties, in the invisible presidential primaries, and as this dissertation argues, in the presidential party coalitions and their national party committees that southern governors reformed after

1964. The national parties’ shift to a coalition led by the governors is indeed not incompatible with the rise of national administrative state centered in the presidency, yet the reasons and meanings behind the shift has not received enough attention in Milkis’s work.34

Daniel Galvin offers a different view from that of Milkis on the post-World

War II presidents’ party leadership. Rather than the president’s expanded national administrative authorities displacing the local traditional parties, as Milkis theorizes,

Galvin finds that the incumbent presidents were using their authority in investing in and buttressing the organizational functions of national parties, such as candidate recruitment and human capital development of the party staffs. He points out that the two major parties have diverged in their presidential efforts to build party organizations: Democratic presidents have tended to prey upon the existing Democratic Party organizations and used them for the presidential office’s benefit but not for the collective welfare of the party,

34 Milkis writes that Carter, who was nominated under the new presidential nomination process, “was an anti-party outsider whose devotion to ‘enlightened administration’ made his isolation profound.” Ibid., 257.

38 while Republican presidents have been active builders of their party through organization

building, fundraising and candidate recruitment. Galvin attributes this asymmetry to the

need for the Republican presidents to overcome their party’s continued minority status in voter partisanship and office holding across governments at the state and federal levels.35

The two parties have been asymmetric while being out of power from the

White House as well. According to Philip Klinkner, whenever one of the parties lost in the presidential elections, the “out party” national committees reformed themselves in distinct ways in the four or eight years in the interim. Klinkner finds that in the four

decades from 1956, the Republican National Committee has always responded to its

electoral defeat by improving its organizations and adeptly employing communication

techniques, such as direct mail, computerized voter and donor data base compilation,

market research and professional consultants, while the Democratic National Committee

has tended to implement procedural reforms on the party rules. Notably, Klinkner finds

that neither party actively modified its ideological and programmatic appeals to win back

the median voter in the next election. 36 Galvin and Klinkner both find that the

Republican National Committee has built its party organizations to overcome the party’s electoral minority status across the nation and taken advantage of the communication and marketing technologies that became readily available from the corporate world and the funding sources that the party was endowed with from its business constituents. The

Democrats, in contrast, tended to take their majority status for granted and did not find it urgent to develop the party organizations.

35 Daniel Galvin, Presidential Party Building: Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). 36 Philip A. Klinkner, The Losing Parties: Out-Party National Committees, 1956-1993 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994).

39 This dissertation demonstrates that there was more to the party building leadership of the presidents and the national party leaders than just being in either the

striving minority or the complacent majority. So far as the processes of southern former

enclaves’ democratic consolidation were concerned, both parties’ organizational

development and reforms were overseen and directed by the respective national parties

and implemented by the local party elites. In the national-state party interactions, the

national parties aimed not only to expand local party vote in the former enclaves, as

Galvin and Klinkner would predict, but also to grant the political credentials to the local

parties without letting the opponents in the state and the national party voice criticism of

such moves. For the local Democrats in power, they needed to reform their party to

regain political recognition from the national party. For the national Republicans, the

party initially did not have local footing in the former enclaves and thus needed to gain

local party votes while containing the potential national recriminations against such

electoral outreach in the former authoritarian territories.37

d. A New Definition of Political Parties

The preceding discussion leads to the following definition of political parties.

A political party is a set of multiple political institutions created by seekers and holders of

public office across various levels and branches of constitutional government to first capture power in government and then to ensure the continued hold of it. A political party pursues power in government through majority coalition formation in the electorate and

37 Martin Shefter’s distinction of two classes of political parties – externally mobilized parties and internally mobilized parties – and their different reasons and methods for pursuing electoral votes are informative for the development of subnational democratic consolidation. Shefter employs such distinctions in explaining the development of patronage distribution party machines in the American cities, a political world completely different from the southern political parties. Martin Shefter, Political Parties and the State: The American Historical Experience (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).

40 among the elected officials. The party elites create the programmatic appeals to win

elections, rather than letting the existing socioeconomic cleavages define what the party

stand for, as the party elites test and select which segment of the electorate they aim to

appeal to.38

Through the candidate nomination process a political party creates and maintains institutional orders that are not explicitly stipulated in the regime constitution.

The endorsement of co-partisans for a presidential candidate seeking nomination and election to the White House is important not just because it assures the quality and ideological orientations of the candidate to the voters but because such endorsements indicate where the party’s presidential coalitions shift to. The enclave democratization and the subsequent change in the previous disinclination of the national Democratic Party to nominate state party elites of enclave origin for the national executive office make the partisan candidate endorsements quite critical.

It should be noted that enclave successors’ support of the national party do not

necessarily correspond to their policy positions in the spatial models of the rational

choice theory. The authoritarian enclave successors taken up in the present study are

overall on the conservative end of the ideological spectrum, assuming such measurements

existed for the governors and state party officials across the nation or within each state.

But such ideological positions do not merely explain their support and challenges to the

national party leadership. Rather than the ideological policy positions measured by

38 I concur with Martin Shefter in his view that “political parties are not simply devices for transmitting to leaders whatever views happen to prevail in the electorate. Rather, parties are institutions constructed by political elites to mobilize popular followings.” Ibid., 17. Although this dissertation focuses on the three-state region that is known for the absence of machine-type party organizations, the subject of Shefter’s study, his elite- and institution-based theorization of party emergence are nonetheless informative for the democratic consolidation processes. See also David R. Mayhew, Placing Parties in American Politics: Organization, Electoral Settings, and Government Activity in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).

41 legislative votes and executive vetoes, their dispositions in relation to the party’s

presidential candidates can be measured by the candidate endorsements in the presidential nomination contests.

The presidential party coalitions formed through the nomination contests affect

the particular mode of democratic consolidation in each former enclave. What I mean by

a presidential party coalition is the network of state party elites, prominent among them

the elected public officials of the state government, congress and party organizations,

supporting a presidential candidate for party nomination. Of all the enclave successors,

governors, who do not have constitutional authority in the federal government, were

critical in determining the democratized subnational regimes’ relationship with the

presidential party coalitions. Whether the governors were supporting members of the

coalition, or were defying it, proved critically important to the ways the three enclaves

were reinstituted into the national democracy.

This dissertation’s intended theoretical contributions to the preceding studies

on political parties are to demonstrate and argue the following two points: first, that from

the end of the 1960s and throughout the 1970s, the national party leaders increasingly

intervened in the state parties of the three former enclaves, so that the national parties

could forge presidential party coalitions in the three states. The national interventions in

the gubernatorial candidate nominations were critical departures from the local autonomy

the authoritarian enclave rulers had defended and enjoyed in the previous seven decades

through the aforementioned arrangements of Democratic Party institutions. The

interventions hardly ever worked, however, in ways intended by the national party. This

is the second point of contention. The national interventions, whether in the forms of

42 party reform guidelines, funding opposition candidates, or selectively enticing local party

defectors, proved successful only when the enclave successors agreed to comply with the

national instructions so that they would remain in power.

viii. Existent Southern Mass Voting Behavior Literature’s Incomplete Answers

Studies on southern political transformations in the latter half of the twentieth century, particularly that of the southern mass electorate, abound. Though they have been informative, none has provided satisfactory answers to the research questions posed in

this dissertation. Taking advantage of the wealth of public records in elections returns and

demographic data, which makes the southern voting behaviors across the eleven distinct

former Confederate states comparable over time, political scientists in the behaviorist

school sought parsimonious answers to account for the party realignment in the

post-Second World War period. They have asked whether the cause of party realignment

was white reactions to desegregation or the region’s economic modernization. Answers

differed depending on the ways authors organized the data at hand. Race mattered when

the peripheral southern states of Florida, Texas and North Carolina were compared to the

states of the Deep South, or when black majority congressional districts were juxtaposed

to white majority districts. 39 Economic class divisions mattered when presidential

electoral returns of only white voters but not black voters were regressed against partisan

voters’ income levels.40

While these results are all informative, the binary argument of either class or

39 Earl Black and Merle Black, Politics and Society in the South (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987); The Rise of Southern Republicans (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002). 40 Byron E. Shafer and Richard Johnston, The End of Southern Exceptionalism: Class, Race, and Partisan Change in the Postwar South (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006).

43 race being the sole “engine” of partisan mass voting behavior change in presidential

elections fails to account for many things, including the state party’s shifting relations with the national party organizations, and the varied paces of the state Republican Party’s organizational growth. Mass voting data and demographic attributes may in some cases provide confirming evidence for these changes, but the behaviorists’ single-minded effort to identify parsimonious causal mechanisms – a common pursuit in studies of southern voting behaviors – leaves out important inquiries on the particular reconfiguration of political institutions established during the democratic consolidation processes.

Electoral majorities do not necessarily determine the trajectories of institutional development. Rather the trajectories are set by those elites already in power or in pursuit of it, and the mass voters for the most part can only choose from the alternatives that are presented to them by the elected officials and candidates. The reconfiguration of political institutions, political parties being the most prominent among them, that came about in the processes of democratic consolidation appear to have had lasting effects on the later growth of party votes. Therefore the scholarship on mass voting behaviors of the southern electorate is incomplete, without explicating the institutional underpinnings of political parties.

ix. Methodology, Sources of Empirical Data and Rationales for Case Selection

As the preceding discussion makes clear, this dissertation employs comparative historical analysis as the method of inquiry. Comparative historical analysis is the most fitting approach for pursuing the research questions because it attends to the causality and

44 temporality of political change, as well as the systematic comparison of cases.41

For documenting the empirical evidences for each chapter, I relied on the following sources of information. Lyndon Johnson’s digitized phone conversation tape collection reveals the live exchanges of raw comments between the president and the southern party elites that no written memorandums can recount. The archival materials in

the presidential libraries of Richard Nixon, Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter have

provided both administrative and personal papers of the White House aides who were

involved in the politics of the three states. Personal papers of the relevant local party elites and the state party committees were consulted in the special collection libraries of the following institutions: the , Georgia Department of Archives

and History, Auburn University and Clemson University. Local and national newspapers,

published monographs, biographies, unpublished dissertation manuscripts, as well as the

transcripts of recorded personal interviews have been valuable sources of information.

Of the eleven former Confederate states in the south, Alabama, Georgia, and

South Carolina are selected as comparable cases for three reasons. First, these three states

had notable former and incumbent governors who had aspirations for the national

executive office and who won at least a few electoral college votes as presidential

candidates before and after democratization. This is an important qualification for the

choice of states, as presidential campaigns of the enclave rulers and their successors

provide an important backdrop to the politics of subnational authoritarianism and its

democratic consolidation. One cannot discuss how the national constraints placed on

enclave rulers came to an end if the specified state did not have notable presidential

41 James Mahoney and Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

45 aspirants who stayed in power throughout the course of subnational democratic

consolidation.

The three states also shared several distinct authoritarian regime characteristics

in common prior to democratization. First, the enclaves disenfranchised the local blacks

and poor whites, thereby severely curtailed mass electoral and political participation. As

Figure 1.2 demonstrates, the presidential general elections voter turnout rate in the enclaves in the first half of the twentieth century generally remained below 20 percent, which was less than half the national figure.

[Insert Figure 1.2 here.]

Second, the three Deep South states had significantly large proportions of

African Americans in the state population. Figure 1.3 indicates that the black population constituted more than one-third of the state population in the first half of the twentieth century.

[Insert Figure 1.3. here.]

The third structural similarity among the three states is the state labor market.

The three states were commonly agrarian as of the mid twentieth century. Shown in

Figure 1.4 are the numbers of workers employed in non-farm establishments in proportion to the state populations since 1950. The proportion of the non-agricultural labor in each state is cited here as a rough measure of the economic class composition in the state population.

[Insert Figure 1.4. here.]

It would be safe to claim from these figures that the three states were roughly

46

Figure 1.2

Voter Turnout in Presidential General Elections, 1916-2012 60 40

20 US VoterTurnout in Percentage AL GA SC South 0

1916 1924 1932 1940 1948 1956 1964 1972 1980 1988 1996 2004 2012 Year

Sources: John P. McIver. Table Eb62-122. Voter turnout in presidential elections, by state, 1824-2000. Historical Statistics of the United States. Millennial Edition Online. Retrieved through Johns Hopkins University Library on May 5, 2015. For years 2004 to 2012, Michael P. McDonald. United States Election Project: State Turnout Rates. Retrieved on July 19, 2015 at http://www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout/voter-turnout-data

47

Figure 1.3

Proportion of State Black Population, 1910-2010

.55 AL GA SC South .5 .45 .4 .35 .3 .25 .2 .15 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 Year

Sources: Michael R. Haines. State Populations, Series Aa2244-6550. Historical Statistics of the United States. Millennial Edition Online. Retrieved through Johns Hopkins University Library on May 5, 2015. For 2000 and 2010, U.S. Census Bureau.

48

Figure 1.4

Ratio of Employees in Non-Agricultural Establishments to State Population, 1950-2010 .5 .4 .3

AL GA SC South .2

1950 1954 1958 1962 1966 1970 1974 1978 1982 1986 1990 1994 1998 2002 2006 2010 Year

Sources: Compiled from Table “Employees in Nonfarm Establishments – States.” Statistical Abstract of The United States, 1954-2012 and Michael R. Haines. State Populations, Series Aa2244-6550. Historical Statistics of the United States. Millennial Edition Online. Retrieved through Johns Hopkins University Library on May 5, 2015.

49 identical to each other in terms of the severely curtailed political mobilization in the first half of the twentieth century, the size of the black population and the predominantly agricultural labor market. These structural similarities can serve as baseline control in accounting for the variations in the political outcomes, which are summarized in Table

1.3.

Table 1.3. Summary of Democratic Consolidation Process Alabama Georgia South Carolina

Statewide politics Personalistic/ Competitive Organized/ by 1980 Clientelism two-party Republican dominant

Governors’ relations with Defiant Defiant ! Reformist Supported DNC DNC, 1964-72

State Democratic Disorganized Weak Organized, till 1973 Party organization

GOP national None (H. Dent in Frequent Some interventions Nixon adm. & RNC)

Major Presidential George Wallace Strom Thurmond Jimmy Carter (1976) Aspirants (1964, 68, 72, 76) (1948)

Election of 1st post-Wallace (1986) Late (2002) Early (1974) GOP Governor

The democratic consolidation processes that took place in the three states can be briefly summarized as follows. In Alabama, the state party organization remained disorganized throughout the period. Its authoritarian holdover governor, George Wallace, continued to defy the Civil Rights Acts and the national Democratic Party directives. For

Wallace, the state and the national party did not prove useful to keep him in the seat of the state government after democratization. What kept him in the state governorship was

50 his perennial interest in running third-party presidential campaign to detest the

democratization pressure. Because Wallace’s presidential party bid gained significant

tractions across the south, the national Republican Party frequently intervened in the

statewide politics in an effort to curtail Wallace’s presidential aspirations. The state’s first

Republican governor in the contemporary time was first elected right after Wallace’s retirement from politics in 1986, and the state governor’s politics has been characterized by personalistic and clientelistic rule.

In Georgia, the state Democratic Party’s relations with the Democratic National

Committee oscillated, as the state’s gubernatorial administrations were handed over from

Carl Sanders, a close ally of President Johnson, to Lester Maddox, an unapologetic segregationist governor elected in a contested election of 1966, then to Jimmy Carter, who committed himself to the McGovern-Fraser reform implementation process in the

1970 gubernatorial campaign. Soon after George McGovern’s 1972 presidential candidacy faltered, Carter started to plan his own presidential campaign and became actively involved in the Democratic National Committee. Georgia remained a

Democratic stronghold for a longer time than the other two states, and the first

Republican governor was elected only in 2002.

South Carolina’s Democratic Party leadership had been highly organized under state senator Edgar Brown and state House speaker Solomon Blatt, both of whom were elected from Barnwell County. The Barnwell Ring leaders gave stability and continuity to the state administration, as the Democratic gubernatorial candidates in the latter half of the 1960s were endorsed by these two state legislators. Both Brown and Blatt were close supporters of the Democratic National Committee, and the state Democratic delegation

51 regularly supported the national Democratic presidential candidates even after democratization. Those authoritarian holdovers who did not support the Barnwell legislators defected to the Republican Party relatively early. As the Barnwell Ring leaders lost control of the state government in the early 1970s, the state saw an accelerated growth of an organized, conservative Republican Party.

x. Chapter Overview

The rest of this dissertation is structured as follows. Chapter Two gives the overview of the three authoritarian enclaves immediately following the passages of the two federal civil rights acts in the mid-1960s. It describes where the enclave rulers stood in relation to the national Democratic Party, particularly their variant support given to

President Lyndon Johnson at the 1964 presidential nomination convention and throughout the Civil Rights Act enforcement process. The elections of reactionary governors in 1966 were critical for enclave democratization processes because the state

Democratic Party delegates to the tumultuous 1968 national party convention in Chicago were either appointed or led by these governors.

Chapter Three investigates the processes of the nationally mandated state

Democratic Party reform compliance. The state party leadership implemented the nationally drafted party reform guidelines of the McGovern-Fraser Commission.

Prompted to democratize the state delegate selection process in the wake of the disastrous

1968 Chicago convention, the compliances and implementations of the eighteen guidelines at the state level took different turns among the three states. The differences in the timing and the degree of cooperation in the state party with the national party

52 stemmed mainly from the variant gubernatorial leadership over the state party

organizations and the state party leaders’ relations with the national Democratic Party

committee.

Chapter Four considers the national interventions of the Republican White

House and the national party leaders in the three enclaves between 1969 and 1972. The

Nixon administration during this time increasingly intervened in the statewide elections of Alabama and Georgia. The chapter examines why these interventions occurred and what results they produced. The state Democratic Party leaders’ shifting relations with the national Democratic Party, the authoritarian holdovers’ third-party presidential campaigns, as well as Nixon’s own reelection incentive for 1972, shaped the decisions of the national Republican interventions in these states.

The last empirical chapter, Chapter Five, traces the breakdown of institutional constraints that had been placed on enclave successors’ national executive ambitions. The chapter specifically examines the path to the White House that was reclaimed by Georgia

governor, Jimmy Carter. The chapter also identifies the institutional mismatch that mired

the Carter presidency in the midst of economic and foreign crisis. By the time he exited the White House in 1980, the subnational democratic consolidation was complete.

Chapter Six draws conclusion from the findings of the preceding empirical chapters and by relating them to the theories of contemporary American political parties.

The chapter identifies fields of inquiry that need further investigation. It then concludes with a thought on how the politics in the 1970s Deep South could illuminate the presidential nomination politics that followed in the late twentieth century.

53 Chapter Two. The Authoritarian Enclave Rulers’ One Last Defense, 1964-1968

George Wallace: We’ve got those flying in, nuns, priests and we’ve got those hundreds of bearded beatniks in front of my capital now. … All I want to say is that quite frankly they have been stirred up by a lot of things. Of course I know you don’t want anything to happen, but it looks like a revolution. Lyndon Johnson: Well, Governor, the court has acted now. … I think that your concern is justified and if you can do anything to get that request for stay out of the way so we don’t have to sit here and wait days and days and days for that to be acted on, while the stuff builds up and blows the cork out. White House phone conversation, March 18, 1965.1

To destroy and cut out of the social body a part which clung to so many organs involved a frightful operation. This made the Revolution appear greater than it was. It appeared the universal destroyer: for what it did destroy was linked, and, in some degree, incorporated with almost every thing else. Alexis de Tocqueville. The Old Regime and the Revolution.2

The next day after the federal court cleared the order for the civil rights march to proceed from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama governor George Wallace and President

Lyndon Johnson negotiated over the telephone the deployment of the Alabama National

Guard for providing roadside security to the marchers. Wallace, ever vacillating over the deployment decision, insisted that he saw no immediate need to call in the guard for protecting the marchers. As an excuse for his inaction, the governor cited the possible depletion of state funds for prolonged guard mobilization, should the marchers stay on in town after the march was over. President Johnson, being hesitant to immediately

federalize the national guard under the president’s authority, tried to persuade Wallace

that neither side wanted to see the march, the counter protest and the state highway police

descend into another violent confrontation while the nation intently watched

1 Lyndon Johnson Presidential Recordings, Conversation with George Wallace, Nicholas Katzenbach, Buford Ellington. March 18, 1965. Citation No.: 7094, Tape: WH6503.09. Online Audio Archive, Miller Center, University of Virginia. 2 Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution, trans. John Bonner (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1856), Book I, Ch. 5, 36.

54 developments on television. He hinted that the government of Alabama had the primary

responsibility for providing law enforcement on the ground. The two sides did not come

to an explicit agreement that day. A day and half later, with still no troop deployment by

Wallace forthcoming, the President signed an executive order to federalize the national

guard.3 The marchers finally started the walk to the state capitol on the next day.

What the phone conversation quoted in the epigraph reveals is not only that

Wallace, the emblematic enclave ruler, and the president knew that the civil rights

protests finally brought about democratization to Alabama and the Jim Crow south. They

also knew that their executive decisions had to be made for holding under control the

physical presence on the ground of popular protest movements, both pro-democratization and white supremacist. The violent police confrontation that unfolded at the Edmund

Pettus Bridge and was broadcast to national audiences eleven days prior to the phone

conversation finally prompted the president and Congress to prepare for the enactment of an enforceable federal voter registration law. This left the provision of law enforcement on the ground and execution of local desegregation policies to the governors who were at the forefront of state governance in the final stage of democratization.

As the heat of protest demonstration subsided from the street and mass democracy began to take root, the remaining governors in the long run began to adapt to the expanded and changing electorate. As the example of George Wallace’s prolonged political career that lasted into the middle of the 1980s exemplifies, the passage of the

Voting Rights Act did not immediately oust the subnational authoritarian rulers from the state government. While the act enabled the enfranchisement of citizens who had been

3 Ben Franklin, "Wallace Pleads Poverty and Bids U.S. Call up Guard," New York Times, March 20, 1965; Fendall Yerxa, "Johnson Calls up Troops, Deplores Wallace's Acts; Alabama March on Today," ibid., March 21.

55 excluded from political participation, it did not immediately displace those enclave rulers in the statewide and federal offices that had defended the enclave regime boundaries against the national government. To hold onto power in the state government after democratization, the governors could no longer take for granted the three regime boundary control institutions that had insulated them from national interventions. Instead the governors needed to adapt to the expanded electorate and devised new ways of influencing the national party and the president. Thus the problems of subnational democratic consolidation began.

This chapter compares and contrasts the varied responses of the enclave succeeding governors in defending their state regime from the national party and

President Johnson for one last time before the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination process was reformed. The state-by-state section first identifies the major state party elites’ reactions to the enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and their support of President Johnson for presidential nomination at the national convention that took place less than two months afterward. The governors’ responses to the 1964 Civil

Rights Act and the subsequent nomination of President Johnson at the national convention ranged from reluctant embracement to express defiance. The degree to which the governor could control the state delegates, and the state party’s relations with the president, determined the responses at the national convention.

This chapter then examines the alignment of state political elite support in the

1966 gubernatorial races, which were fought over the survival of the local enclave authoritarianism. Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina all elected governors who largely resisted civil rights progress and had varied relations with the state party organizations

56 and the national Democratic Party. Thus electoral majoritarian democracy of state government and civil rights enforcement remained very much at odds, as segregationist governors and gubernatorial candidates still sought to exploit the white backlash to their electoral advantage. This gave governors and state party leaders opportunities to influence the national-state relations. President Johnson, meanwhile, had no means to affect the outcome of the gubernatorial elections in the three states. As far as the records indicate, the president did not have direct recourse to affect the 1966 gubernatorial elections, though he confided his concerns to his congressional leaders from the South.

As the head of the national Democratic Party, the 1966 elections of Democratic governors in the three states mattered to a great degree to Johnson, as he both sought trouble-free implementations of the federal civil rights acts and set his sights on his reelection in 1968.

This chapter lastly compares how the three state parties handled the credentials challenges that were brought to the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

The governors and other state party elites adapted differently to the often-incompatible pressures coming from the national party’s support of , regular party members’ embrace of only the token representation of African American delegates, and the credentials challenges raised by insurgent groups that pressed for the national party’s credentials recognition.

The main objective of these cross-state comparisons from the relatively short yet volatile period between 1964 and 1968 is to map both the national-state party elite relations, and to identify the organizational conditions of the state party leadership for the rest of the dissertation chapters. To provide a brief preview, the three states’ varied

57 responses to the presidential nominations and national civil rights laws depended on the

state party elites’ relations with the presidential nominees, and the organizational control

the governors had over its state party elites. The divergent adaptations of state political

party leaders to the incongruence between civil rights protection and the electoral

strengths of white backlash in the gubernatorial elections set the initial conditions of

democratic consolidation in the three states.

i. The South Carolina Democratic Party’s Integration with the National Party

and the Control of the State Party Organization

South Carolina’s Democratic Party remained highly organized through its

orderly transition to an electorally competitive two-party system. South Carolina’s

Democratic Party leaders forestalled the divisions among its state delegates at the national convention and eventually stood with the Johnson administration by seeking compromise among the state leaders. Its state governors tried every institutional means to contest and defy the federal orders and keep South Carolina’s authoritarian state intact.

Until all such institutional means ran out, the governors continued to express explicit reservations about the diminishing scope of state authority. The principal difference between South Carolina and the other two states in response to the Civil Rights Acts came from the mediating roles that the state party leaders played among themselves and with the national party leaders.

From the late 1930s to the early 1970s, South Carolina’s Democratic one-party rule in the state government was controlled by a group of leaders in the state legislature.

Commonly called the Barnwell Ring, the few state legislators elected from Barnwell

58 County, located on the western state border, wielded control over the state government

through their control of the state budget appropriations process and legislative committee assignments. One of its prominent leaders was Solomon Blatt, the state House Speaker.

First elected to the lower chamber in 1932 and remaining in the House seat until his death in 1986, Blatt represented his home county of Barnwell for fifty-four years, out of which he had presided as the House Speaker for a total of thirty-three years. As the Speaker,

Blatt singlehandedly controlled the assignments of state representatives to the standing

committees, giving him the advantage of tight party discipline in lining up legislative

votes. 4 Together with the Senate Finance Committee chair Edgar Brown, also of

Barnwell County, the Barnwell Ring controlled the state appropriations process.

Their control extended beyond the chambers of the state legislature. In gubernatorial elections, the candidate endorsements from the Barnwell Ring leaders were the precondition for party nomination in the Democratic primary. Without the Barnwell

Ring leaders’ endorsements, gubernatorial candidates hardly ever made it through the

party primaries. Both Governors Donald Russell and Robert McNair, who served in the

mid to late 1960s, had endorsements and political support from the Barnwell Ring leaders.

Their eventual embrace of the Civil Rights Acts was possible because the Barnwell Ring control of the state Democratic Party withstood the earlier phase of democratization. As a result, the governors’ hold on power in the state government was secured at least for a few more years.

In the quadrennial Democratic presidential nomination conventions prior to

1968, the Barnwell leaders regularly had unit vote control over the South Carolina

4 Solomon Blatt, George D. Terry, and Catherine Wilson Horne, The Bridge Builder: Solomon Blatt Reflects on a Lifetime of Service to South Carolina (Columbia: McKissick Museum, University of South Carolina, 1986), 39.

59 delegates, instructing the delegates to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate of

Barnwell Ring leaders’ choice. Through these means of party discipline, the Barnwell

Ring had successfully consolidated the most disciplined one-party control over the

politically demobilized, segregationist state polity. Even after 1965, the leadership retained control over the state party organization, enabling the enclave successors, including the governors, to expect that they would remain in power in the post-democratization state government.5

- State Democratic Party’s Reluctant Acceptance of the Civil Rights Act

The was passed without a single vote of approval from the South Carolina congressional delegation. In South Carolina’s capital, the reaction of the state leaders to the act was at best reluctance and indifference. The

Columbia newspaper the State reported that Governor Donald Russell commented that he considered the enactment “unfortunate.” State Senator Marion Gressette, chairman of the

South Carolina School Committee, which sought legal means to avoid school integration, said “any comment I might have would be unprintable, so I don’t have any.”6 While the

South Carolina Democratic Party leaders refrained from outright rejection of the Act, neither did they embrace it. When President Johnson appointed former Florida governor

Leroy Collins to the director of Community Relations Service in the Commerce

Department, a position created by Section X of the Act, Collins was to tour the south.

When it was announced that Collins was making contacts with the southern governors,

5 Blatt’s penchant for selective enfranchisement did not change in the twenty years after the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. In one of his last oral interviews in 1986, Blatt stated “if you haven’t got intelligence and sense enough to select the best representative of the people, then I don’t know whether extending the right to vote is the best interest of the public. I want to give everybody an opportunity to vote, but if they can’t properly, mentally know how to select the best candidate, I wonder if we’re doing them the proper service.” The legislator remained in the state House until death took him. Ibid., 95. 6 “In South Carolina: Reluctant Acceptance.” The State. July 3, 1964. 1 and 12-A.

60 Russell commented to a State reporter that “I have no present plans to see anyone” with

regard to the civil rights law, indicating his lack of interests in meeting with the director.7

Despite the state Democratic leaders’ initial reluctance to actively comply with

the Civil Rights Act, they ultimately stood with Johnson at the 1964 Democratic National

Convention that convened eight weeks later. Unlike Georgia’s delegation headed by

Governor , the South Carolina delegation to the Democratic national

convention in 1964 was all white and chosen by state convention. Although the

delegation lacked African American representation in the delegation, there was no

credentials contest from South Carolina’s black community because South Carolina’s

black leadership reportedly had chosen not to contest the credentials of the all white state

delegation in 1964. When Rev. William McK. Bowman, a black delegate to South

Carolina’s state Democratic convention, was approached by unnamed out-of-state groups

to make an objection to the state’s all white national Democratic convention delegate, he declined to do so. Bowman told the reporter that “party loyalty means more than creating an issue,” and that he hoped “in 1968 we can have a Negro delegate and this can be done without being used as a wedge to destroy the party” in South Carolina.8

When Mississippi’s authoritarian holdovers walked out of the convention hall

in protest over the national credentials committee decision to offer two additional seats to

the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), the reactions of the South Carolina

delegates to the walkout were more nuanced and varied than outright support for the

Mississippi regulars. On the convention floor, Governor Donald Russell attempted to

raise a point of order on the credentials committee decision, arguing that the decision to

7 “The State House: Nobody to Talk to?” The State. July 7,1965. 1-A. 8 “State House: Outside Group Rebuffed.” The State. July 20, 1964. 1 and 9-A.

61 add two MDFP delegates to the Mississippi delegation was illegal because the number of state delegates had already been established under the national convention’s call. The governor’s move was not granted recognition by the floor speaker at the convention.

Russell explained he would probably vote with the Mississippi majority to object to seating of the two MFDP members. He also made it clear to a news reporter from his home state that even though he did not support the committee decision, there was also no plan of a walkout by the South Carolina delegation.9

In contrast to Governor Russell, Edgar Brown, South Carolina’s state senate

leader and the head of the Barnwell Ring, expressed his disappointment in seeing the

Mississippi regular Democrats walking out of the convention hall after the compromise

plan was rejected. Brown saw no problems in the credentials committee decision to add two seats for MFDP and he commented that “The Mississippi delegates said they wanted to be seated at the convention. We all worked to get them seated, when they walked out and left us holding the bag.” With regard to the convention resolution for 1968 that was

adopted and called for the state party to provide all voters the opportunity of full

participation in party affairs regardless of race, color and creed, Brown was confident that

the resolution’s language had no great importance and thus its impact on the South

Carolina Democrats in four years would not be worth serious protest. He remarked,

“They’ll just apply it according to the conditions that exist when it’s time for another

convention.”10 After the MFDP delegate seating dispute was resolved, South Carolina’s party leaders eventually decided to loosen the unit rule that had been placed on the state delegation. Governor Russell said he could find no reason or authority to impose unit rule

9 Robert McHugh. “Governor Russell Says ‘No.’” The State. August 26, 1964. 1 and 10-A. 10 Robert McHugh. “State’s ‘Mr. Democrat’ Unhappy with Mississippi: Edgar Brown – They Left Us ‘Holding the Bag.’” The State. August 27, 1964. 2-A.

62 and he instructed, “Each delegate will exercise his independent right to vote for

himself.”11 Although the unit rule was removed, all of the state’s delegates eventually supported the Johnson-Humphrey ticket on the first ballot of the candidate nomination vote.

The enclave rulers’ responses to the civil rights act and the national convention credentials decision demonstrate that South Carolina’s Democratic Party leaders reached a consensus on following the president’s civil rights leadership only after other means of institutionalized opposition were exhausted. The Democratic Party’s national convention delegate consensus on supporting Johnson was eventually attained also in part because those state Democrats who strongly objected to nominating Johnson skipped the convention in Atlantic City and supported the independent campaign of the Republican nominee .12 The independent supporters would remain in the state

Democratic Party, under whose party banner they would run for office in South Carolina, all the while supporting Goldwater in the presidential campaign.

- The 1966 Gubernatorial Election: Succession to Donald Russell

The election of Robert McNair to the governorship in 1966 ensured the institutional continuation of the state Democratic Party. McNair had been lieutenant governor under Governor Russell and had already taken over the governorship from him

in April 1965 after Russell took over a U.S. Senate seat vacancy. When McNair stood for

11 Robert McHugh. “S.C. Delegation has First Caucus.” The State. August 25, 1964. 2-A. 12 Included in the list of independent supporters of Goldwater were State Rep. J. Fred Buzhardt, former State Senators S. K. Nash and Paul Quattlebaum, Mayor Thomas P. Stoney, Columbia attorney Douglas McKay, and Farley Smith, son of former U.S. Senator Cotton Ed Smith. Thomas N. McLean. “Political Picture in South Carolina: Independents.” The State. July 19, 1964. 1 and 5-A. U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond switched to the Republican Party in mid-September to support the Goldwater campaign. Robert McHugh and William B. Williams. “Sen. Thurmond to Bolt Democrats, Back Barry: May Affect ’66 Senate Race Here.” The State. September 16, 1964: Joseph Crespino, Strom Thurmond's America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2012), 177-82.

63 election in 1966, his candidacy was endorsed by the state party leaders, particularly

Solomon Blatt and Edgar Brown of Barnwell County. McNair was a longtime Blatt

protégé in the state house, and he had no challenger in the Democratic primary.13 His campaign rally in Allendale was attended by the Barnwell Ring leaders. 14 These

endorsements from the Barnwell leaders and gubernatorial successions ensured

continuity in the state government and the enclave holdovers’ prospect for remaining in

the seat of state government for the foreseeable future.

Immediately before the gubernatorial general election, McNair publicly stated

in an interview that he would not support President Johnson if the presidential election

were held that day.15 At a time when his general election opponents accused the state

Democratic Party of “block vote buying from Negroes,” McNair’s rejection of Johnson earned the support of white conservative voters.16 McNair’s Republican opponent,

Joseph Rogers, was a former Democrat who switched parties the same day he announced his gubernatorial campaign. The State newspaper reported that although the Republican leadership said the party’s convention would be completely open, the top party leaders were for Rogers.17 Harry Dent, Strom Thurmond’s former senate aide and then the South

Carolina Republican Party chairman, appeared with Rogers at the Lexington County

Republican Convention and said “Joe Rogers never did have the Barnwell Ring in his

13 Philip G. Grose, South Carolina at the Brink: Robert Mcnair and the Politics of Civil Rights (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006), 87. 14 “McNair Predicts He’ll Sweep Vote.” The State. November 1, 1966. 1 and 7-B. 15 “McNair Vows He would Serve Full 4-Year Term If Elected.” The State. November 3, 1966. 1 and 12-B; Jack Bass, “Open Feuding Erupts Between S.C. Democrats, Independents.” The State. November 4, 1966. 8-C; State of South Carolina v. Katzenbach. 86 S.Ct. 803. 1966; “Voting Rights Law: S.C. Solons Express Regret Over Decision.” The State. March 8, 1966. 1-B. 16 “Parker Declares Democrats Are Buying Negro Block Vote: Political Roundup.” The State. November 6, 1966. 2-A. 17 William E. Rone, Jr. “Rogers Announces Switch, Candidacy: Rogers Enters Top Race.” The State. March 8, 1966. 1-B.

64 nose,” implying that the candidate’s party defection was a defiance against the state

Democratic Party leadership.18 McNair won the general election over Rogers with a sixteen percent margin. McNair’s public rebuke of President Johnson while he was endorsed by the state Democratic Party leadership shows the extent to which the governor relied on the highly organized state party to keep him in the state executive office.

- South Carolina’s Moderation at the 1968 Democratic National Convention

With the state Democratic Party leadership of the Barnwell Ring still intact, the

South Carolina Democratic Party did not need to project their discontent with the national party in full public display at the national convention in 1968. Rather, the Barnwell Ring leaders appeared convinced that they could have critical input into the candidate nomination. A month and a half before the Chicago convention, Edgar Brown suggested that Edward Kennedy should be the vice presidential pick for Humphrey, a choice that

Brown was sure his fellow South Carolina Democrats would go along with. Brown told a local reporter, “I have grave doubts about the race between Nixon and Humphrey and unless the Democrats take Edward Kennedy on the ticket to add strength, I wonder what will become of it.”19 However, Brown’s suggestion for a Humphrey-Kennedy ticket was

met with objections from South Carolina’s congressional delegates. Congressmen

Mendel Rivers and Bryan Dorn, as well as Governor McNair, indicated that they would

prefer Texas Governor John Connally for the vice presidential candidate.20

18 Sam E. McCuen. “Dent: GOP will Force McNair to Take a Stand.” The State. March 8, 1966.: “Rogers Says South Carolina Can Be Self-Sufficient State.” The State. November 4, 1966. 8-C. Grose, South Carolina at the Brink: Robert Mcnair and the Politics of Civil Rights, 137. 19 Levona Page. “Demos Need Kennedy for Victory – Brown: ‘S.C. Will Support Ticket.’” The State. July 12, 1968. 1-B. 20 Lee Bandy. “S.C. Demos Cool to Idea of Ted Kennedy on Ticket.” The State. July 25, 1968. 1-B.

65 At the national convention in Chicago in late August, the Barnwell Ring

leaders allowed no credential contest from the state’s insurgent groups, in contrast to the other two states. South Carolina’s national delegation included five black delegates and eight alternates, all of whom had been either elected at the state convention, or appointed by the state party chairman. According to a pre-convention poll conducted by The State newspaper, the delegates unanimously supported Humphrey for the presidential nomination.21 Of the thirteen delegates and alternates, at least three – Reverend I. D.

Newman and Attorney Matthew Perry, both of Columbia, and Reverend Alonzo Holman of Aiken – worked for the South Carolina chapter of the National Association for the

Advancement of Colored People, and their representation in the national convention delegation invited criticism from more activist oriented black leadership in the state. In the convention hall, the black delegates’ decision to go with the majority of the state

regular party delegates was tested in a vote over whether to support Georgia’s Julian

Bond in his credentials contest with the Georgia regular party. The South Carolina black

delegates supported Bond while South Carolina’s regular party delegates voted against

his Georgia Loyal National Democrats.22

In an effort to forestall Edward Kennedy’s victory in the first round of nomination vote, Governor McNair first indicated that he would offer himself as the

“favorite son” candidate to unify the state party delegates.23 To help boost his popularity and name recognition, the state party even brought five thousand copies of a 12-page

brochure on McNair’s gubernatorial accomplishments so that the state party could

21 The five were: George Holman of Moncks Corner; the Rev. Alonzo W. Holman of Aiken; the Rev. C. J. Whitaker of Columbia; Ernest Finney of Sumter; and Alex Alford of Georgetown. Levona Page. “Negro Delegates Favor Humphrey.” The State and the Columbia Record. August 25, 1968. 4-F. 22 Phillip G. Grose, Jr., “S.C. Negro Delegates ‘Playing It By Ear.’” The State. August 28, 1968. 1. 23 Philip G. Grose, Jr., “Morris Says McNair Still Veep Possibility.” The State. July 24, 1968. 1-B.

66 distribute it to the convention delegates.24 After Humphrey solicited the governor’s support, however, McNair released the state delegates from the “favorite son” commitment and announced his endorsement for Humphrey on the second day of convention. All of the state’s twenty-eight delegation votes went to Humphrey in the first round of the presidential nomination vote.

In sum, relatively strong control of the state Democratic Party leadership under the Barnwell Ring assured continuation of the state governorship in the latter half of the

1960s. The state party organization remained highly disciplined under the pro-Barnwell

Ring governors that forestalled the insurgency challenge to the regular party credentials at the national convention. The state Democratic leaders retained close ties between the presidential nominees of the national party and the state party leaders, despite the governors’ expressed opposition to the national civil rights programs.

The 1968 Convention, however, was to be the last convention in which Edgar

Brown would try to control its delegation. The eighty year old Senator took a reporter from The State for a day drive out of Chicago and confided to him: “I’ve had enough.

After this one, I’m turning the whole thing over to (Gov.) Bob McNair,” who had already been elected South Carolina’s national committeeman to succeed Brown.25 Seeing that the state Democrats’ hold of state government was assured so long as the Barnwell Ring remained intact, South Carolina Democratic governors did not stage major presidential bids of their own at the 1968 national convention, but instead tried to influence and work through the existent DNC.

24 “The State House: McNair Brochure,” The State, August 24, 1968, 1. 25 William E. Rone. “Brown Recalls 1924 Debacle,” The State, August 26, 1968, 1-B.

67 ii. White Backlash and Democratization Insurgents in Georgia Democratic Party

Of the three states, Georgia underwent the most drastic change in the state

executive administration in 1967 and the resultant shift in the relationship between the

national party and the state party led by the governors. First under the governorship of

Carl Sanders, a moderate and confidant of Lyndon Johnson, the Georgia Democratic

Party supported President Johnson’s nomination in 1964. The governor appointed four black delegates to the 1964 Democratic national convention from the state’s moderate

African American elites, and tried to forestall the credentials contest in the convention hall. Then in 1967 the state executive office was handed over to a reactionary governor,

Lester Maddox, who had a strained relationship with the president, the Democratic

National Committee and the local black community. While Georgia’s democratization came to a halt under the Maddox administration, the state Democratic Party remained home to segregationists that struggled for control of the state party apparatus with racial progressives and the newly enfranchised black electorate.

- Governor Sanders’s Incorporation of Moderate Black Leadership in the

State Democratic Party

Governor Carl Sanders kept close ties with both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations as the state implemented federal desegregation orders. In the process,

Sanders walked a thin line to hold his state Democratic Party together. In the 1962 campaign, he took neither side on either promoting civil rights or endorsing mass resistance.26 Of the state’s heterogeneous black community, Sanders forged relationships

26 According to Tim Boyd, the first major reform of Georgia’s state Democratic Party was commenced in 1962 by Melba Williams, whom Sanders appointed to the state Democratic Executive Committee following his election to the governorship. The demand for state party reform came from DeKalb County Democratic Party, which first campaigned for state legislature reapportionment and the end of county-unit voting in the

68 with moderate black leaders, such as Fulton County lawyer Leroy Johnson and Grace

Towns Hamilton of the Atlanta Urban League, both of whom were open to formal

negotiations with the governor. Activists of the civil rights movement, who preferred

taking direct action over negotiating through established elite channels, were isolated and

excluded from the governor’s coalition. For example, Julian Bond, one of the founders of

Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and elected to the state legislature in 1965,

publicly denounced the Johnson administration’s Vietnam policy and by implication

rejected Governor Sanders’s ties with the president. Bond was unseated by a legislative

vote of 184 to 12 on the first day of the session, and Sanders immediately endorsed the

removal.27

The unity of the Georgia Democratic Party was tested in 1964, when President

Johnson sought nomination at the national convention. As a Johnson ally and the head of the state party, who appointed the delegates to the national convention, Governor Sanders needed to deliver the delegate vote at the convention floor without splitting the state party.

Sanders feared the possibility that his state delegates would splinter into pro-civil rights and segregationist factions, just as the Mississippi Democrats did that year, each contesting the state party credentials at the national convention. In order to defuse the potential tension within his Georgia delegates, Sanders selected four moderate black delegates to sit in the Georgia seat at the national convention. When the MFDP delegates

statewide primaries. These two measures had allowed the overrepresentation of the state’s rural counties in the state government. After these campaigns proved successful, Williams, as well as Marjorie Thurman, Georgia Democratic National Committeewoman, pressed for change in the state executive committee organization so that it would include women, youth and black voters. DeKalb County, located at the eastern outskirts of Atlanta, was by then seeing an increase of Republican votes in state legislature elections. Tim S. R. Boyd, Georgia Democrats, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Shaping of the New South (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012), 134-7. 27 Ibid., 146. Bond reclaimed the legislative seat after the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the Assembly decision.

69 were granted two seats at the national convention, however, Sanders called President

Johnson in the Oval Office to warn him that the move “could create complete havoc” that

could invite “a wholesale walkout from the South” if the two MFDP representatives were

to be recognized as delegates and not just as honorary guests to the convention. Johnson

remonstrated and told Sanders that honorary status is not enough and that MFDP

representatives should be “what they ought to be, now, honestly, between you and me,

with their population fifty percent, they ought to be delegates to the Mississippi group.”

Then President dismissed the governor’s worry on the domino effect of a segregationist delegate walkout upon other states. Johnson told Sanders, “All it does is just stop the agony and the pain and the bad publicity of three damn days here on television and gets us out of there with a unanimous vote. And I can’t see that it costs a man a dime.”28

Even though Sanders disagreed with Johnson over the MFDP decision, the

Georgia governor kept working closely with the Democratic White House. Sanders warded off credential challenges from radicalized civil rights activists, while keeping close control over the moderate black leadership within the state party delegate at the national convention. Despite Sanders’s efforts to work with the White House and incorporate the moderate black leadership, the state’s two U.S. Senators remained uncommitted to the their party’s nomination of the incumbent president. 29 The

28 “Lyndon Johnson, John Connally, and Carl Sanders on 25 August 1964,” Conversation WH6408-37-5183, 5184, Presidential Recordings Digital Edition [Lyndon B. Johnson: Civil Rights, Vietnam, and the War on Poverty, ed. David G. Coleman, Kent B. Germany, Guian A. McKee, and Marc J. Selverstone] (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014–) http://prde.upress.virginia.edu/conversations/4002851 29 Boyd, Georgia Democrats, 150. After the general election was over, Johnson invited Sanders to a hunting party at the president’s Texas ranch. Sanders kept declining the invitation three times, claiming that the other invitees to the party included his state’s two senators who had not worked for the Johnson campaign with Sanders and that his joining the party would give the wrong impression to the people who had worked for the campaign. “Lyndon Johnson and Carl Sanders on November 11, 1964,” Phone tapes (Citation numbers: 6331 and 6332, Tape: WH6411-17), Lyndon Johnson Presidential Recordings, Miller

70 November election that year proved a major loss for Sanders and the state party, as

Georgia’s electoral college vote went for Goldwater.

- White Backlash and Insurgent Movements in the Georgia Democratic

Party in 1966 Gubernatorial Race

The election of segregationist and non-party organization candidate Lester

Maddox to the governorship in 1966 marked a departure from the Sanders administration, as Maddox failed to establish close working relations with the national government. The

election also tested the state Democratic Party’s unity like no other contest did in the past.

From the candidate nomination process to the settlement of the general election result, the election stirred many a controversy and rendered the election procedure’s legitimacy questionable. It was the first contest since Reconstruction in which a Republican candidate, Howard , then the first term U.S. House Representative, mounted considerable opposition to the Democratic Party. Callaway actually won a plurality vote in the general election, but narrowly fell short of a majority, which was a constitutional

requirement for the election of the governor. The decision was then left to the state

general assembly vote for final selection from the top two contenders of the general

election. Since the state legislature was still controlled by the Democratic Party, the

legislators mostly abided by the party discipline and elected Democrat Lester Maddox to

the governor’s mansion, with a 182-vote majority in the 258-member legislature. The

legislature’s election handed the governorship to a successor who did not intend to forge

relations with the president.

The gubernatorial primary campaign resulted in the elevation of Lester

Maddox, the ultra segregationist, to the position of top contender, though he apparently

Center, University of Virginia.

71 lacked organizational support of the state Democratic Party. Maddox was a considerable

thorn in President Johnson’s leadership of the national Democratic Party and the enforcement of civil rights on the ground. The Georgia Democratic Party also faced dilemmas, as it tried to maintain power in the state executive and at the same time sought to maintain a working relationship with the national party, while the state party looked for ways to expand the party coalition among the newly enfranchised African Americans amid the radicalization of the black nationalist movement.

The difficulty of holding Georgia’s state party unity first came to light when

U.S. Senator Herman Talmadge for a brief moment got himself involved in the 1966 gubernatorial race. Despite making the public announcement of his candidacy and

gaining the support of Governor Sanders and other state government party officials,

however, in a matter of a couple of days Talmadge decided to withdraw from the race

without giving reasons. Talmadge’s brief foray and sudden withdrawal invited confusion

within the state Democratic Party. Irritated, Governor Sanders called President Johnson

on the phone and reported the situation. Sanders complained, “Herman has done in the last two or three days to build up the Republican Party, by getting in, and now flip-flopping and getting out. He’s done to build them for a sweep than he could have done in twenty years by doing that. … He has made a colossal blunder.” The lack of initial coordination among the incumbent governor, state party leaders and the candidates foreshadowed the confusion that ensued.

Sanders pointed out to Johnson that in the remaining field of candidates in the

Democratic primary, Ellis Arnall, also a former governor, was “a man with a great deal of

forensic ability,” but his progressive political philosophy did not particularly entice the

72 state electorate that year. With Bo Callaway as the Republican nominee, whom Sanders described as a “pretty good looking horse, who has never been on the track but he’s

running on a good speed,” the incumbent governor predicted that there would be “a

massacre” for the Democratic Party in the general election. Sanders warned the president

that the Republican Party could endanger Democrats not only in the gubernatorial

election but also in elections for the congressional seats and other state government

offices. Johnson empathized with Sanders by saying, “It sure is distressing,” and

expressed worries that the Georgia situation could have contagious effects on other

neighboring states, such as Alabama.30

The fears of Sanders and Johnson over Georgia’s Democratic Party unity that

year gradually came true. In the first round of gubernatorial Democratic primary that

eventually had six contenders, Ellis Arnall led the race with 29.4% of the vote, followed

by Lester Maddox, who got 23.5%. Since neither of them received a majority, the two

went on to the run-off primary.

The endorsements of the political and business establishments following the

first round of primary were split between Democratic moderate Arnall and Republican

Callaway, while the Democratic run-off contender Lester Maddox received little public

support. The liberal Atlanta Constitution endorsed Arnall a few days before the first

primary, based on his past records of gubernatorial leadership. The paper recommended

that “Georgia discovered under the Vandiver and Sanders administrations that

moderation is the wise and just way to racial harmony, whereas extremism brings racial

trouble, and an Arnall administration should spare the state any letdown in that

30 Lyndon Johnson and Carl Sanders, May 23, 1966, Phone tapes (Citation number: 10134-5, Tape: WH6605.05), Lyndon Johnson Presidential Recordings, Miller Center, University of Virginia.

73 respect.”31 The editorial endorsement of the conservative Atlanta Journal, in contrast,

went to Callaway, the Republican candidate.32

Maddox, in contrast, had few ties with either the state’s still dominant

Talmadge faction or the newspapers, and he ran as an outsider challenging the party establishment. Maddox was an owner of fried chicken restaurant chain in Atlanta and the suburbs, an enterprise that made him infamous as he waved pick handles and pointed pistols at black customers who came to be served after Civil Rights Act was enacted.

Rather than obeying the federal desegregation order, Maddox opted to close the restaurant business. As he sarcastically commented on the 1966 campaign later, “it really wasn’t very difficult. All that was necessary was to defeat the Democrats, the

Republicans – on the state and national levels – 159 county courthouses, several hundred city halls, the major banks, the railroads, the utility companies, major industry, and all the daily newspapers and television stations in Georgia.”33 In the run-off campaign, Maddox railed at Arnall in his repeated harangue that he was “a wild Socialist who is the granddaddy of forced racial integration.”34

Maddox’s segregationist appeal was fueled as the heated summer of 1966 wore

on. A week before the first primary, street riots broke out in Atlanta, resulting in the

black protestors’ direct confrontations with the city mayor, Ivan Allen, and the Atlanta

police. The protest was coordinated by the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee,

in response to the Atlanta police shooting of a black auto theft suspect on the previous

31 “Russell, Arnall, Smith.” Editorials, The Atlanta Constitution, September 7, 1966, p. 4. 32 Billy B. Hathorn, "Frustration of Opportunity: Georgia Republicans and the Election of 1966," Atlanta History: A Journal of Georgia and the South 31, no. 4 (1987). 33 Lester Maddox, Speaking Out: The Autobiography of Lester Garfield Maddox, 1st ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975), 93. 34 Bradley R. Rice, "Lester Maddox and the Politics of ," in Georgia Governors in an Age of Change: From Ellis Arnall to , ed. Harold P. Henderson and Gary L. Roberts (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988), 198.

74 day. The police dispersed the crowed using tear gas and shooting in the air, and

sixty-three persons were arrested. Over a dozen people were reportedly injured and the

confrontation was reported on the front pages of the state’s newspapers in the following

few days.35 In the run-off that was held in late September, Maddox defeated Arnall by a

8.6% margin.

- Write-in for Arnall and Democrats for Callaway in the General Election

The general election campaign took a complicated turn when a group of

Democratic supporters who were dismayed at the candidate choice between Maddox and

Callaway initiated a write-in campaign. This initiative, called “Write-In Georgia,” sought better candidates than the two names printed on the ballot. They settled on Arnall as their candidate for the write-in campaign, after briefly considering other notable elected officials of the state. Arnall neither endorsed nor repudiated their efforts on his behalf.

Other anti-Maddox Democrats weighed the electability of Maddox over the write-in campaign for Arnall, and decided instead to support Callaway so that Maddox’s election would be blocked. This group, named “Democrats for Callaway,” included prominent business and civic leaders, such as Atlanta businessman William Bowdoin, who chaired a commission on state government reorganization, city judge Robert Heard who had worked as manager for candidate James Gray in the gubernatorial primary, and

Atlanta banker and lawyer John Sibley.36 In the last week leading up to the general

35 Dick Herbert et al., “15 Injured as Hundreds of Negroes Riot, Toss Rocks at Police, Smash Cars Here: Defy Allen, Repulsed by Tear Gas.” Atlanta Constitution, September 7, 1966, p. 1. Two days later, the police arrested Stokely Carmichael in downtown Atlanta as the principal instigator of the riot. Keeler McCartney and Bill Shipp, “Carmichael Arrested on Riot Charges in Raid on Snick Office,” The Atlanta Constitution, September 9, 1966, p. 1. 36 In the early 1960s, Sibley served under Georgia governor Vandiver’s administration to head a commission on public school desegregation, and with his recommendation the governor mitigated massive resistance and direct confrontation with the federal authority at the state university. Hathorn, "Frustration of Opportunity: Georgia Republicans and the Election of 1966," 44.

75 election, Callaway received additional endorsements from former regents of Georgia

university system board as well as university system chancellor Harmon Caldwell, with

whom Callaway had served when he was a board member from 1958 to 1964.37 Former

president of Georgia Farm Bureau Federation, Harry Wingate, also gave Callaway public

support on the account of Callaway’s agricultural policies.38 Callaway also received blessings from some quarters in the establishment of black community, including Rufus

Clement, the president of historically black Atlanta University, and the Negro Baptist

Convention.39

A month before the general election, Lyndon Johnson called Senator Richard

Russell to solicit his opinions about the prospect of Maddox’s election. Johnson

complained that the media is “beating hell out of us every day on this Maddox thing, and

I don’t want to get involved. We just dodge it, run and hide, no comment. President

didn’t know anything about it.” To the weary president, Russell assured that “Maddox, if

elected, is not gonna be as bad as he sounds. He sounds impossible.” Then Russell added

“I like Bo [Callaway], he’s a nice fellow, but if I had to take a choice between the two, I

take Maddox.”40 Having been informed of the confounded situation since Herman

Talmadge’s abrupt candidacy withdrawal in May and seeing the development as Carl

Sanders warned, President Johnson at this point had no recourse to push back the reactionary surge.

In the general election held on November 8, Callaway received 47.4 percent of

37 “News Release – Board of Regents Endorse Callaway, 1966 November 2” and “News Release – H. W. Caldwell endorses Callaway, 1966 November 2.” Press Files, 1966-7, Gubernatorial Campaign Subject Files, Campaigns, 1966. Political 1964-1976 Series. HBCP. 38 “News Release – Democrats for Callaway, 1966 November 1.” Press Files, 1966-7, Gubernatorial Campaign Subject Files, Campaigns, 1966. Political 1964-1976 Series. HBCP. 39 Hathorn, "Frustration of Opportunity: Georgia Republicans and the Election of 1966," 44. 40 Lyndon Johnson and Richard Russell, October 4, 1966. Phone tape (Citation number: 10921, Tape: WH6610.02). Lyndon Johnson Presidential Recordings. Miller Center, University of Virginia.

76 the entire vote. Maddox followed him by 47.08 percent, just a 3039 vote difference with

Callaway. Write-in votes for Arnall totaled a historic record of 52,831, or 5.52 percent.41

Since none of the three candidates received a decisive majority, the final decision was

taken to the state legislature. There Maddox was officially elected, and was inaugurated

into office in January the following year.

- Lester Maddox’s Estrangement from the National Democratic Party

Despite winning such a divisive campaign, Governor Maddox’s first few

months in office surprised many in the state and the White House. His campaign diatribe

against liberals and civil rights activists subsided and he instead called for moderation

and reconciliation in his inauguration speech. He pleaded for “a cause which requires the

help and support of all Georgians – young and old, poor and rich, farmer and city dweller,

and Democrat and Republican, regardless of race, creed, color or national origins.”42 Yet

he also left conflicting impressions to the observers of Georgia politics, as he invited

prominent segregationists to the inauguration ceremony, including the state’s former

governor Marvin Griffin and Mississippi governor Ross Barnett, as well as Matty

Thurmond Talmadge, the mother of Herman Talmadge and the second cousin of South

Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond, who were all seated on the inaugural platform.43

Just five days after the inauguration in January 1967, Maddox asked the White

House for a meeting with the president in the following month bringing the Senators and

the state’s congressional delegation with him. Unsure about Maddox’s intentions,

Johnson got Senator Russell on the phone again and told him, “If people of the state want

41 Georgia’s Official Register, 1965-66. Ben W. Fortson, Jr. Secretary of State. Department of Archives and History, Sate of Georgia. 42 Inaugural Speech, 11 January 1967. Bob Short, Everything Is Pickrick: The Life of Lester Maddox, 1st ed. (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1999). 43 Rice, "Georgia Governors in an Age of Change," 201; Short, Everything Is Pickrick, 101.

77 to see me, I have to see him. On the other hand, I never sat down and talked to him. The

man has said many mean things about me. … It’s pretty hard for me to [see him].”

Russell again assured the president that he should definitely see Maddox and reported

that the inauguration speech “absolutely astonished the state” for its tone of racial

reconciliation. Russell even confided that “he makes a better governor than Callaway

would have made. Their philosophies are about the same, except that Maddox is hope for

the poor people than Callaway is.” 44 After the meeting took place in early February, the

president and his aides appear to have somewhat eased their suspicions of the governor.

Vice President Humphrey visited Atlanta in April and saw Maddox at the governor’s

mansion. At the press conference Humphrey assured the governor that “the Democratic

Party is like a big house; it has lots of room for all of us.”45

Despite Russell’s optimistic prediction that Maddox would make a good governor, by the time summer arrived, his trademark harangue returned. Enraged by the governor’s attacks on “the liberal, socialistic, and radical leadership,” moderate appointees in his administration resigned from their posts, and the White House stopped courting the governor. Maddox lost lines of communication with the White House, though the national party continued to court the support of the state Democratic Party leadership dominated by Maddox appointees.46

Meanwhile, the main organizers of the write-in movement for Arnall in the

1966 general election formed a new organization called the Georgia Democratic Forum

(hereafter abbreviated as GDF) in early 1967. It was led by the AFL-CIO civil rights

44 Lyndon Johnson and Richard Russell, January 16, 1967, Phone tape (Citation number: 11363, Tape: WH6701.05), Lyndon Johnson Presidential Recordings, Miller Center, University of Virginia. 45 Rice, "Georgia Governors in an Age of Change."; Boyd, Georgia Democrats, 186. 46 Boyd, Georgia Democrats, 187.

78 director E. T. “Al” Kehrer and Reverend John B. Morris of the Episcopal Society for

Cultural and Racial Unity. They held their first meeting in May 1967 in Macon and elected Kehrer as the chairman. Their primary objective was to gain the Georgia state delegation credentials at the national Democratic convention, which was going to be held in a little more than a year. As the presidential campaign of 1968 approached, the selection of Georgia delegates to the national convention became a point of contestation for Georgia Democrats, including the GDF. Under the state party rule, the delegates were appointed by the state party chairman with the advice of the governor, and this meant that

GDF members were unlikely to be represented in the Maddox delegation.

In order to forestall Maddox’s domination of the state delegate, the GDF attempted to reach out to Democratic National Committee chairman John Bailey.

Reverend John Morris wrote to Bailey in April 1967 that the GDF would remain loyal to the Democratic ticket no matter what Maddox’s position turned out to be.47 Yet the response of the national party chairman to the GDF was not enthusiastic, as the DNC and

White House still sought to establish communication with Maddox and his allies in the

Georgia Democratic Party, rather than with the insurgent group. On the minds of the national Democratic leaders was the defection of MFDP from the regular Democratic delegation at the convention four years ago. In early July, the state Democratic Party chairman, James Gray, announced the list of Georgia delegates. Aside from the few moderates, the forty-two convention delegates were filled with Maddox allies. The GDF soon informed its intention to challenge the credentials of the Maddox delegation to

Bailey.

Two weeks before the start of the national convention, the GDF held a meeting

47 Boyd, ibid.

79 in Macon. Because Lyndon Johnson had by then announced that he would not seek

nomination, GDF members were now split between Hubert Humphrey and Eugene

McCarthy, as the McCarthy supporters protested Humphrey’s policies for continued

American involvement in the Vietnam war. In historian Tim Boyd’s account, Kehrer’s

proposal to split the GDF delegation three to two in favor of Humphrey was rejected at

the GDF meeting and subsequently he resigned from the chairmanship in protest. In his

place, Savannah minister James Hooten and Julian Bond were elected as co-chairs, and

they headed a pro-McCarthy majority delegation to Chicago. Control of the GDF was taken over by anti-war McCarthy supporters.48

- Falling Apart in Chicago

At the Democratic convention in Chicago in late August, the state party

delegation began to crumble. Triggered by an impulsive move by Governor Maddox to

offer himself as a presidential candidate at the convention hall, his state delegation fell

behind the governor. Realizing that now the Georgia delegates were no longer countable

as a bloc vote loyal to Humphrey, the credential committee recommended that the

delegate seats be split half and half and offered evenly to both the Maddox delegates and

the GDF representatives. Both the GDF and Maddox delegates challenged the committee

recommendation by filing minority reports, claiming that all the seats should be given to

either one of the groups, yet both were rejected. Maddox delegate leaders James Gray and

Phil Campbell walked out of the convention hall in protest.

Then in the convention hall, Julian Bond was announced as the running mate

of McCarthy, though it was a symbolic gesture on the side of McCarthy supporters to the

48 Walter Rugaber, "Politics: Alabamian Challenges Mccarthy Delegates," New York Times, August 22, 1968.

80 GDF, since Bond was still underage to run for the vice presidency. In the first round of nomination voting, Georgia’s delegation vote was split 19.5 and 13.5 between Humphrey and McCarthy, while nine abstained from voting for either. In the end, Maddox had neither the intention nor the political skills to hold the state Democrats together. Under

Maddox’s leadership there was no party organization to discipline the rank and file members, and the Maddox supporters flocked to the governor without rooms to make compromises. Maddox worked for George Wallace’s American Independent Party campaign throughout the fall and the state’s Electoral College vote went for Wallace.

The breakdown in Chicago opened new prospects for the democratizers with national ambition. GDF was originally founded first by civil rights activists who tried to stop the election of Maddox in 1966 and later taken over by McCarthy supporters who protested against Johnson’s Vietnam policy. The GDF delegate eventually achieved only half of their goals, in other words, their delegate credentials were eventually recognized yet they lost the nomination to Humphrey. The GDF credentials challenge at the national convention nonetheless received the national spotlight, making its leader Julian Bond a nationally known figure. As the next chapter identifies, Bond continued to receive national support from outside of the state Democratic Party through the early 1970s.

iii. George Wallace’s Abandonment of the Democratic Party in Alabama

The 1966 gubernatorial race in Alabama affirmed George Wallace’s continued hold of state executive office, although his name was not printed on the ballot. Wallace made his wife, Lurleen, to run on his behalf that year so that the Wallace’s can remain in the state executive mansion, thereby literally evading the state constitution’s prohibition

81 on governors serving the office for more than one term. George Wallace needed to hold onto the governor’s office so that he could pursue his ambition for the White House in

1968. Throughout the presidential elections in the 1960s and 1970s, George Wallace’s popularity among the white conservative voters in Alabama and across the nation changed the electoral calculations of not only the local politicians in the state of Alabama but also of the presidential candidates of the two major parties.

This section demonstrates that from 1964 to 1968 under George Wallace’s governorship was internally disorganized and most isolated from the national Democratic Party leadership, in contrast to the close working relations that the governors of Georgia and South Carolina enjoyed. The relationship between

Governor George Wallace and the state Democratic Executive Committee chairmen, Roy

Mayhall, and Robert Vance, who succeeded Mayhall in 1966, was in tension because the chairmen were moderate national Democrats who opposed George Wallace’s firebrand segregationist stand while at the same time tried to save the state party’s ties with the national Democratic Party. Unlike South Carolina’s Governor Robert McNair, whose hold on the state government was secured because of the state Democratic Party, Wallace severed his ties with both the state and the national Democrats by running his own independent presidential campaigns. While Wallace had his personal clique of associates and followers who supported his state and national campaigns, the state Democratic Party remained disorganized.

- George Wallace’s Reaction to the Civil Rights Act and the Defense against

Republican Surge

George Wallace responded to the passages of the Civil Rights Acts by outright

82 vocal opposition to the legislation. When President Johnson suggested that Community

Relations Service director Leroy Collins visit Montgomery for an off the record

conference with Governor Wallace, he replied that while he would welcome the

director’s visit, he would “respectfully decline [the] invitation to engage in an

off-the-record conference regarding implementation of the so-called Civil Rights Bill.”

Then he continued, “My position on this bill is well-known. I believe the legislation is

unconstitutional and if unchallenged will result in the destruction of individual liberty and

freedom in this nation. It should, and will be, tested in the courts on constitutional

grounds.”49

Within a couple of days after he turned down the meeting offer from Collins,

Wallace spoke at the Independence Day Rally in Atlanta. Appearing on stage with

Mississippi’s former governor Ross Barnett and other states’ rights supporters from

Tennessee and Arkansas, Wallace told the crowd that the new civil rights law was “a fraud, a sham, and a hoax … rammed through the Congress on the wave of ballyhoo, promotions and publicity stints reminiscent of P. T. Barnum.” Wallace announced his intention to run for the White House with plans to file his candidacy and set up campaigns in ten of the former Confederate states, except Texas, Johnson’s home state, plus six non-southern states.50 Throughout his appeals to gain support for his own campaign, Wallace also told the press that he would withdraw from the presidential race if either of the two national parties’ nominees took a pro-South stand on certain key issues.51 Wallace indicated that should he corral enough electoral votes to hold the

49 “Gov. Wallace Turns Down Meeting Bid.” Montgomery Advertiser. July 3, 1964. 1. 50 “Wallace to Take Campaign to 16 North, South States,” Montgomery Advertiser and Alabama Journal, July 5, 1964, 1. 51 On the list of issues he listed were: 1) a firm statement in behalf of local government and the rights of

83 balance of power, then he would be willing to throw his votes to the candidate who

offered the most to the South. He did not rule out the possibility of giving the electoral

votes to a Republican, should he offer more than the Democrat.52

Wallace did not intend that his presidential candidacy in 1964 would garner

him the majority of electoral college vote in the November election; his priority was to

pressure the major party candidates to support his states’ rights causes. That primary

objective was fulfilled soon in the Republican nomination of Barry Goldwater, whose

campaign pledges met every item on Wallace’s checklist of southern demands. 53

Wallace officially withdrew his candidacy two days after the Republican Convention in

San Francisco concluded. He repeatedly emphasized “there’s been no agreement made

with anyone – no secret arrangement or agreement” with the Goldwater campaign, but it

was an implicit yet powerful nod to the Republican candidate.54 The withdrawal was

welcomed by the Alabama GOP delegation that had unanimously supported Goldwater

over other Republican frontrunners at the San Francisco convention, as Wallace’s

withdrawal improved the prospect for a Goldwater victory in the state.55

For the state’s congressional Democrats, the presidential electors, and the state

Democratic executive committee, Wallace’s abrupt decision to quit the presidential

states; 2) a repeal of the civil rights bill; 3) a statement declaring that the “running of the schools has historically been a right of the states”; 4) support of a strong national defense; 5) a promise to crack down on Communists; and 6) the preservation of law and order. “Continues Plans: Governor Lists ‘Quitting Price,’” Montgomery Advertiser, July 2, 1964, 1. 52 “State Rights ‘Must’ for Wallace Support,” Montgomery Advertiser, July 11, 1964, 1. 53 Barry M. Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative (Shepherdsville, Ky.,: Victor Pub. Co., 1960); Vesla M. Weaver, "Frontlash: Race and the Development of Punitive Crime Policy," Studies in American Political Development 21, no. 02 (2007). 54 “Wallace Quits Race for President: Keeps Mum on Choice for Office.” Montgomery Advertiser. July 20, 1964. 1. 55 Colin MacGuire. “Alabama Republicans Greet Withdrawal News with Glee.” Montgomery Advertiser, July 20, 1964, p. 1; “Alabamians Beginning Trek to San Francisco.” Montgomery Advertiser, July 7, 1964; “‘Sympathetic’: Bama Likes GOP Goals,” Montgomery Advertiser, July 12, 1964; Bob Ingram, “Bob Ingram Reports: Rebels Meet their Man,” Montgomery Advertiser, July 13, 1964; Bob Ingram, “Bob Ingram Reports: Alabamians Are Pleased,” Montgomery Advertiser, July 14, 1964.

84 campaign brought immediate logistical and political problems. For one thing, Wallace’s

withdrawal reduced the electoral prospect of Democratic nominees for congressional

races because the state’s federal election ballot under the existent plan was a party ballot,

which made it difficult for the voters to split the ticket between the presidential office and

the congress. Goldwater’s popularity in the state meant that the Republican congressional

candidates were likely to ride the presidential coattails, while the Republican ballot could

wipe out the congressional Democrats.56

Knowing that the party ballot structure under the present plan would doom the

Democratic congressional candidates, the Wallace administration sought to curtail the

Republican surge in the congressional races in ways it could. The administration

introduced a number of legislative measures to be enacted in a special legislative session

in early August.57 One was a congressional redistricting bill. The state’s congressional

districts had not been redrawn even once in the twentieth century despite the state

constitution’s provision to do so every ten years. The 1960 census reduced the

apportionment of the state’s U.S. House seats from nine in the previous decade to eight,

and in 1962 the state had skipped the redistricting process by holding a statewide at-large

election for the eight congressional seats.58 Despite the federal court’s decision to

tentatively allow the at-large district for the 1964 general election, the administration

introduced in the August session a bill that newly divided the state into eight districts,

56 John Williams, “Republicans Emerge as Strong Contenders in State,” Montgomery Advertiser, July 23, 1964, 28. 57 Bob Ingram. “Legislature is Called on Redistricting: Special Session Slated to Convene August 4. Won’t Hurt GOP, Say Candidates.” Montgomery Advertiser. July 25, 1964. 1.: Howard Moffett. “Solons Stuff Hopper as Session Gaveled: Succession Bill Among Proposals.” Montgomery Advertiser. August 5, 1964. 1; “Cites State’s Progress: Wallace Asks Redistricting, Blasts U.S., High Court.” Montgomery Advertiser. August 5, 1964. 1. 58 Jeff Frederick, Stand up for Alabama: Governor George Wallace (Tuscaloosa: Press, 2007), 87-90.

85 each with equal population. The redistricting bill came late in the election year and the

Republican Party of Alabama had already presumed that the general election in 1964

would also be held in the at-large election. The state GOP protested that the redistricting

plan disproportionally disadvantaged their candidates.59 Included in the final version of the redistricting bill that passed the state legislature on August 19th was a provision to have separate general election paper ballots for the presidential electors and congressional races, making it easier for the voters to cast a split vote for both elections.60

To complement these state-administered election measures to curb the Republican surge

in the congressional elections, Wallace actively campaigned on behalf of congressional

Democrats, while refraining from interfering in the presidential race.61 Despite these

governor-led efforts to contain Goldwater’s popularity in the state, five Republicans were

elected out of the eight U.S. Representative seats in the 1964 congressional election, the

largest Republican House delegation in the three states.

Two other major problems that Wallace’s candidacy withdrawal caused were

the Alabama Democratic Party delegates who were chosen in the May party primary to

support Wallace’s party nomination at the national convention, and the presidential

electors who were pledged to cast the state’s Electoral College votes to Wallace and

whose names were to be printed on the state’s general election ballot. As for the national

59 Bob Ingram and Howard Moffett, “House Votes Redistricting; Bill Waits Wallace Signing. GOP Suit of Protest is Expected,” Montgomery Advertiser, August 19, 1964, pp. 1 and 10. See also James Lamar Sledge, III, "The , 1865-1978" (PhD Dissertation, Auburn University, 1998), 209. 60 Howard Moffett, “Succession Bill Fails as Legislature Quits: Nabors Halts Brief Flurry on Measure,” Montgomery Advertiser, August 29, 1964, 1; “Districting is Approved by Governor,” Montgomery Advertiser, August 20, 1964, 2; Howard Moffett, “Filibuster Threatened over Succession Bill,” Montgomery Advertiser, August 6, 1964, 1; Howard Moffett, “Wallace Assails Four Over Filibuster: Strong Reaction Follows Address,” Montgomery Advertiser, August 7, 1964, 1-2; Howard Moffett, “Wallace Talk, Redistricting Pose Many Questions,” Montgomery Advertiser and Alabama Journal, August 9, 1964, 14C; Colin MacGuire. “Solons Produce Proposals for State’s Redistricting,” The Montgomery Advertise,. August 6, 1964, 1. 61 Bob Ingram, “State Demos Look for Answer to Campaign Muddle,” Montgomery Advertiser, July 22, 1964, 1.

86 party convention delegates, Wallace released all thirty-six of them from binding their

support at a state party caucus held immediately after his withdrawal announcement.

Though the delegates were released from the pledge to support Wallace, the pro-Wallace

force in the state Democratic caucus managed to elect Jesse Lanier, Mayor of Bessemer

and a Wallace protégé, to the chairmanship of the delegation. But his election

materialized only after a well known team of Wallace associates, including Seymore

Trammell and Eugene “Bull” Connor, forcefully and heavy-handedly worked on the

caucus floor proceedings to secure the vote for Lanier.62 The state caucus in July also

postponed a decision on whether to impose a unit rule on the delegation which would

bind the majority decision of the delegation on all of its members.

Wallace attended only the pre-convention proceedings of the platform

committee at the 1964 Democratic convention in Atlantic City, where he made an

impassioned speech that called for the outright repeal of the Civil Rights Act and

threatened that he would lead a third party movement after the November election should

his demands not be met by the president-elect.63 Then he skipped the rest of the convention and watched the developments from Montgomery.64 The state delegation

chair, Lanier, initially planned to have the Alabama delegation cast a unanimous

ceremonial vote for George Wallace as the state’s “favorite son” candidate in the first

round of voting.65 However, the national convention’s credential committee decided that

for the Alabama delegates to be seated at the convention, each one of them must

62 “Alabama’s Delegates to Caucus: Wallace Selection Held Not Probable; Still Favorite Son,” Montgomery Advertiser, July 22, 1964, 1; Bob Ingram, “Wallace Releases Demo Delegates: ‘Unit Rule’ Move Runs into Snag,” Montgomery Advertiser, July 23, 1964, 1. Frederick, Stand up for Alabama, 92. 63 Sterling F. Green. “Wallace Hints 3rd Party in Warning to Democrats,” Montgomery Advertiser, August 22, 1964, 1. 64 Howard Moffett, “Tongue-in-cheek: Wallace Suggests Oath for Everyone,” Montgomery Advertiser,. August 26, 1964, 1. 65 Bob Ingram, “First Bama Votes to Go to Governor,” Montgomery Advertiser, August 23, 1964, 1.

87 individually sign a loyalty oath to support the national party nominee. 66 As the convention opened, only eleven delegates signed the pledge without raising objections.

“Bull” Conner, the state’s national party committeeman, physically confronted the convention sergeants at arms and refused to step aside from the floor. The former

Birmingham police commissioner with ties to local white supremacist groups had led the walkout at the 1948 convention. He told a press reporter “when you walk out of a

convention like that [as in 1948] you’re dead. You’re a dead duck. You can’t vote yea

and you can’t vote nay.”67 The remaining delegates who refused to sign the oath lingered

on at the site of the convention in an attempt to get their seats recognized. But on the last

night, only the eleven delegates who had signed the oath were allowed to cast their vote

for the nomination confirmation of Johnson and Humphrey, as the rest watched the roll

call outside of the convention hall.68

Besides the issue of Alabama’s Democratic Party delegates, the other question concerned the presidential electors. The Democratic Primary in May had elected a slate of presidential electors who were pledged to George Wallace and whose names would be printed in the Democratic Party’s general election ballot. Now that Wallace had dropped from the race, the electors were left unclear about which presidential candidate they would cast the state’s ten votes for. The Democratic nominees for electors had pledged to

the governor at the time of primary that they would not support President Johnson for

reelection. They also were compelled to sign a pledge that they wouldn’t cast Alabama’s

66 Bob Ingram, “State Demos Turn Down Loyalty Oath: Signing Was ‘Price’ Put on Being Seated,” Montgomery Advertiser August 24, 1964, 1-2. 67 “State Delegates Take Seats Anyway: Clash Over Civil Rights Issue Avoided. Bull Won’t ‘Step Aside’ as Ordered,” Montgomery Advertiser, August 25, 1964, 1. 68 Bob Ingram, “Bailey Says ‘No’: Bama Sees Mass Pledge as Victory,” Montgomery Advertiser, August 25, 1964, 1; Bob Ingram, “Bama Delegates: A Few Took Seats, Yielded to Texas,” Montgomery Advertiser, August 27, 1964, 1.

88 electoral votes for a Republican.69 Ultimately the names of Johnson and Humphrey were not printed on Alabama’s Democratic ballot in the general election. There were only two slates for the state’s general election for voters to choose from at the voting booth – the

Republican electors for Goldwater, and the unpledged Wallace electors.

George Wallace and his associates in the Alabama Democratic Party isolated

themselves from the national party leadership by mounting a disorganized challenge and

physically confronting the national party institutions in the summer of 1964. Wallace’s

withdrawal from the presidential candidacy after Goldwater’s nomination brought serious

blows to Alabama’s other Democratic candidates who sought to run on the party ticket.

The Republican Party for the first time since Reconstruction took over a majority of the

state’s congressional delegation and the state’s presidential electors.

- 1966 Gubernatorial Campaign and State Democratic Party Executive

Committee Contest

The state Democratic Party Executive Committee chairmanship was contested

at the committee meeting in August 1966. Robert Vance, a national Democrat and a

Wallace antagonist, succeeded to the position after Roy Mayhall, also a national

Democrat, stepped down from the office.70 Most of the Wallace supporters in the

executive committee, including Earl Goodwin, a Wallace backed candidate for the chairmanship, were absent from the meeting. To overcome the division in the committee, it elected a pro-Wallace vice chairman and also adopted a resolution to fully support the

69 Rex Thomas. “10 Unpledged Electors Consider Resignations: Allen Says GOP Tough State Rival.” Montgomery Advertiser. July 21, 1964. 1: Bob Ingram. “Would Give State Voters Clear Choice.” Ibid. July 21, 1964. 1. 70 R. O. Y. Reed, "Wallace Already Campaigning for 1968," New York Times, October 16, 1966.

89 gubernatorial candidacy of for the general election.71

For Wallace, maintaining a hold on the state government became the utmost

priority as he planned his 1968 presidential bid. He found the proxy in his wife, Lurleen,

who agreed to hire the husband as an advisor: this was the only way left for him to make

his proxy run for the office and continue direct control of the state government. In the field of the Democratic gubernatorial primary that had ten candidates, Lurleen Wallace and Attorney General Richmond Flowers were the serious contenders. Throughout the campaign trail, George Wallace was less vocal on Alabama’s once-explosive racial troubles as he did not use the word “segregation.” Instead, the incumbent governor promised a continuing struggle to preserve local government and to combat “the liberalist, beatnik, street-marching crowd that’s running things in Washington.” Lurleen Wallace’s opponent in the Democratic Primary, Richmond Flowers, was endorsed by the Alabama

Democratic Conference, the intra-party group of African American Democrats, and the

Confederation of Alabama Political Organizations.72

In the Lurleen received a commanding lead of 54 percent over the other nine male opponents in the gubernatorial primary, winning a majority in all but five of the state’s sixty-seven counties. The six remaining counties were from the Black

Belt counties.73 Flowers’ runner-up spot came almost entirely from his strong support

from the black vote. It was evident that the attorney general, who had openly courted the

African American voters, had polled the vast majority of black votes in the Black Belt

71 "Alabama Loyalist Heads Democrats," ibid., August 7. 72 “It All Comes Down to This – Tomorrow Climaxes Long, Bitter Campaign.” Montgomery Advertiser. May 2, 1966. 1. 73 Bob Ingram. “Lurleen Beats Opponents in 61 of State’s Counties: N. Alabama Vote Big Factor in Win,” Montgomery Advertiser, May 5, 1966, 1.

90 counties.74 Lurleen Wallace had James Martin, a Republican opponent in the general

election but won easily in a two to one vote in November.

- 1968 Wallace Third Party Candidacy and Alabama Delegate Challenge at

the Democratic National Convention

With the governor’s office in hand, Wallace launched a full scale third party

campaign for the White House. His presidential campaigns were in part funded by the

state government budget, as he had unlimited access to the governor’s airplane when he

flew to other states to make stump speeches.75 As much as his third-party presidential campaign needed the access to the state government coffers, after his wife won the governorship in 1966, his continued hold on the state government also depended on the

kind of presidential campaign he would run in years to come. His perennial bids for the

White House were a way of adjusting to the expanded electorate in Alabama that was

receptive to Wallace’s presidential campaign rhetoric on state rights. The governors of

the other two states also sought to hold onto power after 1964, but what distinguishes

Wallace and Alabama from the other two states is that the disorganization of the state

party obliged Wallace to continue seeking the national executive office solely for sustaining his political base in the state, as the disorganized state party did not guarantee that he stay in office.

His third-party campaign in 1968 affected the state Democratic Party, as well as the two national parties’ presidential contests. As Wallace’s response to the 1964 election and the Republican surge demonstrated, Democratic congressional candidates were having hard time reclaiming the seats from the Republican members of Congress

74 “It’s a Lurleen Landslide! No Runoff,” Montgomery Advertiser, May 4, 1966, 1. 75 The Alabama state legislature had authorized payment for the airplane’s running costs in 1964. Frederick, Stand up for Alabama, 65 and 179.

91 elected in the sweep of 1964 Goldwater campaign. In early August the Democratic

congressional candidates needed to coordinate campaign strategies with Governor Albert

Brewer, State Party chairman Robert Vance and executive secretary Chriss Doss. The

group visited George Wallace headquarters and discussed the state party strategy for the

congressional and state campaigns.76 The coordination was necessary to contain the

damage the governor’s third party campaign would have on the state’s Democratic

candidates for the other offices. In the end, a ballot arrangement was made to give

advantages to both Wallace and the Democratic candidates for Congress. Although

Wallace was running as a third-party candidate in other states, in Alabama the ballots for

Wallace presidential electors were printed on the regular “rooster” Democratic Party

vote.77 The regular party slate of presidential electors included the state governor Albert

Brewer and five other constitutional officers who were nominated in the Democratic primary and pledged to support Wallace.78 Thus, Alabama’s major Democratic elites supported his third party presidential campaign even though it ran against the national

Democratic Party.

The Alabama Democratic delegates who attended the national convention in

Chicago were split between supporters of Wallace, a candidate who nonetheless was not

running in the Democratic nomination contest, and others who would support the

nominee of the national Democratic convention. A poll of Alabama delegates taken in the

middle of August indicated that thirty-one of the fifty delegates were still in favor of

76 Don Wasson, “Congressional Candidates Gather for Strategy Meet,” Montgomery Advertiser, August 9, 1968, 6. 77 The rooster slate of Democratic Party was so called for the state party emblem, which until 1966 had its state party slogan “ for the Right.” The Alabama Democratic Party replaced it with “Democrats for the Right.” 78 Don Wasson, “Gov. Brewer Says Wallace Will Carry Possibly 16 States,” Montgomery Advertiser, August 15, 1968, 1.

92 Wallace. After Wallace indicated that he didn’t want his name to be placed in the

Democratic nomination ballot, the number of pro-Wallace delegates shrank to sixteen, as

some of the pro-Wallace delegates decided to forego the convention.79 The regular party delegation credentials were contested by two groups from Alabama: the Alabama

Independent Democratic Party (AIDP), and the National Democratic Party of Alabama

(NDPA).

AIDP was a racially integrated group of national party loyalists who challenged

the “rooster” Democrat delegates who would support Wallace. The AIDP chairman,

David Vann, contended that the rooster delegation should be seated at the national

convention only if the delegate pledges supported the nominees of the convention. If not,

Vann demanded that the Wallace supporter should be replaced first by any of the regular

party alternates willing to support the pledge, and if the regular Democrats run out of

committed alternates, AIDP members would fill the rest of the delegation seats.80 The

Credentials Committee chairman, Richard Hughes, ordered that the Alabama delegates

sign a “disloyalty disclaimer,” a pledge that they would not support the candidate of

another party. Before the national credentials committee decision was made, loyalist

members of the State Democratic Executive Committee had pushed through a resolution

which removed the requirement of pledging support to the elector ticket the Democrats

picked in their May 7 primary. This allowed regular Democrats left in the existing party

structure to support a slate of electors advanced by Vann’s AIDP – a slate pledged to

support the nominee of the national convention.81

79 Don Wasson. “Loyalists File Brief to Challenge Delegation.” Montgomery Advertiser. August 14, 1968. 1 and 2. 80 Don Wasson. “Warfare Upcoming for State Democrats.” Montgomery Advertiser. August 18, 1968. 6C. 81 Other AIDP witnesses who testified in support of the challenge included Charles Gommilion, professor

93 The NDPA was a splinter group that separated from the Alabama Democratic

Conference, a black caucus in the state regular Democratic Party. 82 The NDPA challenged to replace all of the regular Democratic delegation at the national convention.

Their challenge was once denied further hearing by the national convention credentials committee before the convention convened, yet the NDPA chairman, John Cashin, secured signatures from a number of the Credentials Committee to bring the NDPA challenge back to the convention floor.83 Credentials Committee chairman Hughes

brought the NDPA challenge again on the first night of the convention, yet the NDPA’s

minority report was voted down by the floor. Arthur Shores, a civil rights leader in

Alabama and an AIDP delegate, testified against the NDPA challenge, stating that the

Credentials Committee had only one question to determine. The question was whether or

not the delegates pledged to support Wallace should be seated. Credentials Committee chairman Hughes also declared that the seating of NDPA delegates “would be exactly what a man named George Wallace would want.”84 Unlike Julian Bond’s Georgia

Loyal National Democrat group, the NDPA did not gain national recognition because the national Democratic Credentials Committee preferred the Alabama regular Democrats who supported the national party’s presidential candidate to the insurgent group.

After the credentials contest on the state regular delegation was settled in favor of the AIDP, all of the remaining Alabama delegation voted for Humphrey. However, in

at Tuskegee Institute, and Joe Reed, chairman of the Alabama Democratic Conference and executive secretary of the Negro Alabama State Teachers Association. The AIDP delegation contained a total of nineteen white persons and thirteen black persons, included businessman, lawyers, housewives, students and laborers. Don F. Wasson, “State Delegates Face Oath: Demo Committee Orders Disclaimer,” Montgomery Advertiser, August 24, 1968, 1 and 5. 82 Hardy T. Frye, Black Parties and Political Power: A Case Study (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1980), 23. 83 Don F. Wasson, “State Has Delegates on Floor,” Montgomery Advertiser, August 27, 1968, 1-2. 84 Don F. Wasson, “Alabama Loyalists Win Seats: Convention Vote is 1525 to 801½,” Montgomery Advertiser, August 28, 1968, 1-2.

94 the general election, two-thirds of the state electorate supported George Wallace’s third

party campaign, while Humphrey and Richard Nixon split the remainder of the vote.

Conclusion

Since the Civil Rights Acts were enacted, the gubernatorial election contests in

the three states have had profound national repercussions, as the authoritarian holdovers

began to seek ways of holding onto the state government. Where the state party

organization was robust enough to keep the authoritarian incumbents in power, their

reaction to the national civil rights laws and support for the national party’s presidential

nominee took the form of a reluctant embracement, as were the cases of Georgia under

Governor Sanders, and South Carolina under the Barnwell Ring. The governors needed to

skillfully strike a balance between making concessions to national leaders and holding the

state party factions together. Only when there is adequate communication between the

national party leaders and state party elites were the governors able to maintain the

existing state-national party relations. Georgia Governor Sanders managed to do this, but

his successor Lester Maddox lacked such political leadership. Maddox isolated himself

from both the White House and the state’s insurgent groups and he also failed to reform

the Georgia Democratic Party into a lasting institution wedded to the national party.

In contrast to Georgia’s abrupt change in its gubernatorial leadership, South

Carolina presents a case of skillful political coordination led by Democratic Party leaders

that carried the state through orderly transition to two-party competition between 1964

and 1968. Unlike Alabama and Georgia, in which some party officials expressed outright

objections to Lyndon Johnson’s nomination in 1964 and continued defiance of the federal

95 Civil Rights Acts, South Carolina’s Democratic Party leaders forestalled division among its delegates and eventually stood with the Johnson administration by seeking compromises among the state leaders. Their compromises were reached only after the state governors tried every institutional means to contest and defy the federal orders and keep South Carolina’s authoritarian state regime intact. Until all such institutional means were exhausted, the governors maintained express reservations about the diminishing scope of state authority over its regime and the party. At the same time, they did not resort to the language of mass resistance to continue segregation, as Georgia’s Lester

Maddox and Alabama’s George Wallace did.

The principal difference between South Carolina and the other two states in response to the Civil Rights Acts came from the mediating roles that the state party leaders had among themselves as well as with the national party leaders. The Barnwell faction of the South Carolina Democratic Party, from which both Governors Donald

Russell and Robert McNair accrued political support, produced compromises within the state party leaders and served as a bridge with the national Democratic Party. Meanwhile, outspoken racial conservatives who were alienated from the Barnwell ring switched to the Republican Party, accelerating the party’s organizational growth. These initial conditions for the institutionalization of the Republican Party had long lasting effects on the development of the state’s two-party system, as the Republican Party opposition to the state’s Democratic Party increasingly was fueled by racial conservatism, as we will continue to find in the South Carolina section in Chapter Three.

If South Carolina exemplified a coordinated state party unity by the Democratic leaders and the emergence of two distinct parties, Alabama stood at the other end of the

96 scale, as the state Democratic Party remained disorganized. George Wallace’s 1964 bid for the White House as a third party candidate and sudden withdrawal from the race confounded the elections, as his name was printed as the presidential candidate of

Alabama’s regular Democratic Party on the general election ballot, while the state electorate had no ballot to vote for Lyndon Johnson. With the Goldwater surge in 1964, however, Wallace’s state government was also threatened with the election loss of some of its Democratic state legislators and congressman. To stall the Republican surge in the state’s congressional races, Wallace called a special session of the state assembly in

August 1964 to draw new congressional districts. Despite such last minute effort on the part of Wallace, the state elected Goldwater and several Republican congressmen in 1964.

Wallace then used the office of state executive to continue pursuing his presidential ambition in 1968, this time again in the third party. His continued pursuit of the presidency kept him in the state executive mansion, while the state Democratic Party remained divided and disorganized.

Such were the state governors’ relations with the national Democratic Party and the varied extent to which the governors relied on the state Democratic Party to keep the governors and the state party elites in power. After the state party elites’ last defense of the enclave autonomy against the national party failed in Chicago, the national party committee decided to reform the national convention delegate selection process in each state. The governors committed themselves to the reform implementation process differently primarily because each governor had distinct relations with the national party and the state party organization. The next chapter examines how this came about.

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Chapter Three. The State Democratic Party Elites’ Responses to the Nationally Mandated Party Reform, 1968-1972.

If we are not an open party; if we do not represent the demands of change, then the danger is not that people will go to the Republican Party; it is that there will no longer be a way for people committed to orderly change to fulfill their needs and desires within our traditional political system. It is that they will turn to third and fourth party politics or the anti-politics of the street. McGovern-Fraser Commission Report.1

The McGovern-Fraser Commission, formally known as the Commission on

Delegate Selection and Party Structure, was a group of the national Democratic Party

leadership that sought to intervene in the state party’s national party convention delegate selection processes. Prior to democratization, the authoritarian enclaves’ delegates had retained their decisive authority over the nomination of non-enclave presidential candidates in the hall of the national convention. Following the breakdown of order at the

1968 Chicago convention, the McGovern commission’s reform mandates came as the coup de grace by the Democratic national leadership on the party institutions that had

sheltered the enclave authoritarianism in the national democracy. While the party reform guidelines were applied equally to the three states, the state governors’ responses were varied. This chapter investigates how and why the state compliance processes varied among the three states, and to what effects the states’ varied acceptances of the national order changed their later courses of subnational democratic consolidation.

In the existent account the McGovern-Fraser reform has commonly been understood that it enabled participatory democracy in the selection of delegates for the party’s presidential nomination. The Commission’s guidelines were meant to deprive the

1 The Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection, “Mandate for Reform: A Report on the Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection to the Democratic National Committee,” Congressional Record, September 22, 1971. (Government Printing Office, 1971). Volume 117, 32908-21.

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delegate selection authority from the state Democratic Party leaders, and to open the state

delegate selection processes to independent activists and voters.2 The state Democratic party needed to comply with the eighteen guidelines drafted by the national Commission, most critical of them being the provision to use democratic and open delegate selection processes for the 1972 presidential nomination, so that the delegates would not be subject to the control of a few state party bosses. The Commission guidelines required that state parties take affirmative steps to overcome past discrimination in selecting delegates on the basis of race, age, sex, so that the delegates represent the racial minority, youths and women in proportion to these groups’ sizes in the state population. Proxy voting and unit rule were banned, and party rules and delegate selection schedules had to be made available to the public. In many cases the states legislatures enacted these reform

guidelines into election statutes rather than simply amending the state party rules, thereby

affecting the delegate selection processes of both the state Democratic Party and the

Republican Party.3

The conventional understanding holds that the McGovern reforms brought the

demise of party bosses, as they no longer could reign in the presidential nomination

process. In the place of smoke filled conventions, candidate centered campaigns have

risen as prospective presidential nominees now needed to solicit the popular support in

those states that hold primaries and caucuses early in the campaign season in order to

build favorable momentum. The candidates also needed to invest campaign resources

heavily in states that send large numbers of national delegates.

2 Nelson W. Polsby, Consequences of Party Reform (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 73. 3 For a general account of the reform, see William J. Crotty, Decision for the Democrats: Reforming the Party Structure (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978).

99

Such comprehensive account of the reform, however, overlooks the distinct dynamics and politics in the state level compliance processes. The existent view has treated the state level implementations of the guidelines hardly problematic, as if the magnitude of the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention’s breakdown was profound enough to prompt orderly acceptance of procedural reform.4 In reality, for the national reform proposals to be successfully implemented in a timely manner, two conditions had to be met: the Democratic National Committee, which was still dominated by the organized state party leaders, first needed to accept the reform; and second, a majority of the state Democratic Party organizations across the nation had to comply with the reform proposals coming from the national party commission, so that non-complying state party delegates can be legitimately denied seats by the national convention majority vote in four years. The scholarly consensus on the success of the reform overwhelmingly focus on the first point, that is, the national party’s drafting and approval of procedural reform in an effort to defuse the fissures arising again at the national convention in 1972 and unite the dissident factions.5

In contrast, the local struggles over state-level party reform compliance has

been largely overlooked in the previous scholarship even though these processes were

critical to the democratic consolidation of the three Deep South states into the national

4 An exception is Byron Shafer’s Quiet Revolution, in which the author offers an incisive explanation for the politics of party reform implementation at the state level. Shafer argues that during the early phase of Party Structure and Delegate Selection Committee’s recommendation formulation between the end of 1968 and early 1970, the party reform proposals were generally met with indifference if not blatant resistance from party leaders in organized party states, than in less organized volunteer party states in which pro- reform activists welcomed the proposal (see the map on p.282 in Quiet Revolution). The prospect of implementing McGovern-Fraser Commission’s guidelines at the state level remained far from certain until the elections of pro-reform Democratic governors in 1970. In Shafer’s account, Georgia’s Jimmy Carter is portrayed as the epitome of newly elected pro-reform governors who found a path to the national political scene. This dissertation concurs with that view. Byron E. Shafer, Quiet Revolution: The Struggle for the Democratic Party and the Shaping of Post-Reform Politics (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1983). 5 In addition to the pieces of work mentioned in the previous three footnotes, see Philip A. Klinkner, The Losing Parties: Out-Party National Committees, 1956-1993 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994).

100

democracy. What have been missed in the existent accounts are answers to the following

questions. How did the state party leaders reform the national delegate selection processes, while most of the authoritarian holdovers still remained in the seats of statewide public office? Who took the lead in subnational party reform, under what local political conditions? Lastly, did the nationally mandated reform change the ways the state party elites sought influence in the national Democratic Party – if yes, in what ways, and if no, why not? Answers to these questions give us better grasp of the shifting relations between the state party elites and national party leaders.

As far as the three states are concerned, the state-level compliance politics of the McGovern-Fraser reform guidelines resulted not in the complete dismantlement of authoritarian holdovers but instead the rearrangement of state political actors who can legitimately participate in the Democratic presidential nomination politics. Contrary to the popular understanding that the reform displaced the regular state party politicians,

McGovern-Fraser commission members and staffs relied extensively on the regular party politicians who were for the reform, while the commission tried to curtail challenges from both local independent parties and insurgent activists. Thus, the reform preserved the state party regulars so long as they reaffirmed their loyalty and institutional ties to the national Democratic Party, while it blocked independent insurgent challenge and third parties that could turn against the Democratic Party.

Though the delegate selection process reform did not displace these holdovers from the state government, the state level implementation of the McGovern-Fraser

Commission guidelines affected the future career prospects of the authoritarian holdover elites. The governors committed themselves to the reform process in the state party when

101

they regarded it was imperative for their political survival and future career prospects.

Thus, the governors’ varied involvement in the party reform reflected their views on the

usefulness of the Democratic Party to hold onto power and advance their careers in the

state and at the national stage.

The analysis in the following pages relies heavily on the archival evidence

gathered from the original archival collection of McGovern-Fraser Commission Record,

especially the office memoranda and letters exchanged between the Commission staffs in

Washington, D.C., and the state political actors with regard to the progress of the state

party reform.6 These internal records reveal the democratic national visions and the

nuanced local insights that the national and state party leaders had on the contingent

processes of subnational democratic consolidation. Oral interviews, monographs and

newspaper reports from other sources are also cited to supplement their views.

i. Governor Led Party Reform in Georgia

In Georgia, the substantive reform of the state party began only after Jimmy

Carter was officially inaugurated to succeed Governor Lester Maddox in January 1971.

Before the new governor came into power, Maddox and James Gray, the state party chairman appointed during Maddox administration, had made only token efforts to comply with the reform guidelines. African American leaders in the state stayed alert on the development of the state reform commission, voicing their critical opinions at every possible turn to the state and national party leaders.

- Local Democratizers’ Renewed Challenges on Georgia’s Democratic Party

6 The McGovern-Fraser Commission Records (hereafter abbreviated as MFCR in footnote citations) are part of the Democratic National Committee Records, archived at the Presidential Materials Division in the National Archives and Record Administration, Washington, D.C.

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As we saw in the previous chapter, two groups representing the Georgia

delegates contended the floor seats at the Chicago convention in 1968. One was the

regular delegation appointed by Governor Lester Maddox and James Gray, and the other

was the Loyal National Democrats (LND), an insurgent group that branched out of the

Georgia Democratic Forum in support of Eugene McCarthy and led by Julian Bond. The

credentials challenge resulted in the decision to replace almost half of the Maddox

delegation seats with the Loyal National Democrats.

After the Chicago convention ended, Georgia’s black leadership continued to

press for changes in the state Democratic Party by challenging the selection of Georgia’s

representatives in the Democratic National Committee. Georgia’s two National

Committee members, Marjorie Thurman and William Trotter, were part of the regular state delegation at the Chicago convention. Both were originally selected by then

Governor Carl Sanders in 1962 and had since served in the posts. Their renomination to the post was confirmed by the regular delegation at the Georgia Democratic Executive

Committee meeting on the second night of the Chicago convention, and subsequently they were reelected to the post by the voice vote of the National Committee.

Julian Bond and the Loyal National Democrats challenged the seating of

Thurman and Trotter in the state’s national committee chairmanship on August 30th, one day after the national convention adjourned. The Loyal National Democrats contended that the reelections of Thurman and Trotter to the positions by the voice vote of the national convention were invalid, because the vote took place before the Loyal National

Democrats were seated on the floor, making it impossible for the LND to challenge the election in the first place.

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Challenge of national committeepersons, rather than the convention delegates,

was unusual, and no decisions were made while the DNC was in Chicago. Soon after the

convention adjourned in August, the supporters of the Georgia LND kept reminding the

DNC to look into the matter. In late September, National Committeewoman,

Carmen Warschaw, wrote to Al Horn, the legal counsel for Georgia LND and an

American Civil Liberties Union lawyer in Atlanta. Reminding him that she wanted

follow up on the challenge to “the Maddox National Committeeman and

Committeewoman,” Warschaw continued, “I still feel very strongly about this, and I am sure many others on the committee would respond if they were called upon to say something.”7 Further, California’s National Committeeman, Stephen Reinhardt, joined

Warschaw in asking the DNC on behalf of Georgia LND to appoint a special committee to initiate an investigation on the post-convention Georgia challenge.8

Al Horn wrote his own letter of inquiry to the DNC chairman, Lawrence

O’Brien, at the beginning of October. After reminding O’Brien of the Georgia LND’s

challenge to Thurman and Trotter in Chicago, Horn offered him the group’s own

candidates for the post, both of whom were black and members of the LND delegation at

the convention in Chicago. Horn claimed that Thurman and Trotter were reappointed by

the state party chairman under the current state Democratic Executive Committee Rule 54.

Horn contended Rule 54 was “a twin” to Rule 55 that enabled the chairman and the

governor to appoint the national convention delegates. Horn pleaded O’Brien that since

Rule 55 has been discredited at the Chicago convention with the seating of the LND

7 Carmen H. Warschaw to Albert M. Horn. September 25, 1968. “Files on Georgia Democratic Party Forum, 1968: Correspondences.” Box 33. MFCR. 8 Stephen Reinhardt to Al Horn. October 3, 1968. Reinhardt to Lawrence O’Brien. October 3, 1968. “Files on Georgia Democratic Party Forum, 1968: Correspondences.” Box 33. MFCR.

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delegates, so should Rule 54. Horn claimed, “It is an archaic and undemocratic hangover”

from the time when “the Georgia governor was the Democratic party in Georgia

[underline original].”9 With the successful LND credentials challenge in Chicago, he

argued that the DNC should continue to press for change in the state party rule of the

national committeepersons selection.

Horn’s first inquiry apparently yielded no immediate response from the DNC

chair. Horn contacted DNC again a month before the general election in November, and

still he did not hear back from the national headquarters, which was preoccupied with the

general election. In reply to Warschaw’s aforementioned letter, Horn lamented the state

of the ongoing presidential campaign by writing, “Things are in a mess in the South and

in Georgia. Humphrey is still relying on the same people who got him in trouble. His

campaign organization in Georgia is made up of ‘regulars’ with not one ‘loyalist’

included.”10 The Humphrey campaign in Georgia was disorganized in large part because the incumbent Governor Maddox publicly supported and worked for the third party campaign of George Wallace.11 Georgia’s Electoral College vote went for Wallace in

November, joining the other four Deep South states.

In mid-December after the election campaign was over, the DNC finally

appointed Joseph Doorley of to the chairman of the National Committee’s

Credentials Committee to investigate the Georgia challenge. Horn reiterated to Doorley

the Loyal National Democrats’ frustration with the regular Democrats in Georgia. In the

9 Horn to O’Brien. October 1, 1968. “Files on Georgia Democratic Party Forum, 1968: Correspondences.” Box 33. MFCR. 10 Horn to Warschaw. October 8, 1968. “Files on Georgia Democratic Party Forum, 1968: Correspondences.” Box 33. MFCR. 11 Charles Pou and Margaret Shannon, "Georgia Democrats: Ins, Outs and Oops!," The Atlanta Constitution, November 2, 1969, SM8.

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aftermath of Wallace’s successful campaign that was actively supported by the

incumbent Democratic governor, Horn wrote, “It is doubtful from public statements that

even a simple majority of the regular delegation worked for the national ticket this fall.”

Horn argued, “It seems inappropriate that this group be allowed to determine both posts.

… Under no circumstances would it seem proper that those who sulked in their tests at

Chicago be permitted to control the committee selection.” Horn then complained the lack

of national party’s attention to the Loyal Democrat’s demand. He added, “Apparently

neither the regulars nor those in a national position of authority recognize that it was the

sense of the Convention that we represent half of the party in Georgia. Most of the loyal

delegation, including Julian Bond, publicly supported and worked for the national ticket:

none opposed it.”12 The LND’s general election effort in Georgia on behalf of Humphrey

was nonetheless sidestepped by the DNC, because the national committee continued to

attempt courting the regular Democrats in the vain hope of getting their support.

Despite the Loyal National Democrats’ plea, the DNC rejected the challenge

next year on January 14 in a roll call vote of 31 to 65. A report written by the DNC

concluded that “the argument of the Credentials Committee of the DNC was that the

challenge was filed after the Georgia Committeeman and Committeewoman had been

ratified by the National Convention, and was therefore moot.” The memo added that the

turning down of the LND challenge, nonetheless, was not to be taken as a sign of DNC’s

leniency to the existing Georgia Party rules. The Credentials Committee report continued,

The Committee also finds and agrees with the proposition advanced by the loyalist Democrats of Georgia that the rules of the Democratic Party of Georgia are both autocratic and undemocratic. We submit the following resolution to the National Committee; Be it resolved that the National Committeeman and

12 Horn to Joseph Doorley. December 23, 1968. “Files on Georgia Democratic Party Forum, 1968: Correspondences.” Box 33. MFCR.

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National Committeewoman of Georgia were properly approved and certified by the Convention, … and should be seated for the remainder of the terms; That there is urgent need for reform of Rule 54 of the Rules and Regulations of the Democratic Party of Georgia.13

Georgia’s party democartizers continued further to press on for change in the state Democratic Party. A month after the LND’s national committeeman challenge was dismissed by the national party, State Party Chairman, James Gray, announced the appointment of a thirty-member special committee for the Study of Rules and Procedures of the Democratic Party of Georgia. In the official statement Gray introduced the committee’s primary intention was to “serve more as a ‘working staff’ than a committee” and to make rules recommendations for consideration at the 1970 state convention of

Georgia Democratic Party.14 The first meeting of the committee took place in mid March.

Julian Bond wrote to Joseph Sports, the executive director of the Georgia

Democratic Party, immediately following the first meeting of the study committee. In the

letter Bond protested that the thirty member study committee, of which he was not a member, did not include enough black representatives but only “the token 2,” which was far smaller than the proportion of the Georgia black voters in the last election. For reforming and restructuring the party, Bond proposed specific ideas such as tax deductions for political contributions to encourage small donations and expand the party’s donor bases, the repeals of unit rules and the current Rule 55, and establishment of presidential preferential primary to enable proportional representation among state delegates. Then he added, “In closing, let me say that if the Democratic Party is to become a stronger force in Georgia, it must develop a state-wide ideology. It may be fine

13 Internal Staff Memo. From Rich Norling to Eli Segal, August 21, 1969. “Program Records: State Files. General Files. Georgia: Newsclips and Correspondence.” Box 44. MFCR. 14 Press Release from Democratic Party of Georgia. February 7, 1969. “Program Records: General Files. Georgia Reform Commission.” Box 44. MFCR.

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for a Hubert Humphrey to suppose that the national party is wide enough for himself and

Governor Maddox; what I am suggesting that it ought not be that wide. This state, like its neighbors, has serious problems of poverty, race, unemployment, education. A vibrant political organization can make important steps toward solving them, but only if there is some agreement, state-wide, as to how those problems ought to be solved.” He concluded the letter by warning Sports that “If the deliberations of the Special Study Committee for

Rules and Procedures fail to allow this important segment of Georgia’s population a voice and an open forum in setting party policy, choosing its leaders, electing its delegates, then I submit it will not be large enough for either Mr. Humphrey or Governor

Maddox, but will in time, cease to exist.”15 Sports wrote back on the next day, refuting

Bond’s contention. “I do not feel that there is even the remotest possibility that the

Democratic Party will ever cease to exist in Georgia. But those of us in positions of responsibility within the Democratic Party are working not just toward the survival of the

Party but to make sure that the Democratic Party continues as the voice of the majority in

Georgia.”16 These correspondences Bond and Sports were released to the press and the

members of the Study Committee, and subsequently printed in The Atlanta

Constitution.17

Overall, the Georgia Loyal National Democrats’ challenges on the state

Democratic Party added pressure, at times through the national party, to replace the authoritarian holdovers in the party’s official positions with democratizers. Though in both instances the LND’s demands were rejected, their activism found outside audiences,

15 Julian Bond to Joseph Sports. March 18, 1969. Sports to Bond. March 19, 1969. “Program Records: State Files. General Files. Georgia: Newsclips and Correspondence.” Box 44. MFCR. 16 Ibid. 17 Remer Tyson. “Bond Urges Democratic Party Revitalization.” The Atlanta Constitution. March 26, 1969. 7

108 including the national party leadership, as well as Warschaw and Reinhardt. Al Horn and

Julian Bond continued to voice their views on what the Georgia Democratic Party should become of in the following couple of years and they increasingly received the national spotlight, as the remainder of this Georgia section shows.

- National Spotlight on Julian Bond at the McGovern Commission’s Public

Hearing

In 1969, the McGovern commission held a total of seventeen public hearings across the nation to survey the local Democrats’ views on reforming the delegate selection processes and party structure. The hearing was held on June 19th in Atlanta for

Georgia and its neighboring states. Although the Atlanta hearing was open to all Georgia

Democrats, those who actually attended and gave testimonies were overwhelmingly pro- reform liberal leaders and activists. Incumbent Governor Maddox and Party Chairman

Gray skipped the entire hearing meeting and did not publicly meet with the national party panel members. 18 Of Georgia’s thirty-member Rules Study Committee, only three,

Marjorie Thurman and William Trotter, both national committee members, and Irving

Kayler, a Georgia member of the National Democratic Party’s O’Hara Commission which proposed convention procedure reforms, gave testimonies at the hearing.

A number of liberal and moderate politicians and McCarthy activists testified in front of the hearing panel from DNC. Ivan Allen, the liberal Atlanta Mayor, opened the hearing as the host of the city. Mayor Allen was followed by the first main speaker, former Governor Carl Sanders, who was presumably invited and given the spot because he was a prospective candidate for the 1970 gubernatorial race. Sanders was neither a

18 Sam Hopkins, "McGovern Group Hears Democrats Allen, Bond and Sanders Monday," The Atlanta Constitution, Jun 14 1969.

109 member of the Maddox delegation in 1968 nor was he on Gray’s Study Committee of

Party Rules. Addressing the hearing panel politely, Sanders nonetheless made sure to

point out that he has a firm belief “that we have every right to believe that democrats [sic]

from other areas of the country will be sensitive to our local problems and will support

our own efforts to modernize our party structure and organization.” 19 The former governor, a moderate and a national party supporter from the days of Lyndon Johnson, expressly stated that the party organization reform must be carried out by the Georgia

Democrats themselves and tried to minimize the national intervention to as much as possible.

Georgia’s national party committee members, Thurman and Trotter, took up the podium right after Sanders. They recommended that partisan voter registration should be instituted in order to strengthen the party organization in Georgia. In the question and answer session that followed their testimonies, one of the McGovern hearing board members, Carmen Warschaw, the California national committeewoman who sided with

Georgia’s Loyal National Democrats in the earlier credential challenge, jumped in. She took the opportunity to chide the two Georgia Democrats, and said that “just simply party registration doesn’t help in the never never land of party politics.” Thurman stood on the defensive and stated, “I would like to explain for the benefit of the Commission that party organization in our state is very new. Our first party rules for an organization within the state were written in 1963. This was six years ago. They certainly not were perfect, by any means, but they were revolutionary at that time because they took away from the governor some of the powers that he had enjoyed historically and put some of the

19 Carl Sanders testimony. June 19, 1969. Atlanta hearing transcript, pp.21- “Program Records: Files on Commission Hearings. Files on Individual Hearings. Atlanta 6/16/69: Transcript.” Box 25. MFCR.

110 election processes or selection processes in the hands of the electorate.”20 The exchange

between Warschaw, a California supporter of Loyal National Democrats, and Thurman, a

pro-reform moderate yet a regular party official in the Georgia Democratic Party, reveals

that even within the Democratic National Committee there were disagreements over the

extent to which the state party keep its own party rules.21

Julian Bond took then podium and spoke after the two national committee members. It was Bond who gained the friendly attention of the commission panelists, including Warschaw. In the prepared statement Bond reiterated what he had written in his

March letter to State Party Executive Committee Director Sports. For instance, Bond repeated the need for introducing state tax deductions for small amount donations to expand the party’s donor base. With regard to the policy orientation of the Democratic

Party, he went a step further and stated, “The party has to have some kind of ideology and its members have to have at least nominal agreement with that ideology.”22 Unlike

Warchaw’s dismissive interrogation of Committeewoman Marjorie Thurman, this time

the hearing board members asked Bond specific questions and solicited his views on the

winner-take-all primaries and campaign finance.23

The attention Julian Bond received at the national public hearing panel is also noteworthy when Bond is compared to other pro-democratization activists in Georgia.

20 Marjorie Thurman and William Trotter joint testimony. June 16, 1969. “Program Records: Files on Commission Hearings. Files on Individual Hearings. Atlanta 6/16/69: Transcript.” Box 25. MFCR. 21 Thurman later stated in a newspaper interview that Georgia’s Democratic Party needed a new titular head other than Lester Maddox, and that state party executive members and the national convention delegates should be chosen from the grassroots up rather than from the titular head down. Pou and Shannon, "Georgia Democrats: Ins, Outs and Oops!." 22 Bond testimony. June 19, 1969. Atlanta hearing transcript, p.56. “Program Records: Files on Commission Hearings. Files on Individual Hearings. Atlanta 6/16/69: Transcript.” Box 25. MFCR. 23 “Statement of the Georgia Democratic Party Forum Before the Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection. Atlanta, Georgia, June 16, 1969.” “Program Records: State Files. General Files. Georgia: Hearing Testimony.” Box 44. MFCR.

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For example, E. T. Al Kehrer, the founding chairman of Georgia Democratic Party

Forum and the director of AFL-CIO’s Civil Rights Department, received far smaller time

and attracted little interests of the McGovern panel. The representatives of Georgia

Democratic Forum were given turns to make their testimonies after Bond and several others at the hearing. Al Kehrer, and two others spoke on behalf of the Forum. It is obvious from the sequence of order to testify and limited allocation of time to the Forum that it was Bond, not Kehrer and the Georgia Democratic Party Forum, whose voice gained volume and prominence among the McGovern Committee members. Following the instructions from the timekeeper of the hearing board that the three GDF members were given a total of ten minutes, Kehrer had to cut the prepared statement, which was originally in twelve page length. The last speaker of the Forum was cut off in the middle

of his rather verbose remarks, and there were no questions asked to the Forum members

from the panel, as the hearing board moved on to the next witness.

Such a short and abrupt end of Kehrer’s presentation at the McGovern hearing

panel, despite his long history of local activism for democratization, reflected the limited

outreach Kehrer made to the national audience. Having been the organizer for anti-

Maddox voter mobilization group since 1966, Kehrer regularly voiced his own views on

the state politics. Writing under the letterhead of Georgia Democratic Party Forum,

Kehrer made every opportunity to directly inform the party regulars of his take on the development of the state party.

As Kehrer continued to express his dissenting voice in the state politics, however, the leaders of Georgia Loyal National Democrats, central among them Bond and Al Horn, gradually distanced themselves from Kehrer and his Georgia Democratic

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Party Forum. In a letter dated February 25th, 1969, Kehrer asked Bond to renew his membership of the Forum and pay the annual membership fee. Bond obliged and even sent him extra contribution for the Forum’s general account. Yet in an undated letter to

Al Horn, presumably written in early March, Bond suggested that Georgia Loyal

National Democrats should start fundraising nationally for themselves and separate itself from Kehrer’s Georgia Democratic Forum. Bond wrote, “I talked with [co-founder of

GDF] John Morris who was disapproving of the move we made to change our name; he thought it would cause additional trouble with Al [Kehrer], and I tend to agree with him.”

Bond acknowledged that his activism had by then outgrown the locally-based organization of GDF under Al Kehrer’s leadership. Bond continued, “But I do think we ought to raise money quickly, under the Georgia Loyal National Democrats name, and appropriate the Forum mailing list from John Morris and go into business as something if we can’t get Al to let go control of the Forum.”24 Nationally inclined Julian Bond and his

Loyal National Democrats were well aware that their democratization demands needed to be heard by the national audience if they were to make further progress in party democratization.

Throughout 1969 and into 1970, neither the nationally initiated public hearing, nor the recommendations of Georgia’s Rules Study Committee, brought political pressures on the regulars state party officials to initiate reform. Though the state party chairman John Gray refrained from outright vocal resistance to the reform commission,

24 Bond to Horn. Undated letter. “Program Records: Background Material and Research Files. Files on Georgia Democratic Party Forum, 1968. Correspondence.” Box 33. MFCR.

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just less than two months before the 1970 state convention, he rejected to consider the

report submitted by his own Study Committee.25

It was the gubernatorial election in 1970 and accompanying turnover of the

State Democratic Executive Committee that finally pushed the reform compliance process in Georgia. A DeKalb county Democratic Party policy committee chair wrote to

McGovern, along with his feedback on the guideline proposals, “It is the judgment of many Democrats in Georgia that the state party is waiting for directives from the DNC and for the gubernatorial election in 1970 before making any alterations in the rules for delegate selection or in party structure. Our efforts locally to recommend changes in the state party rules will, therefore, probably not be fruitful.” The DeKalb county Democrat added as a side note, “Our state executive committee, of which I am a member, has not met since September 1968 when it had to appoint presidential electors. This is an indication that activity at the state level is minimal.”26 For Georgia’s Democratic Party,

the institutional reform had to be led by a new governor.

- 1970 Gubernatorial Campaign and Party Reform Proposal

The 1970 gubernatorial campaign that eventually elected Jimmy Carter to the

state executive office was critical, if not as eventful as the 1966 race, in the course of

Georgia’s Democratic Party reform and also in the party’s coalition formation. In the

Democratic gubernatorial primary, the candidate nomination was contested among Carl

Sanders, Jimmy Carter and seven other candidates. Facing the veteran in the state politics,

in the campaign rhetoric Carter portrayed former Governor Sanders as a politician of

25 E. T. Kehrer to James Gray. May 22, 1970. “Program Records: State Files. General Files. Georgia: Newsclips and Correspondence.” Box 44. MFCR. 26 Faye Goldberg to George McGovern. November 1, 1969. “Program Records: State Files. General Files. Georgia: Newsclips and Correspondence.” Box 44. MFCR.

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privileged class, calling him “Cuff Links Carl” and a “limousine liberal.” Carter alleged

that Sanders profited from his previous service in the governor’s office, and relentlessly

pursued the white backlash votes that had supported Maddox.27 The liberal Atlanta

Constitution endorsed Sanders in the Democratic primary, and after the former governor lost the nomination to Carter in the run-off primary, the paper supported a Republican candidate in the general election.28 Carter nonetheless managed to win the general election with the combined support of the rural white voters, Atlanta’s blacks and progressives.

After Carter won the run-off primary, he was officially confirmed as the

Democratic gubernatorial nominee at the state party convention held in Macon on

October 7th. The convention adopted resolutions for party reform, which included plans to abolish the State Executive Committee and to reduce the authority of gubernatorial nominee from the previous practice of allowing the nominee to select the entire

Committee members. David Gambrell, an Atlanta lawyer and a Carter appointee, took over the party chairmanship from James Gray. According to a newspaper report, the resolutions were adopted almost unanimously at the end of the convention as the

attendees started to depart from the hall and paid little attention to the proceedings. Al

27 E. Stanly Godbold, Jimmy and : The Georgia Years, 1924-1974 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 147-50. 28 “Sanders Should Win.” The Atlanta Constitution. Thursday, September 3, 1970. 4-A: “Wednesday’s Primaries.” The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution. September 6, 1970. 22-A; Sanders was also endorsed by John Sibley. John A. Sibley. “Pulse of the Public: Georgia Needs Sanders.” The Atlanta Constitution. Tuesday, September 8, 1970. 4-A; Carter obtained endorsements of only a couple of local newspapers. “Primary 1970: The Pick of the Press.” The Atlanta Constitution. Tuesday, September 8, 1970. 4-A. The Republican candidate, , won the party’s primary over James Bently who had switched from the Democratic Party following the 1968 Chicago convention. Bently was endorsed by Bo Callaway but he lost the gubernatorial nomination to Hal Suit. Bentley’s loss, according to his own account, was attributed to his joining the Republican Party and announcing the candidacy without consulting the party’s establishment. James Bently interview by Jack Baas and Walter De Vries, April 29, 1974. Interview number A-0062. Transcript pp.3-7. Southern Oral History Collection (#4007) at the Southern Historical Collection. The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.

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Kehrer, the Georgia Democratic Forum organizer, expressed to an Atlanta Constitution

reporter that he would protest the resolution adoption because there were not enough

delegates to fill the quorum, but he apparently took no such official action. The newly

adopted resolution called for the selection of three quarters of the two hundred member

State Executive Committee from congressional district and senatorial district conventions.

The gubernatorial nominee was to retain the right to choose the remaining fifty members

of the state executive committee. In addition a new special committee, composed of ten

congressional district vice chairman, was to replace Chairman Gray’s Study Committee

of Party Rules. The special committee was expected to recommend a new democratic

method for selecting national convention delegates for 1972.29

- The Delayed Yet Assured Reform Implementation by Carter Appointees

Right after Georgia’s gubernatorial election ended, McGovern-Fraser

Commission staff Robert Nelson wrote to Gambrell, the new party chair, urging him to

start actual reform to comply with the eighteen guidelines. “To give you a feel for what is

going on in other states, I can report to you that all but 3 of the 50 state parties have

established reform commissions,” Nelson pressed the newly appointed chairman in the

letter.30 According to the Commission, Georgia was categorized as one of the delayed states in party reform, with “under 50% in compliance with all or bulk of the reform ahead of them.”31 As of January 1971, Georgia Democratic Party had not initiated any

reform to comply with the Commission’s guidelines. In less than a year that Carter

assumed the state executive office and the state party, the Georgia Democratic Party had

29 Bill Shipp. “Democrats Okay Reform.” The Atlanta Constitution. October 8, 1970. 1 and 16-A. 30 Robert W. Nelson to David H. Gambrell. November 20, 1970. “Program Records: State Files. General Files. Georgia: Reform Commission.” Box 44. MFCR. 31 Report on Status of the States. January 7, 1971. “Program Records: Files on Guidelines for Delegate Selection. State Reform Commission: General Information.” Box 20. MFCR.

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to implement the changes required by the reform guidelines so that the Georgia delegates

would be granted credentials by the national committee in 1972.

A day before the governor’s inauguration, the new state party chairman David

Gambrell wrote to Donald Fraser, who by then took over the national reform committee

from McGovern. Gambrell assured, “We are committed to complete the reorganization

by September 1, 1971, so as to be in a position to select delegates to the 1972 National

Convention under the new plan.” He announced that the state party has appointed

William B. Gunter of Gainesville, as Chairman of the Georgia Committee on Delegate

Selection. 32 Despite the pressing deadline for guideline compliance, Gambrell was appointed to the U.S. Senate in the following month to fill the vacancy created by

Richard Russell’s death in late January. The state party chairmanship was taken over by

Charles Kirbo, another Carter ally and political advisor. Carter also replaced the position of National Committeeman, which had been held by William Trotter for the past eight years, with William Gunter.

Even after the shuffling of the personnel in the state party organization, Carter kept appointing his close aides to the reform committee positions. When Commission

staff, Robert Nelson, participated in the first meeting of Georgia’s State Democratic

Executive Committee in March 1971, Nelson reported the meeting back to the DNC chair

Lawrence O’Brien. Nelson wrote that Bill Gunter, the delegate selection committee chair,

was “a man close to the Governor” and “first rate.” Delighted with this finding, Nelson

wrote “Gunter is a national democrat [sic], who proclaimed it loudly and firmly along

32 David H. Gambrell to Donald M. Fraser. January 11, 1971. “Program Records: State Files. General Files. Georgia: Newsclips and Correspondence.” Box 44. MFCR.

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with his intentions to support all future presidential nominees of the party with all of his

energy and strength, as he had supported them in all past elections.”33

Even with the support of Governor Carter and the appointment of his close pro-

reform politicians, Georgia’s full guideline compliance did not take place in one sweep.

State Party Chairman Kirbo reassured Donald Fraser again that the party is making

progress but it takes time to make the reform process more democratic. Two state special

party committees, one on the permanent party structure and the other on delegate

selection, had to be established, with one person elected from each of the ten

congressional districts and additional ten members appointed. There needed to be women,

young people and African Americans represented in the two committees, but it took

another two months for the state Democratic Party to conduct public hearings in all ten

congressional districts. Then, Kirbo wrote to Fraser in mid July that the state assembly

would need to pass into law the reapportionment plans of Congressional Districts, State

Senate Districts and State House of Representative Districts. These reapportionment

plans provided the basis for which the State Democratic Party Executive Committee

would restructure the party organization and reform the delegate selection rules.34

Eventually the amended rules pertaining to the national delegate selection were

adopted by the State Democratic Executive Committee on December 6, 1971. The

revised rule stipulated that the Executive Committee shall determine the number of

delegates elected from each congressional district, and the congressional district

delegates will in turn select statewide delegates, whose number will also be determined

33 Memorandum from Bob Nelson to Chairman O’Brien. March 3, 1971. “Program Records: State Files. Files on Compliance with Commission Guidelines. Georgia 1971.” Box 62. MFCR. 34 Charles Kirbo to Donald M. Fraser. July 13, 1971. “Program Records: State Files. Files on Compliance with Commission Guidelines. Georgia 1971.” Box 62. MFCR.

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by the Executive Committee. For the 1972 national convention, four delegates and three

alternates were to be elected at each congressional district convention and additional 13

delegates and seven alternates at the statewide convention. A new rule was set to prohibit

the binding of the delegates to the instructions coming from the conventions below.35

These delegate selection methods, in addition to the rules publicity provision, finally met

the guidelines of McGovern-Fraser Commission. Under the leadership of Governor

Carter and his political aides, Georgia managed to fulfill the reform guideline at the end

of 1971, just in time for the 1972 national convention.

- Consequences of Party Reform in Georgia

At the 1972 national Democratic convention, there were two credentials

challenges from black groups in Georgia. One was filed by the Georgia Democratic

Forum challenging the delegates in the first congressional district, and the other was

made by Julian Bond regarding the composition of at-large delegates. Both challenges

were partially approved by the Credentials Committee. In the GDF challenge, the

national credentials committee settled the matter by replacing two of the first

congressional district white delegates with two black delegates. The other challenge was

solved by increasing the number of the at-large delegates twofold and giving each

delegate a half vote. According to a newspaper report, these cases were heard at the

Credentials Committee upon the request of George McGovern, whom Julian Bond

35 Amendments Pertaining to the National Delegate Selection as adopted by the Executive Committee of the Democratic Party of Georgia. December 6, 1971. “Program Records: State Files. Files on Compliance with Commission Guidelines. Georgia 1971.” Box 62. MFCR.

119 endorsed for the presidential nomination.36 With the support coming from the national allies, Julian Bond’s protest on the state Democratic Party was resolved in his favor.

The McGovern-Fraser reform, in the end, successfully diminished the governor’s single handed authority over the state executive committee and the national convention delegate selection process. Nevertheless the reform was carried out with the

leadership of the newly elected governor Carter and his appointees. Carter had won the

governorship by appealing to the conservative white rural vote in the 1970 election. Yet

in the process of reforming the party, the state Democratic Party remained a broad

coalition of Atlanta’s racial progressives, African Americans, and the reactionary

conservative rural whites.

Carter gave the following comments in 1974 on Georgia’s changed party

structure:

Eight years ago, if I had been running for governor, I would have gone to the county seat and gone into a back room with an appropriate official – say a judge or a sheriff or some other official in business or banking – and I would have had a secret conversation with him. And if the conversation had been satisfactory, I would have left that county and gone and never worried about the votes. He would deliver the votes by excluding some others and by buying others, in a legal or illegal manner. Now, when I go to a county, I avoid people like that. I don’t go in courthouses, you know, except on business. I go to the shopping centers, and to the factory shift lines, and I deal with the voters individually. So, now not only is there a motivation on the part of voters to speak for themselves, but there’s an equal motivation on the part of candidates to go directly to the voters.37

Carter’s leadership in the state party reform in 1971 was arguably an act of political

adaptation to the changed mass electorate and the party structure. He and his political

36 Warren Weaver, "McGovern's Block Wins Early Test over Delegates: But Margin in Credentials Panel Indicates Trouble on Issue of California," , June 29, 1972. 37 James Carter interview by Jack Bass and Walter De Vries. 1974. Interview number A-0066. Transcript pp.28-9. Southern Oral History Collection (#4007) at the Southern Historical Collection. The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, UNC-Chapel Hill.

120 appointees took leadership in party reform for delegate selection and party structure because that allowed Carter, a pragmatist who did not hesitate to pursue the Maddox vote, to restructure the Georgia Democratic Party on their own terms. As the rest of this chapter and Chapter Five reveal, Carter did not support the existent DNC in the same way

South Carolina’s state party leadership did. But the party reform leadership gave the

Georgia governor not only an opportunity to reconstruct the state party apparatus but also a future political career on the national stage.

ii. South Carolina Governor’s Institutionalized Opposition to Reform

South Carolina’s state Democratic Party reform process was uneventful relative to the other two states. Although the incumbent Governor Robert McNair who led the state’s 1968 delegation to Chicago expressed vocal opposition to the McGovern-Fraser

Commission’s guidelines, he nonetheless did so through the formal party channels and never outside of it. The state eventually adopted the eighteen guidelines in order to fully comply with the national party, and the delegates for the 1972 national convention were selected through the newly introduced three-tier convention systems at precinct, county and state levels. The reform was carried out by the state party organization, to whose efforts the governor eventually yielded. At the 1972 national convention, a challenge was filed on the South Carolina regular delegation, not by a black insurgent group, but a group of white women requesting equal gender representation in the party.

- McNair’s Vocal yet Institutionalized Opposition to the Guidelines

At the Atlanta public hearing, there was only one individual who spoke as a representative of the state but as an outsider of South Carolina’s state Democratic Party.

121 John Scott Wilson, a McCarthy campaign worker in 1968, opened the testimony to the

hearing panel by claiming that “In many ways I don’t belong. I’m a Yankee. I’m from

Tennessee. I’m young. I also teach at the University.” He made a short remark on the

need to restructure the state party, but unlike the other speakers from Georgia and

Alabama, there was no other fellow witness from South Carolina who would either refute

or support Wilson’s views on the stage. When he stated, “The National Party has to decide who is a democrat. It seems to me that it’s a disgrace for people like Mendel

Rivers to be called democratic,” he received only some skeptical words from the hearing board. One of the panel member responded to him, “What you are proposing is an extremely difficult and dangerous thing to do. It could result in fragmentation of the party and in diminution of the party’s base.”38 The Atlanta hearing panel did not spend too

much time on Wilson and moved on to the next speaker.

Governor Robert McNair, who did not attend the McGovern Commission’s

public hearing panel, expressed strong oppositions to the party reform through traditional

party channels. His dissent was made clear first at the Democratic Policy Council

meeting in Washington in September 1969.39 In the oration, he argued that “We are a

party of liberals, we are a party of conservatives, we are a party of moderation

encompassing that great collection of ethnic, racial, religious, economic, cultural,

occupational and social minorities which have given our nation its perpetual regeneration

of strengths.” McNair concluded the speech by saying, “Let us not now turn from this

38 John Scott Wilson testimony June 19, 1969. Atlanta hearing transcript, pp.70-74 “Program Records: Files on Commission Hearings. Files on Individual Hearings. Atlanta 6/16/69: Transcript.” Box 25. MFCR. 39 “Proposed Democratic Reforms Would Affect All States.” CQ Political Report. p.872. March 27, 1970. Congressional Quarterly.

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coalition of ideals into a single-minded party bent on purging certain elements from our midst.”40

Four months later in Nashville, at a Jefferson-Jackson Day fundraising dinner for the Tennessee Democratic Party, the South Carolina Governor again took the opportunity to reiterate his opposition to the reform. McNair stated to the Tennessee

Democrats gathered at the dinner, “The chairman of our party’s so-called reform commission has said that our party must be reformed along his commission’s lines. Or it will die. … If those of us gathered here tonight – and many millions of responsible

Democrats throughout the nation – are unwilling to resist these efforts, then we only send the Democratic Party to a destiny of further deterioration, fragmentation and extremism.”41 His speech was interrupted by applause from the notable Tennessee

Democratic officeholders in attendance, including the state’s governor, Buford Ellington.

What distinguishes McNair from the other segregationist governors, for example, Georgia’s Lester Maddox and Alabama’s George Wallace, is that McNair’s dissent to the party reform was made through the mainstream party institutions, and not from outside the Democratic Party. In April 1970, only a couple of months after McNair made the protest speech at the Nashville fundraiser, the Democratic National Committee chairman Larry O’Brien appointed the South Carolina governor to the position of the second vice chairman in the DNC.42 The appointment was O’Brien’s strategy to bring southern regular party leaders on board in the DNC throughout the reform enforcement process. Until McNair was succeeded by North Carolina Governor, Robert Scott, later in

40 Quoted from Philip G. Grose, South Carolina at the Brink: Robert Mcnair and the Politics of Civil Rights (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006), 298. 41 Jim Luther. “S.C. Gov. Knocks McGovern Reform.” Oak Ridger. Tennessee. January 29, 1970. 42 Shafer, Quiet Revolution, 253.

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February 1971, the dissenting South Carolinian was retained in the DNC council. After he finished his term as a governor at the beginning of 1971, McNair was elected also as the South Carolina Democratic National Committeeman and kept close contact with the

DNC.

- 1970 Gubernatorial Campaign and the State Party Organization’s Compliance

While the governor kept publicly criticizing the McGovern-Fraser Commission reform guidelines through institutionalized venues of the national Democratic Party, by

August 1970 South Carolina formed its first state party reform committee.43 For the next fourteen months, the state Democratic Party made amendments to its party rules on delegate selection process, which were previously not specified in the rule book of the state Democratic Party. Though much of the technical details of the new rules still

remained to be decided over the summer in the following year, the gubernatorial

campaigns of 1970 were critical to the course of state Democratic Party reform.

In 1970, the gubernatorial candidates of both parties were nominated by the

party without primary elections. John West, the Democratic candidate, was the incumbent

Lieutenant Governor and a protégé of Edgar Brown, the state senate finance committee

chairman and the state’s Barnwell Ring leader.44 His Republican opponent, Albert

Watson, was an avowed segregationist who followed the path of Strom Thurmond to switch the party in 1965. West managed to win the general election with a six percent vote margin over his opponent in November 1970. Another pro-Barnwell Ring party elite,

43 “Summary of States’ Progress in Meeting Guidelines.” August 1970. “Program Records: Files on Guidelines for Delegate Selection. Reports on Non-Compliance, 1971.” Box 20. MFCR: there is also a memo that South Carolina had no reform commission as of July 1970. Robert Nelson memo to Executive Committee members. July 6, 1970. “Re: Response of State Parties to Date.” “Program Records: Files on Guidelines for Delegate Selection. State Reform Commission: General Information.” Box 20. MFCR. 44 Philip G. Grose, Looking for Utopia: The Life and Times of John C. West (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 2011), 137.

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Harry M. Lightsey, was elected as the chairman of the state Democratic Party in the

spring of 1970. Lightsey had started his political career as the legal aide for Senator

Brown in the senate finance committee and he also had worked for West’s campaign for

lieutenant governorship in 1966.45 The control of the state party leadership under West and Lightsey demonstrated the continued organizational strength of the Barnwell Ring leaders. The continuity had important implications for the stable rule of the state

Democratic Party amid the national pressures for democratization.

At the beginning of 1971, McGovern-Fraser Commission staff regarded South

Carolina Democratic Party as “more than 50%” in compliance with the reform guidelines.

Over a year following that assessment, the state party carried out the implementation of the other half of the guidelines, working through the state party organizations.

In February 1972, state party chairman, , who succeeded the position from Lightsey the previous year, wrote to Bob Nelson. Fowler explained that he and the state Democratic Party has been working on the reform implementation by informing the county and precinct party chairs and other organized group representatives about the new delegate selection process and the party procedures. Fowler wrote, “A great deal of time and effort has gone into this educational process and I certainly hope that it will pay dividends during our precinct reorganizational meetings, the county conventions to the State Convention and throughout the political year.” Nelson commended his effort in reply: “That is a most impressive package that you sent with your February 14 letter. Thanks for keeping us informed – and great work!”46

45 Kent Krell. “Capital Report: Demo Chief Has Habit of Winning.” The State. Columbia, South Carolina. April 5, 1970. 7-B. 46 Donald L. Fowler to Bob Nelson. February 14, 1972. “Program Records: State Files. Files on Compliance with Commission Guidelines. South Carolina 1971.” Box 66. MFCR.

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- The Short Life of United Citizens’ Party

Politically active blacks in South Carolina who were dissatisfied with the state

Democratic Party’s reluctance to nominate black candidates for elective office founded

United Citizens’ Party (UCP) in late 1969.47 UCP was born out of the South Carolina

Voter Education Project, as the latter group that coordinated black voter registration found it difficult to nominate black candidates running for public office from the existent local and state Democratic Party. With its own candidates running for the state legislature from districts that had higher black voter registration rate, UCP strived to elect African

American representatives to the state legislature and had its own write-in candidates for governor and lieutenant governor in the 1970 election. In the state legislature election

UCP succeeded to elect three of its four nominated candidates, even though the general

election write-in votes for the UCP gubernatorial candidate amounted to less than 0.1

percent of the total vote cast.48 James E. Clyburn, the fourth state house candidate who narrowly lost in a Charleston district, was appointed as an executive staff member in the

West administration.49

Once the 1970 election was over, however, the UCP appear to have quickly lost

organizational momentum and reportedly disbanded soon after it nominated a candidate

for the U.S. congressional seat in a special election in the spring of 1971.50 The UCP legislators rejoined the Democratic Party after their own party dissolved, and began to

47 "South Carolina Blacks Plan New Party," New York Times, November 24 1969. 48 Willie M. Legette, "The South Carolina Legislative Black Caucus, 1970 to 1988," Journal of Black Studies 30, no. 6 (2000); See also Hanes Walton and William H. Boone, "Black Political Parties: A Demographic Analysis," ibid.5, no. 1 (1974). 49 Grose, Looking for Utopia, 156-8. 50 "Negroes Hold Key in Carolina Vote," New York Times, Feb 15 1971; Legette, "The South Carolina Legislative Black Caucus, 1970 to 1988."

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bring in the black electorate to the state regular party, rather than challenging it as an

independent party in the general elections.

For the 1972 national Democratic convention, there was no credentials challenge to the state delegation that was initiated by African American groups in South

Carolina. Governor West was close to endorsing Hubert Humphrey in 1972 when he invited Humphrey to the state capitol, although he did not make his support official.51

Clyburn reportedly worked on behalf of the governor to solicit black delegate votes for

Humphrey from anti-McGovern delegates in other states.52 With the incorporation of

Clyburn into the state party organization, black protest to the regular state Democratic

Party appear to have subsided and it did not initiate a credentials challenge at the national

convention.53

- A Women’s Group Challenges the South Carolina Delegation in 1972

The South Carolina Democratic Party delegation was instead challenged by a

group of mostly young, white University of South Carolina students that demanded

increased representation of women in the delegation and the state party structure. The

thirty-two member regular delegation included eleven blacks, eight women, one of whom

was black, and five youths. One of the points that the female student group raised about

the state delegation was that James Clyburn, who was 31 year old and elected as a

delegate, did not qualify as a representative of the youth because the reform guideline

defined the category as those thirty year old and younger. The women also challenged

that the delegation did not include enough number of women and demanded that the state

delegation’s six at-large delegate, all of whom were male, should be replaced by six

51 Jack Bass, "S.C. Hears H.H.H, Stays Uncommitted," Washington Post, June 14, 1972. 52 Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, "Black Factor in Calif. Test," ibid., July 10. 53 Clyburn is currently the only Democratic congressman elected from South Carolina.

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women, four white and two black.54 The hearing officer assigned to this case, George

Peach Taylor, reported to the national credentials committee that South Carolina

Democrats were actually in full compliance of the guidelines.55 The report of the

challenging party, Wedlock, Young et al., was voted on the first credentials vote at the

national convention in Miami but was narrowly defeated.

Because South Carolina’s state Democratic Party leadership already had

disciplined state party organization and consolidated control over the state budget

appropriations and gubernatorial nomination in the state, compliance with the McGovern-

Fraser commission guideline diminished the autonomous authority of national delegate

selection, which the Barnwell Ring leaders had enjoyed in the state party structure. Due

to the state party leadership’s extensive and institutionalized integration with the national

Democratic Party, the state’s Democratic Party leaders were nevertheless constrained in

their reactions, and they made criticisms of the reform mostly through institutionalized

party venues.

As the nationally mandated party reform guidelines were finally implemented in

the state Democratic Party by the party organization but without active leadership of the

Barnwell Ring governor, two notable shift occurred in the state Democratic Party. First,

the governor, whose political career was assured under the Barnwell Ring, retained a

position in the DNC. Second, the local black leadership began to be incorporated into the

state party without notable pressures from their national allies. Unlike Georgia’s Julian

54 Jack Bass, "S.C. Democrats Accused of Bias," Washington Post, June 6, 1972; "S.C. Women's Challenge on Delegates Rejected," ibid., June 28. 55 George Peach Taylor Report. June 10, 1972. “Program Records: Files on 1972 Convention. Files on credentials Challenges. South Carolina I: Wedlock v. Delegation.” Box 73. MFCR.

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Bond and his Loyal National Democrats, who for the next decade remained outside critics of the Carter administration, South Carolina’s United Citizens Party became part of the state Democratic Party leadership. Their institutionalized national party support and South Carolina Democratic Party’s strong party discipline, appear to have curbed the organizational and political regeneration of the state Democratic Party elites. They did not become a new force to alter the national Democratic Party from both inside and outside of the national party institution, in the same ways Jimmy Carter or George

Wallace did to the national party.

iii. Alabama’s Procedural Party Democracy Sustains George Wallace

The compliance process of the McGovern-Fraser Commission’s reform guidelines in the state Democratic Party in Alabama presents a stark contrast to the other states. Unlike Georgia where the incoming governor took charge of the party reform, in

Alabama the state party reform was led by the party chairman, Robert Vance, who was a

Wallace antagonist. Alabama was one of the states that completed the reform guideline compliance relatively early, in contrast to Georgia and South Carolina that were slow to reform their state party rules.

Even though Alabama implemented procedural reform for the selection of national party delegates at an early stage, however, such quick compliance was possible only because it did not fundamentally alter the delegate selection method Alabama

Democrat had used in 1968. The state’s continued use of presidential direct primary led to the selection of majority pro-Wallace delegates again in 1972. The state also had a notably robust black statewide political party that was based on the Black Belt counties.

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The group independently challenged the regular state Democratic Party in statewide elections and at the national party convention. The group, however, went into gradual decline in the 1970s under the continued governorship of George Wallace, in part because it did not gain the same kind of the national recognition as Georgia’s Loyal

National Democrats did.

- “We Already Have Complete Democracy”

The conundrum for Alabama loyalist Democrats throughout the end of 1960s and the early 1970s was the relationship between the state Democratic Party’s credentialed national convention delegation and George Wallace, the state’s governor and the perennial presidential candidate. Within the state Democratic Party, Wallace supporters and anti-Wallace whites were split over the control of the party’s state executive committee. Robert Vance was elected to the State Democratic Executive

Committee chairmanship in 1966 over the active opposition from the governor.

The Executive Committee did not include a single African American member that year. In Vance’s view, black leadership was not represented in the state party apparatus because the black leaders’ voluntarily decided not to challenge the regular national Democrats in the hope of eliminating the Wallace Democrats. Vance wrote to

McGovern, “Alabama’s Negro Democratic leaders were wisely selective in undertaking election contests. They decided to support white loyalists rather than run Negro candidates for the State Executive Committee. The reason was that a very tough fight was then being waged between the loyalist and for (or Wallace) branches of the

Party and this strategy seemed to offer the best chance for a loyalist victory. It was

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successful, but as a result the present Committee is all white.”56 Regardless of whether such an analysis from 1966 was accurate or not, the tripartite credentials challenges brought by the Alabama Democrats to the 1968 national convention had given the

McGovern-Fraser Commission staff the early warning sign of the Alabama party reform.

Vance further claimed that the state party had the party election processes already open to the citizens. “We have complete democracy within the Party in Alabama,”

Vance wrote to McGovern. “All Party officials – from the lowest county official to the top official – are elected by direct vote of the people, with approximately one million

Alabamians participating. It is paradoxical that compliance with the more frequently suggested “reform” will necessarily involve some diminution of this democratic process.”57 The 1968 national convention delegates were elected in the Democratic primary held in May 7 of that year, but it was direct primary in which only the names of the delegate candidates were printed on the ballot, and there were no clear indications of which presidential candidate the prospective delegate pledged to support. Of the fifty member Alabama regular delegation at the 1968 convention, five were ex-officio members of the state executive committee and the rest of forty-five delegates were elected from Alabama’s nine congressional districts. Only two of the fifty delegates were black, and three were women.58

So even though Vance defended the Alabama’s delegate selection system from

1968 as already democratic, obviously the direct primary did not enable active

56 Vance to McGovern. July 25, 1969. “Program Records: State Files. General Files. Alabama: Reform Commission.” Box 39. MFCR. 57 Robert S. Vance to George McGovern. March 12, 1969. “Program Records: State Files General Giles. Alabama: Correspondence.” Box 39. MFCR. 58 Don Wasson. “Warfare Upcoming for State Democracy.” The Montgomery Advertiser and Alabama Journal. August 19, 1968. 6C.

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participation of the black citizens and women proportional to the number of state

registered voters. The direct primary also enabled the election of delegate slate that

overwhelmingly supported George Wallace, the archetypal authoritarian enclave

defender.

At the national commission’s public hearing in Jackson, Mississippi, in May

1969, Alabama had three main spokespersons – Robert Vance, John Cashin, who was

representing the dissident National Democratic Party of Alabama, and George LeMaistre,

a lawyer who supported the desegregated yet mostly white Alabama Independent

Democratic Party in 1968.59 Of the three Alabama representatives at the hearing panel, it

was Robert Vance to whom the McGovern-Fraser Commission gave attention because he

was the key to state party reform. Vance opened the session by expressing his support for

the reform mandate, yet warned that a national convention was “an inappropriate forum

for retrospectively judging compliance with such guidelines. … The stakes are too

high.”60 This caution was reiterated in a letter Vance wrote to McGovern two months

later: “Our dilemma is simply this: We are attempting to do something worthwhile under

very trying local pressures. It should be done and those interested in party reform want it

done. Our experience suggests to us, however, that whatever we do will be condemned

by some (including some on your Commission) simply by reason of our being

Alabamians. It is frustrating to the extreme for the efforts of sincere, determined loyalists

59 Anne Permaloff and Carl Grafton, Political Power in Alabama: The More Things Change (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995), 263-4. 60 Vance testimony, May 22, 1969. Jackson hearing transcript, p.8. “Program Records: Files on commission Hearings. Files on Individual Hearings. Jackson (5/22/69): Transcript.” Box 23. MFCR.

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to be habitually challenged and contested while they are waging an extraordinarily

difficult fight on the home front.”61

While defending himself and making it known that there was the dilemma,

Vance also made it clear that the Democratic Party’s loss of 1968 presidential election was caused by the liberal McCarthy supporters. After challenging the Eugene McCarthy delegates at the national convention, Vance kept disparaging the young generation of liberal Democrats, in part to ward off the national pressures for party reform from the remaining pro-McCarthy Democrats. In an address he made to the Southern Conference of Young Democrats in August 1969, Vance claimed, “The lessons learned in the streets of Chicago has application here. The bigoted left which jeered at Hubert Humphrey for being too reactionary, too unrepresentative of their point of view, and too hawkish, have earned their reward – his name is Richard Nixon. Uncompromising militants who destroy in the name of reform are beginning to learn that if we are out of power we are not reforming anything. We are just talking to each other.”62 While Vance did not refer to the

responsibility of third party campaign of George Wallace in the loss of Humphrey, he

made it clear that he preferred the moderate reform path.

The McGovern-Fraser Commission stayed in close communication with

Robert Vance throughout the period, but the national party did not have much contact

with the state executive office. Governor , who succeeded former Governor

Lurleen Wallace when she passed away due to cancer in the midst of her tenure in May

1968, was rarely involved in the affairs of the state party executive committee and the

61 Vance to McGovern. July 25, 1969. “Program Records: State Files. General Files. Alabama: Reform Commission.” Box 39. MFCR. 62 Address of Robert Vance, before Southern Conference of Young Democrats. August 9, 1969. “Program Records: State Files. General Files. Alabama: Rules, Laws, Report.” Box 39. MFCR.

133 state’s McGovern-Fraser party reform. Brewer simply made it known directly to the

McGovern Commission his opposition to the reform guideline report. When the national

guideline was released in November 1969, Brewer wrote in a letter addressed to

McGovern, “I have not had an opportunity to study this proposal in depth, but I do have a

very real concern about the direction which is being taken by your Commission and by

the Democratic Committee. I feel that a real effort is being made, whether intentionally or

not, to drive the States of the Deep South away from the Democratic Party. I believe that

the natural position of the South should be in the Democratic Party, and at the same time

I strongly believe that the Democratic Party needs the South because the South provided

the sustaining influence for the Party through the lean years of this century.”63 Despite

the governor’s opposition to the reform, the guideline compliance in the state party

proceeded rather smoothly.

- “A Golden Opportunity” in Alabama

Around at the same time that Brewer sent the above letter, Vance communicated

with McGovern about the state party’s initiatives to reform the state party executive

committee. He proposed that the number of state executive committee members would be

increased and the committee election districts set to the state lower house districts to

address the current malapportionment. Vance pressed for implementing these changes at

this relatively early stage because he thought the reform momentum would dissipate after

the end of his term as the executive committee chairman in 1970. He warned the national

63 Albert P. Brewer to McGovern. November 4, 1969. “Program Records: State Files. General Files. Alabama: Compliance Letter and Drafts.” Box 39. MFCR.

134 headquarters that January 1970 meeting of the state executive committee was the last

occasion that these proposals could be adopted under his leadership.64

McGovern Commission staffer, Robert Nelson, flew to Birmingham in mid

December of 1969 to discuss the state party situation with Vance. The meeting was a success, Nelson wrote in a confidential internal memo:

On the Committee’s official guidelines, Vance said there would be full compliance. He said he may sound like he’s giving us heck all the way, but will comply with all of them. Pressure from us would hurt more than help – he cannot react favorably to seeming dictation from Washington. Needs more of an information-type letter. (This is a good rule of thumb to follow, I believe, in all our “compliance” letters). … Personal assessment: I believe that Vance is caught between [NDPA chairman] Cashin and Wallace and his actions at the actions of survival. By following the route he has indicated he drives Wallace out of the party and Cashin into a corner, where he must either get aboard or get out, with his base considerably weakened. We have a golden opportunity here. If we can be successful in aiding Vance in the overhaul of the Alabama party to the extent indicated it will have a powerful influence on other southern states. We have established a good relationship thus far and should us[e] it the most effective way possible.65

This memo illuminates a couple of problems that Vance and McGovern Commission staff tried to solve. First, even though Vance informed the national committee of the details of state party reform plans in advance, he did not want to be regarded by his fellow Alabama Democrats, including Wallace, that he was ceding the state party’s autonomy to the national directives. The state party had to implement the reforms in its own terms. Second, at least in Nelson’s eyes, Vance was trying to keep George Wallace

64 Vance to Nelson, November 17, 1969. “Program Records: State Files. General Files. Alabama: Compliance Letter and Drafts.” Box 39. MFCR. 65 Robert Nelson memo, December 19, 1969. “Subject: Trip to Birmingham, Ala. To see Robert Vance, Chairman of the Alabama Democratic State Executive Committee.” “Program Records: State Files General Giles. Alabama: Correspondence.” Box 39. MFCR.

135

out of the state party organization and bring in the NDPA to the side of the national

regular Democrats. If successful, Nelson expected that Alabama’s experience would be a

model to be replicated by other southern states.

From December 1969 onward, Alabama’s delegate selection and party structure

reforms proceeded in a stride. By January 1971, Alabama Democratic Party was one of the only five states that had fully complied with the Commission Guidelines.66 Robert

Vance was reelected to the state party chairmanship in 1970, contrary to his previous

concern that he may lose the position. In comparative perspective, the early and

unproblematic completion of Alabama’s state party reform appears to be due primarily to

two reasons: first, the sitting governor showed no active but only passing opposition to

the reform, and the state party executive committee chairman was not a close ally of the

governor. Second, Alabama had already used the direct primaries in each congressional district to elect the national party delegate for the 1968 convention, and the McGovern-

Fraser Commission’s guideline did not bring about major alterations in the delegate selection procedure.

- The Limit of Independent Black Protest: National Democratic Party of

Alabama

National Democratic Party of Alabama (NDPA) was originally a splinter group that separated from Alabama Democratic Conference (ADC), a black party caucus in the regular state Democratic Party. According to NDPA historian Hardy Frye, the group was formed as an independent party in late 1967 to challenge the state delegation at the 1968

Chicago national convention and to represent “the mainstream philosophy and actions of

66 The other four were Iowa, Maine, Mississippi and North Carolina. Report on Status of the States. January 7, 1971. “Program Records: Files on Guidelines for Delegate Selection. State Reform Commission: General Information.” Box 20. MFCR.

136

the national Democratic party.”67 After its attempt to gain credentials at the 1968 Chicago convention failed, the NDPA focused its political strategy on county level black political organization, particularly in the Black Belt counties located in the lower middle section of the state. NDPA’s electoral mobilization in these majority black counties proved successful in the elections of the county and local offices, and local black residents soon reclaimed control of county government from the white elites.

In the 1970 gubernatorial Democratic run-off primary, NDPA abstained from endorsing either Wallace or Albert Brewer, whereas the mainstream ADC supported

Brewer. In the general election, NDPA had its state party chair, John Cashin, as its own candidate for governor in the general election. Cashin received more than 16 percent of

the statewide vote: although the vote was far too small to overcome the popularity of

Wallace, Cashin’s coat-tail effects were most palpable in the local government elections,

as the party’s ballot printed with an eagle icon helped NDPA candidates down the ticket

get elected to local governments.68

Nevertheless, the NDPA’s electoral success was limited solely to the Black Belt counties and did not extend to the statewide offices and national elections. Despite

Cashin’s surprising vote returns in the gubernatorial race, the NDPA remained an

electoral minority in statewide elections, and Alabama continued to be a Democratic one-

party state. Even though NDPA claimed control of the Black Belt county governments by

the virtue of strong political organization in the predominantly rural areas, the elected

black county officials had to face the state government that was controlled by Wallace

and the regular state party.

67 Hardy T. Frye, Black Parties and Political Power: A Case Study (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1980), 34. 68 Boone, "Black Political Parties: A Demographic Analysis."

137

- The Election of Wallace Delegates by Procedural Democracy in 1972

On May 2nd, 1972, the Alabama Democratic Party held the direct primaries to elect twenty-nine national convention delegates. Eight more delegates were to be selected as the at-large state delegates by the twenty-nine congressional district level delegates. Of the total of thirty-seven delegates, twenty-three were pledged supporters of Wallace. All of the Wallace delegates were white, and included only three women.

Within days after the primary, two challenges were filed to the national credentials committee to contest the delegate credentials of the Wallace supporters. One was filed by NDPA, and the other by a group of female Democrats and Alabama

Democratic Conference, the black caucus within the state regular Democratic Party. The

NDPA challenge argued in the brief that the twenty-nine delegates elected through the

May 2nd primary were not representative of state electors loyal to the national Democratic

Party and requested that the NDPA delegates that were chosen through the convention be

seated at the national convention in Miami.69

The DNC appointed a hearing officer to gather witnesses on credentials

challenge in Birmingham, and a public hearing was held in early June. William Walsh,

the appointed hearing officer, sent the following memorandum to the national credentials

committee:

“A unique feature of present Alabama political life is that Mr. Vance: a) is chairman of the State Democratic Executive Committee; b) has successfully strived for reform of the rules of the Democratic Party in Alabama in accordance with the Guidelines of the Democratic National Committee;

69 John L. Cashin, Jr. “Challenge to Delegates and Alternates Elected May 2, 1972, in the Alabama Democratic Party Primary and the Ex-officio Delegates Selected by the State Democratic Executive Committee.” May 10, 1972. “Program Records: Files on 1972 Convention. Files on Credentials Challenges. Alabama I: Cashin v. State Delegation.” Box 70, MFCR.

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c) is, from his own unabashed testimony before me, a vigorous opponent of Governor Wallace; and d) nevertheless – in support of the reform rules he has sponsored – defends the selection of delegates calculated by any judgment to support Governor Wallace, since they were elected under the new rules. I find as a fact each of the above subparagraphs (a) through (d). I find as a fact, from the evidence before me, that the Democratic Party in Alabama, guided by the State Democratic Executive Committee, has taken every conceivable step to encourage the broadest possible opportunity for young, black and female citizens in Alabama to become delegates to our National Convention. Without summarizing the evidence in detail (not having our record in print) I can only describe the evidence on this issue to be overwhelming and beyond honest dispute.”70

With the credential committee’s hearing officer siding with Vance, the NDPA challenge was voted down in the Credentials Committee, 69 to 55.71 A minority report of the

NDPA was submitted to the full convention, yet the NDPA lost by a voice vote. The

ADC challenge was also voted down.

In the end, Alabama’s rather quick reform compliance politics sustained the

popularity of the sitting segregationist governor and the state regular party, while the

black independent party did not receive the national approval for delegate challenge.

Without either the external allies providing support through the national party, as Julian

Bond received in Georgia, or the full incorporation of black political activism into the

state party apparatus, as exemplified in James Clyburn’s lobbying of black delegate votes

on behalf of Governor West, Alabama’s NDPA did not last long as an independent party.

Indeed, the NDPA had lost many of its members by the middle of the 1970s, and finally

ceased its operation by the summer of 1978.72 The lack of national assistance to the local

70 William F. Walsh memo to Patricia Roberts Harris, Esq. “Subject: Alabama delegate contests 1972 Democratic National Convention.” June 10, 1972. “Program Records: Files on 1972 Convention. Files on Credentials Challenges. Alabama I: Cashin v. State Delegation.” Box 70, MFCR. 71 Frye, Black Parties and Political Power, 141. 72 Ibid., 169.

139 black insurgent political organization appear to have severely limited the resources that

NDPA could deploy to make further inroads into the state government.

Alabama’s Democratic Party successfully reformed the procedures of national

delegate selection in part because the state already had open primaries and the governor

was absent from the reform implementation process. Nonetheless, the state’s relatively

quick and unopposed compliance of the McGovern guidelines also had drawbacks:

because the reform did not bring major change in the state party structure, the electoral

popularity of George Wallace as presidential candidate and governor did not wane in the

1970s. It would be safe to assume that the Alabama governors were indifferent to the state party reform process because the Democratic Party organizations, both in the state and the national committee, did not greatly affect these governors’ continued hold onto power. For most of the four years between 1968 and 1972, another third-party presidential campaign seems to have remained an attractive option for Wallace’s own survival in the state government.

iv. Conclusion

Before 1968, the state Democratic Party’s control over national convention delegate selection process had been one of the party institutions of enclave defense against national encroachment. Because many of the authoritarian holdovers still remained in power even after the federal passages of the civil rights acts, the local struggles over reform implementation took more complex turns than it is commonly assumed in the existent literature. The enclave party reform through the nationally mandated McGovern-Fraser commission guidelines prompted variant responses in the

140 states, ranging from Alabama governor’s indifference, to Georgia governor’s leadership for reform, to South Carolina Democratic Party leaders’ institutionalized opposition and their continued hold of the national party committee positions.

These state party elites’ varied responses to the national reform guidelines originated from their prospects for political careers in the future and their relations with the national Democratic Party. Jimmy Carter’s gubernatorial leadership in the state party rules change introduced the little-known southern Georgia governor to the DNC. South

Carolina state party leaders’ institutionalized opposition to the McGovern-Fraser reform delayed the state party compliance process, yet the governor and other state party leaders remained entrenched in the DNC. In Alabama, the reform was implemented swiftly by the state party chair while the governor remained largely absent form the scene. Four years later in 1972, the newly instituted delegate selection procedure in Alabama did not diminish the popularity of the governor’s presidential bid.

The national support given to the local democratizers was also critical to the long-term success of the democratization efforts by the organized black insurgents. Julian

Bond and his Georgia Loyal National Democrat group found it imperative to actively appeal to the national audience, while Al Kehrer’s activism through Georgia Democratic

Forum remained primarily parochial and received little national attention. Throughout the

1970s, Bond remained a staunch critic of the Georgia state government and Jimmy

Carter’s presidential administration. Local democratizers in Alabama and South Carolina in general received fewer national spotlight and financial aids from the supporters outside of the states, limiting these insurgent parties’ local activism.

141 Though this chapter did not directly address what exactly Wallace’s political

intent was throughout this period because he was largely absent from the state

Democratic Party reform process. Nonetheless, it would not be unreasonable to assume that his political survival in the state government was contingent upon his continued pursuit of presidential ambitions through the third party campaigns. Whereas it was not politically realistic for Wallace to win the national executive in the general election through building a third party coalition or being either major party’s official nominee, his continued intent to run a third-party presidential campaign could impose credible threat of constitutional crisis to the conservative candidates of both major parties. Wallace’s presidential popularity among the conservative voters also hinged on the politician’s appeal to renege the national civil rights acts and his allusions to the authoritarian past.

The state party elites in Alabama, including Wallace, thus saw that their continued hold of their own state government was contingent on the national influence they would gain through the third-party presidential campaign, in other words the threat that Wallace could throw the presidential general election contest into the United States

House of Representatives should he stage a third-party campaign. This was a scenario that Republican candidates wanted to avoid at all costs, as the U.S. Congress was in the

Democratic Party majority control. Wallace kept reminding other major presidential aspirants of his plans for perennial presidential campaigns, regardless of the actual chance he could win the White House. The next chapter examines how President Richard

Nixon and his southern political aides in the national administration attempted to curtail another Wallace third-party presidential candidacy, and what effects such national attempts had on the democratic consolidation of the three states.

142 Chapter Four. National Interventions in the State Party: Nixon’s Southern Strategy as Regime Boundary Negotiation, 1969-1972

“I know nothing about any Southern strategy, anyway.” Harry S. Dent1

While the state Democrats reformed the party to meet the national party

guidelines, concurrently the national Republicans in the White House negotiated with

some of the same state Democratic Party elites to shape the state candidate nomination

and the presidential campaign politics in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. Between

1969 and 1972, the Republican president and his political aides increasingly intervened in the candidate nomination politics of the state government officials, primarily to improve

Richard Nixon’s own reelection prospects. Prior to democratization, similar national

Republican involvements in the enclave party would have led nowhere. After democratization and the party’s control of the national executive office in the 1968 election, the national Republicans found it imperative to selectively intervene in the state politics, as authoritarian holdovers began to discover new ways of reaching out to the national politics.

The primary motivation of national Republican interventions was to keep

authoritarian holdovers from staging another third-party presidential campaign and help

reelect the incumbent president in the next election. The national Republicans found varying opportunities and pitfalls in the three states, and they tried to navigate through the shifting relations between the state Democratic elites and the national government.

The state party elites, on the other hand, did not always respond to the national

1 Harry Dent memorandum to John Ehrlichman. July 22, 1969. Memoranda and Departmental Referrals, 1969 Ehrlichman Memos. [2 of 3.] Box 1. Staff Member and Office Files, White House Special Files. Papers and Other Historical Materials of Harry S. Dent. Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, Yorba Linda, CA (hereafter abbreviated as RNPL).

143 interventions in ways the Republicans intended: when they did so, it was only when their

accommodation would benefit their future political careers in the state and nation.

This chapter examines Nixon administration’s political interventions in the

three states and argues that the interventions were driven by the president’s reelection

incentive. Nixon’s so-called southern strategy aimed less at turning southern Democrats

into Republicans, than improving Nixon’s reelection prospects by preventing the

southern Democrats from staging another third-party campaign. The national

interventions did not actively promote democratic consolidation of the three former enclaves, even though the Republican interventions could have potentially cracked open the local one-party rule by aiding the formation of a robust local opposition party that challenged defiant authoritarian rulers. The national Republicans prioritized stemming the third-party presidential bid of George Wallace over pursuing black political representation in the state and national government. Thus, the initial processes of

Republican growth in the three states were contingent on the relations the state

Democratic elites had with the national Republicans.2

This chapter first provides an overview of the logic behind the Nixon White

House’s interventions in the three states, and then makes state-by-state comparisons of

the Nixon White House’s interventions and the local responses during the first term of his

presidency. The chapter relies on archival materials from the Richard Nixon Presidential

Library, in combination with southern local party elites’ personal papers.

2 Reader’s could compare this chapter’s argument with other accounts of Republican growth in the south, for example, Thomas Byrne Edsall and Mary D. Edsall, Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics (New York: Norton, 1991); Bruce J. Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt: Federal Policy, Economic Development, and the Transformation of the South, 1938-1980 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). As Chapter One of this dissertation makes clear, this dissertation stands in curious contrast to Robert Mickey’s argument that the divergent state law enforcement capacity in maintaining law and order throughout the democratic transition process affected the economic modernization and hence the growth of the Republican Party.

144

The Logics of National Republican Interventions

There were three notable patterns to the instances of the national Republican involvements in the state politics during this period. One was the national Republican

Party’s selective enticement towards major state Democratic elites to switch party affiliation. Second, there was an effort to cultivate urban African American leadership support for the Republican Party. Thirdly, the national Republicans tried to placate local

Republican leaders. Republican political advisors in the Nixon White House juggled these three oft-incompatible demands in order to eliminate possibilities of the state party elites’ revolt against Nixon’s presidential party coalition, most notably in the form of third party campaigns that could compete with the Nixon candidacy.

- Selective Enticement of Former Enclave Rulers’ Party Defections and the

Containment of George Wallace

The national Republican political aides involved themselves and asserted their views on some, though by no means all, instances of the major enclave rulers’ party

defections from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. While the White House

had no control over party defectors among enclave rulers of minor ranks, Nixon aides

paid close attention to the potential Republican Party switchers of noted statewide public

officials. The national Republicans seriously took the national repercussions of the party

defectors: if the prospective switchers could potentially disturb the existing national

Republican Party institutions, including the president’s reelection campaign, national

party leaders would attempt to preclude their switch. The national Republicans

importantly declined to embrace state Democrats who had campaigned for the third-party

145 presidential candidacy of George Wallace. Though this sometimes meant they forewent

the immediate benefit of increasing electoral votes for the local Republican Party, the

national Republicans prioritized to maintain the existing national Republican coalition.

As early as 1968, Nixon had recognized George Wallace as “his chief obstacle”

for election in a three-way race. Harry S. Dent, who later served as the political counsel

and chief liaison with the southern states in the Nixon White House, recollected how

seriously Nixon took Wallace: according to Dent, the third-party opponent was “The

catalyst that convinced Nixon he needed to heavily woo the South in 1968 and 1972.”3

Nixon managed to narrowly win the national majority of the Electoral College vote in the

1968 general election, without Georgia, Alabama, and three other neighboring states that

elected Wallace. As Nixon looked toward the reelection campaign once he entered the

White House, the recurrence of Wallace’s third-party bid needed to be stemmed by any

means. One certain way of doing this was to intervene in the statewide public office elections of Alabama and Georgia in 1970 in order to forestall the presidential aspirations of the authoritarian holdovers. Such interventions required close, often clandestine, contact with prospective party defectors and local Republicans regarding party candidate nomination for statewide offices. Dent and his White House assistants involved

themselves in the enclave candidate nomination politics to contain and eliminate Wallace

and his major enclave allies during the first term of Nixon presidency.

- Urban Black Vote Incorporation into the Republican Party

As the national Republican leaders selectively enticed reactionary former

enclave rulers to join the opposition party, they also explored the possibility of gaining

black leadership support. However, rather than formulating programmatic appeals to the

3 Harry S. Dent, The Prodigal South Returns to Power (New York: Wiley, 1978), 159.

146 local black electorate, the national Republicans limited their political mobilization target to black business owners in the three states’ urban centers. There was no concerted party effort to actively recruit black candidates to run for public office on the Republican ticket.

Moreover, the national efforts to cultivate the support of local black communities occurred only when their vote mattered enough to make a difference in the successful election of white Republican candidates. If the national Republican support to the urban black leadership was expected to diminish the electability of local Republican candidates, or fail to contain the resurgence of reactionary third-party candidates who could adversely impact the electability of a Republican candidate, such a national effort was immediately rescinded. These national efforts to selectively reach out to black communities in the three states remained a secondary priority at best because the national

Republicans ignored the policy needs of black communities wherever it diminished the electability of white Republican candidates. This negative calculation of vote getting, rather than positive pandering to respond to the policy demands of black voters and maximize the party’s vote, was the limit of national Republican efforts toward black electoral mobilization.

This retrofit pursuit of black support by national Republican leaders is evident in a memorandum that Harry Dent wrote to , the Republican National

Committee chair, on August 22, 1969:

Now that the President has launched his welfare reform program and most of the money is going into the South, I think we should again seriously consider my proposal for subsidizing Negro Republican recruiters in the South. They have something to sell now, so they should be able to do better than previously. My proposal is that the National Committee agrees to put up a certain amount of money per campaign worker in the major Metropolitan areas or the areas of large Negro population concentration, have the State party put up so much and then the local party. For instance, in some places we might be able to get a

147 Negro insurance salesman to do this work on a part-time basis or $3,000 to $6,000 per annum. If it is $3,000, each sponsoring party would put up $1,000. We might try this in the South and then see about extending it to the ghetto areas in the North. It is worthy of being undertaken as a pilot project.4

Dent was at least intent on making some black electoral campaign mobilization efforts,

though this proposal does not appear to have been further discussed among the national

Republicans.

Aside from Dent’s proposal of the voter mobilization in the African American

communities, the national Republican Party made no active recruitment of black

candidates to run on the Republican ticket in the three states. More than two months after

Dent wrote the above memo, Nixon’s congressional affairs deputy assistant, Lyn

Nofziger, pointed out to Dent that, “One of our problems we will never solve is how to

get Negro support, if not today, then tomorrow.” Nofziger suggested a few solutions that

the national Republican Party should consider pursuing. The first was “to strengthen the

Republican Negro press (yes, there are a few Negro Republican papers)” by supplying

them with sources of advertisement revenues. Second, “Utilizing our elected Negro

officials in such a way as to give them stature” so that they would be given more

publicity. “I think that they would be flattered, and that they would be helpful in the

Negro community,” Nofziger wrote. Third, he suggested that the RNC should seek active

and visible involvement of the prominent black Republican athletes in the party. “These

are people who have made it and who are heroes to a lot of young Negroes.” And only as

the last point of recommendation, Nofziger suggested, “We scattershot our efforts to elect

Negro candidates. If we would pick three or four each year, at whatever level, and

4 Dent memo to Rogers Morton. August 22, 1969. Folder “1969 Southern GOP [I] [1 of 3]” in Box 9, Subject Files, 1968 (1969)-70. Staff Member and Office Files, White House Special Files. Papers and Other Historical Materials of Harry S. Dent. RNPL.

148 adequately finance them and support them, then within a few years we could have cadres

of elected Republicans who have a special obligation to the Republican - Nixon

administration.”5 However, as Nofziger himself acknowledged, the recommendation for

black candidate recruitment in the national party remained largely scattershot. As far as

the three former enclaves’ Republican candidates for statewide offices were concerned,

there were no active efforts to recruit black candidates for the party.

While these two memos were written with regard to potential black supporters

both within the Deep South and beyond, they demonstrate the highly limited extent to

which the national Republican Party leaders were committed to bringing the newly

enfranchised black voters in the South into the Republican Party.6 What Dent actually did in the three states was to reach out to metropolitan black communities in South Carolina and Georgia in order to scrape together the local black support for conservative white

Republican candidates. The black voters were pursued so long as they would help elect

local Republican candidates, and Dent cultivated their support by assisting the federal

business loan application process for black business owners. These national efforts

remained tenuous, however, as there were neither active recruitments of black leaders to

run as Republican candidates for public office, nor programmatic efforts to buttress the

plight of metropolitan black communities.

5 Lyn Nofziger memorandum to Harry Dent. October 31, 1969. “Blacks; February – November, 1969,” Folder 5, Box 1. White House File Series, 1. Subject File, 1969. Harry S. Dent Papers (Mss. #0158). Clemson University Libraries Special Collections, Clemson, South Carolina (hereafter CULSC). 6 In addition to the White House staffs, the Republican National Committee had two liaisons with the black community, director of Minorities Division Clarence Townes and his aide Bob Brown. So far as the black communities in the three states were concerned, however, the national party building instructions went through the office of Harry Dent, rather than the Minorities Division in the RNC. According to Leah Wright Rigueur, the Nixon administration hardly publicized its civil rights accomplishments, and in 1970 disbanded the Minorities Divisions of RNC. Townes resigned from RNC in August that year. Other African American appointees followed suit later in the same year. Leah Wright Rigueur, The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power (Princeton University Press, 2014), 169.

149 These observations on national Republican efforts to cultivate black business

owners, coupled with the selective enticement of white reactionary party switchers, add

some insights to Paul Frymer and John Skrentny’s theory on the electoral capture of

African American voters in the American major two-party system. Both Frymer and

Skrentny contend that electoral competition between two political parties does not

automatically result in all groups enjoying party appeals, contrary to the assumptions in

the Downsian model of democracy wherein the parties supposedly converge their

programmatic appeals onto the median voter to maximize the number of votes. Rather,

the authors argue:

The incentive to reach out and incorporate a group into a party’s coalition exists only if the group’s votes are perceived to add to their pre-existing coalition. Party leaders will avoid making appeals to a group if they see such appeals as disruptive to their overall party building efforts. To form an electoral majority parties must avoid appealing to those groups that will either hamper their efforts to maintain the support of their existing coalition, or diminish their attempts to reach out to median (“swing”) voters.7

As this chapter demonstrates, when the national Republican Party leaders asserted their

candidate preferences and campaign strategies in major statewide elections in the three

states, they gave significant consideration to the potentially destabilizing effects brought

by the party defections of state party elites on the national party coalition. The national

Republican Party leaders were particularly cautious about the repercussions of party

switch by the third-party campaign supporters of George Wallace. The national

Republicans also cultivated black support selectively only on the condition that the

pursuit would enhance the election prospects of white Republican candidates. The Nixon

7 Paul Frymer and John David Skrentny, "Coalition-Building and the Politics of Electoral Capture During the Nixon Administration: African Americans, Labor, Latinos," Studies in American Political Development 12, no. 2 (1998); See also Paul Frymer, Uneasy Alliances: Race and Party Competition in America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).

150 administration’s interventions in the enclaves during this period, in other words, not only rendered the local opposition party formation a secondary priority and the African

American electorate “captured” in between the two parties, but also aimed at Nixon’s reelection in four years as the overriding objective.

- Supporting Local GOP Leaders

Lastly, national Republican leaders attempted to placate the local Republicans so that they would remain loyal supporters of the national administration. Because federal patronage, especially post office jobs, was no longer available to local Republicans, the national Republican operatives tried to pump up the morale of local Republicans by other means, such as frequently holding meetings of fellow southern Republicans and letting them have access to the President and administrative officials. In addition to providing them political access to the President and his staff, Dent tried to fulfill the state

Republican requests for political appointments in other administrative positions in the federal government. Considered lacking in executive competence by the national administration, however, some noted local Republicans were rejected for positions in the federal bureaucracy. Overall, the lack of patronage and political appointment for the local

Republican Party leaders resulted in the arrested growth of the local Republican Party.

These three motivations of national Republican interventions in the three states evolved in the first four years of the Nixon administration. Although oftentimes at odds with one another, they complemented the national effort to improve Nixon’s reelection prospect, if not further progress of subnational democratization. When Kevin Phillips’s

Emerging Republican Majority came out in 1969 as the blueprint of election strategy for

151 the Republican Party in the coming decade, the author argued that the party would gain

dominance in the South, Midwest and California, while the party could potentially write

off the northeast. 8 National Republic Party leaders were cautious not to make unquestioned embrace of Phillips’s argument, at least in the public’s eyes. In a memo written by speechwriter Bill Safire to John Ehrlichman, the domestic policy advisor to the

President, Safire warned that the book was “the most dangerous” because the author was

a member of the administration, and the idea “makes a lot of sense to a lot of people.”

Safire advised, “The President must not tip his hand as to his ultimate political strategy,

nor must he be pushed into appearing to accept a Democratic assessment of his strategy.

We must not allow the conservative Phillips analysis to be interpreted by the Democrats

as the ‘Nixon political line.’”9 The Safire memo was circulated among White House

political advisors who shared the concern. Dent concurred and wrote to Ehrlichman:

“With regard to the new book by Kevin Phillips, … We should not try to repudiate the

book, but we should not permit it to be the ‘gospel according to Richard Nixon.’ I have

been telling people and will continue to underscore the point that we are writing off no

state and no vote. I know nothing about any Southern strategy, anyway.”10 Their cautious response to the book, rather than the wholehearted embrace of it, reveals the contingent nature of the repeated national involvements in the former enclaves.

8 Kevin P. Phillips, Emerging Republican Majority, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014 [1969]), http://JHU.eblib.com/patron/FullRecord.aspx?p=1753615. 9 Bill Safire to John Ehrlichman. “Re: Avoiding an Imposed “Nixon Philosophy.”” July 17, 1969. Memoranda and Departmental Referrals, 1969 Ehrlichman Memos. [2 of 3.] Box 1. Staff Member and Office Files, White House Special Files. Papers and Other Historical Materials of Harry S. Dent. RNPL. 10 Harry Dent memorandum to John Ehrlichman. July 22, 1969. Memoranda and Departmental Referrals, 1969 Ehrlichman Memos. [2 of 3.] Box 1. Staff Member and Office Files, White House Special Files. Papers and Other Historical Materials of Harry S. Dent. RNPL.

152 i. Strom Thurmond’s Party Defection and Reconstitution of State Republican Party in

South Carolina

United States Senator Strom Thurmond’s permanent party switch to the

Republican Party in the midst of Barry Goldwater campaign in 1964 was an adaptive act of Thurmond, a holdover from the former authoritarian enclave, to withdraw from the state Democratic one-party regime and form an opposition party on the ground with the help of the national Republican Party. The timing and political circumstance of the switch set subsequent course of the state Republican Party’s organizational development and its electoral coalition composition in South Carolina. This section demonstrates that

Thurmond’s defection to the Republican Party was not just a show of momentary defiance to the Civil Rights Act enacted earlier in the same year, but also a consequence of this authoritarian holdover’s cumulative challenge on the state Democratic one-party control in the previous two decades.

- The Early and Cleavage Defining Party Switches of Strom Thurmond

The relatively early timing of Thurmond’s formal party switch in September of

1964 gave him a set of new party institutions separate from the state and national

Democratic Party. Because Thurmond’s party switch took place at the height of

Goldwater campaign, Thurmond’s segregationist past went largely unquestioned by the national Republican Party. Thurmond’s early start in the Republican Party also aided the national party’s reach into other southern states. As the subsections on the other two states indicate, major elected officials who had segregationist records similar to

Thurmond’s also indicated interest in switching to the Republican Party in the late 1960s to the early 1970s. However, once Goldwater’s 1964 Republican campaign ended in

153 national electoral defeat, the national Republican Party and the Nixon administration

became far more selective in choosing whom they welcomed to defect from the

Democratic one-party regime to join the opposition party on the ground. The national

Republican selection criteria worked in favor of those state party elites who would bring the maximum number of constituent votes to the Republican side without causing much disturbance to the national Republican coalition.

Strom Thurmond had risen in statewide politics by challenging the highly organized state Democratic Party leadership under the Barnwell Ring rule. While having supported the New Deal economic programs for his senate district of Edgefield during his only term in the state legislature, Thurmond nonetheless voted for the anti-New Deal U.S.

Senator Cotton Ed Smith in the 1938 reelection race, in which President Roosevelt intervened in the state Democratic primary in an unsuccessful attempt to help elect a pro-

New Deal candidate. 11 Thurmond’s initial alignment with the national New Deal

coalition further unraveled as he sharpened his challenge on the Barnwell Ring leaders that remained close supporters of the national Democratic Party. After returning to his hometown from his military service in Germany in 1945, Thurmond ran first as a

progressive candidate for the governor’s office in the campaign the following year. With

the appeal to challenge the “small group of scheming politicians” of the Barnwell Ring,

his call to reform “ring rule” found receptive audience among the young generation of

elites who returned from the war theaters of Europe and the Pacific.12

Because of Thurmond’s surging popularity, Solomon Blatt, the state House

Speaker and one of the Barnwell Ring leaders, relinquished the House leadership position

11 Joseph Crespino, Strom Thurmond's America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2012), 38. 12 Ibid., 45.

154 in 1947 when Thurmond was inaugurated to the governor’s office. Blatt later explained that the decision to temporally step down from the speakership was made, “Because

Strom’s strength would make it very difficult for me to get elected” to the speakership

position and there would have been considerable opposition to Blatt from pro-Thurmond

legislators in the House had he remained.13 Only after Thurmond left the executive office and the office was succeeded by Jim Byrnes, a pro-Barnwell Ring governor, did Blatt resume control of the House by running for and successfully getting reelected to the speakership in 1952.

In addition to the challenge he waged on the Barnwell Ring, Thurmond’s staunch defense of white supremacy pushed him further away from the national

Democratic Party. The gradual estrangement of Strom Thurmond from the national

Democratic Party came to a break point in 1948, when Thurmond campaigned for the presidency as the State Rights Party candidate in protest to the national Democratic

Party’s embrace of civil rights. Early in February 1948, President Harry Truman had sent a message to Congress recommending civil rights measures. Later in the fall, the national

Democratic Party inserted a moderate civil rights plank into the party platform.

According to Joseph Crespino, the southern enclave rulers who gathered at the meeting to draft Thurmond for the States Rights Party ticket did not include prominent elected officials who had broad political bases; rather, they included a constellation of racist fringe elements from the enclaves.14 The 1948 campaign won the Electoral College votes

13 Solomon Blatt, George D. Terry, and Catherine Wilson Horne, The Bridge Builder: Solomon Blatt Reflects on a Lifetime of Service to South Carolina (Columbia: McKissick Museum, University of South Carolina, 1986), 54. 14 Crespino, Strom Thurmond's America, 70.

155 of South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana and affirmed Thurmond’s break

from the national New Deal Democratic coalition.

Thurmond’s final defection in 1964 to campaign for the Republican presidential

candidate Barry Goldwater and to join the Republican Party marked an end to the

preceding long history of estrangement from the national Democratic Party and the state

leaders of the Barnwell Ring that supported the former. Thurmond brought with him

Harry S. Dent, then his press secretary in the Senate office to the local Goldwater campaign and the state Republican Party. Dent took over the state GOP chairmanship in

1965, served as the presidential campaign manager for Nixon in 1968 and 1972, and then

as political counsel to Nixon in the White House during his first term.15 As this chapter

demonstrates, Harry Dent was the primary national negotiator with the state party elites

during this period.

The Goldwater campaign and Thurmond’s switch in 1964 began a vigorous

Republican Party organization in South Carolina. Thurmond brought his mass electoral

vote to the Republican Party, a base that the business elites of the Republican Party

delegates just could not build.16 It also meant the early exodus of conservative white

voters who followed the Senator across the party. Following Thurmond, Albert Watson,

the state’s Congressman, defected from the Democratic Party to join the Republican

Party in 1965.

15 Dent, The Prodigal South Returns to Power, 67. After Dent resigned from the Republican National Committee in 1972, he later worked for ’s presidential campaign in 1976. 16 Former state GOP chairman Drake Edens recalled later in 1974 that Thurmond’s switch was beneficial overall to the Republican Party, although he noted that “The Senator was not used to working within a party structure or even less, and he was a little bit apprehensive as to how to work with a party and how much commitment you make to it.” Jack Bass interview with J. Drake Edens, February 13, 1974. A-0149. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007). The Southern historical Collection, the Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

156 Dent wrote to Albert Watson on April 10, 1969 a memo that informed him of the party leadership endorsements of Watson for the gubernatorial candidacy in the 1970 race. “I talked with Joe R[oger, the 1966 gubernatorial candidate]. He says a group, including Drake [Edens, South Carolina’s Republican National Committeeman], is getting ready to push you for higher office and sees you as the only hope for the position.” 17 With the blessing of state Republican leaders, Watson’s gubernatorial campaign exploited the racial fear in the campaign that defended “freedom of choice” over school desegregation.18 As the next section illustrates, Watson’s gubernatorial

campaign closed the door to black political leaders’ participation in the local Republican

Party.

Through the civil rights democratic consolidation process, Thurmond remained

in power like other authoritarian holdovers of the enclave regime did: he did so by

switching early to the Republican Party. Harry Dent’s appointment as the political

counsel in the Nixon administration served Thurmond’s interests in political survival,

since the Senator and his former aide needed to successfully institute themselves in the

national Republican Party and reestablish the political base in the state to expand the

local Republican Party. For Thurmond, however, incorporating himself into the national

Republican Party meant that he would suspend his own national ambitions for the executive office and support the other Republican candidates’ presidential campaigns in the rest of his career.

- Urban Republican Black Leadership in Columbia and its Unraveling

17 Dent to Albert Watson, April 10, 1969. “South Carolina Politics, April – December 1969.” Folder 19, Box 3. White House File Series, 1. Subject File, 1969. Harry S. Dent Papers (Mss. #0158). CULSC. 18 Billy B. Hathorn, "The Changing Politics of Race: Congressman Albert William Watson and the S.C. Republican Party, 1965-70," The South Carolina Historical Magazine 89, no. 4 (1988).

157 Before the state Republican Party was fully taken over by the authoritarian

holdovers in the early 1970s, national Republican efforts towards local black leaders

centered around urban business owners in South Carolina’s state capitol. Building upon

an existent black Republican faction that originated during the Republican presidential

campaigns of the 1940s, Harry Dent tried to maintain their support for the local

Republican Party. Eventually, this tie with urban black leaders fell apart as the state

Republican Party leaders pushed for the gubernatorial candidacy of Albert Watson in

1970. The urban black support for the party since then has been permanently strained.

The Columbia Republican Party that existed prior to the mid 1960s was a tan

faction of the Abraham Lincoln Republicans, which Columbia’s progressive black

leaders formed in order to participate in the national Republican conventions of the 1940s.

After the democratization of the Democratic one-party enclaves, however, the city’s

black leadership began to witness gradual shifts in the Republican Party committee. At an

official meeting of the City Republican Party that was held on March 6, 1969, one third

of the meeting attendees reportedly were black residents of Columbia. The meeting

elected the city party’s central committee members, including the secretary Thomas

Martin, a professor at a historically black college in town.19

Modjeska M. Simkins, one of the progressive black leaders, attended the meeting and sensed the shifting winds for the remaining African American Republicans.

Simkins was a founding member of South Carolina National Association for the

Advancement of Colored People and had been active in the state Republican Party

19 Martin taught at Benedict College. “Republican Party for City Formed.” March 6, 1969. The Columbia Record. 4-C. Memoranda and Department Referrals, 1968. Folder “[1968-1969 Request Fulfilled] [III] [1 of 3]” Box 1. Staff Member and Office Files, White House Special Files. Papers and Other Historical Materials of Harry S. Dent. RNPL.

158 executive committee since ’s 1940 presidential campaign.20 She sent a note to Harry Dent in Washington a few days after the Columbia meeting. She observed in the letter, “Our main problem on a city set-up was the fact that many of our desirable potentials are living outside city limits. ... I was surprised at the turnout, though. … I thought I had what was a good reason for not going, but I did and will continue to give full organizational support to the movement.” Then she added, “I have the hope, not a vain one I pray, that there will be a great threat against the entrenched political establishment in the next Governor's race. I am frank to say that I do not feel as good about it with you gone.” Anticipating that state party leaders were leaning toward Albert

Watson’s gubernatorial candidacy, she expressed her frustration.

On a more business-like tone, she concluded the letter by asking Dent to check her small business loan application status with the federal Small Business Administration.

She wrote, “I am desperately awaiting the outcome of my loan appeal. We had two large telephone orders today, but cannot move due to lack of operational funds, particularly for materials. The March 31 deadline on the lease has me frantic.”21 Before replying to

Simkins, Dent inquired as to the status of the business loan application to the federal SBA

on her behalf. Dent wrote to SBA director Bill Murfin, “This lady is a Negro and is very

powerful with the Negro vote. If anything can be worked out here in accord with the SBA

20 Barbara Woods Aba-Mecha, "Black Woman Activist in Twentieth Century South Carolina: Modjeska Monteith Simkins" (Ph.D. Dissertation, Emory University, 1978), 321. 21 Modjeska M. Simkins letter to Harry Dent. March 11, 1969. Memoranda and Department Referrals, 1968. Folder “[1968-1969 Request Fulfilled] [III] [1 of 3]” Box 1. Staff Member and Office Files, White House Special Files. Papers and Other Historical Materials of Harry S. Dent. RNPL.

159 policies, this would be a good political move. I suggest you call … and determine what the status is and what the possibilities may be, and any obstacles, if any.”22

Despite Dent’s prodding to expedite the SBA loan to Simkins, local black support and party participation in Columbia appears to have drastically waned. The state

election statistics record indicates that by 1976, only less than two percent of the

Republican primary voters in Richland County, where the state capital is located, were

non-white, while white voters constituted the remaining 98 percent.23 The abysmal record

of the black Republican Party primary participation in contrast to the robust black

attendance at the city party’s inaugural meeting at the end of the previous decade shows

that the takeover of the local Republican Party by white conservatives was complete

between the early and the mid 1970s.24

- Placating Local Republican Leaders in South Carolina

While the Republican Party in South Carolina appeared to have gained a foothold with the defection of authoritarian enclave holdovers, local Republicans were not always content with the national administration, particularly with regard to the public school desegregation orders. Dent wrote a letter of complaints on behalf of a South

Carolina Republican Party leader to Patrick Gray, executive assistant to the Secretary of

22 Confidential memorandum from Harry Dent to Bill Murfin. February 28, 1969. Memoranda and Department Referrals, 1968. Folder “[1968-1969 Request Fulfilled] [III] [1 of 3]” Box 1. Staff Member and Office Files, White House Special Files. Papers and Other Historical Materials of Harry S. Dent. RNPL. 23 The 1976 election statistics is the first record that South Carolina Election Commission makes available the racial composition of party primary voters. South Carolina Election Commission, "Report of the South Carolina Election Commission for the Period Ending June 30, 1977 (Including Results of November 2, 1976 General Election)," ed. South Carolina Election Commission (Columbia, SC.: State Budget and Control Board, 1977), 23. 24 The author did not find the trace of Modjeska Simkins’s Republican Party activism in Columbia after 1970. Barbara Aba-Mecha’s doctoral dissertation on Simkins, which is based largely on Aba-Mecha’s oral interviews with Simkins, documents that after the 1948 presidential election in which Simkins supported the Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace, she became less active in the local Republican Party. In 1952, she had voted for Adlai Stevens. The author could not locate published records on Simkins’s partisan identity and activism from the 1960s on. See Aba-Mecha, "Black Woman Activist in Twentieth Century South Carolina: Modjeska Monteith Simkins," 329-32.

160 Department of Health, Education and Welfare in the summer of 1969. The South

Carolina Republican Party Executive Director, Gay Suber, had complained to Dent that

he was feeling insulted by the HEW Secretary and was “getting the run-

around by HEW,” because the HEW officials in different office branches in Washington,

D.C. and Atlanta gave Suber instructions that were uncertain and confusing. After his

meeting requests with the department officials were cancelled, Suber became resentful of

the Department, Dent reported.

In the letter Dent wrote to Gray, Dent pointed out political implications of the

local Republican frustration with the Department over school desegregation. “The

Republican Party is helping build in Newberry County and we are winning elections.

Recently a Democrat edged our Republican State Senator.” Dent warned Gray that the

Democratic senator was taking advantage of the desegregation orders issued by the Nixon

administration. “Now this Democrat is laughing up his sleeve,” he wrote, “and is going to

charge the situation is worse in Newberry under the Nixon Administration than under

LBJ. Please give us some help on this and let's get this thing straight.”25 Dent expected

and pressed the HEW Secretary’s assistant that the administration’s desegregation orders

should take the local partisan repercussions into account.

On another occasion in the summer next year, Dent similarly wrote to Attorney

General John Mitchell with regard to the school desegregation impact on local party

politics, this time in the Barnwell County. He wrote:

In South Carolina, the Barnwell County School District is one of those being sued by the Justice Department to bring about compliance. This happens to be the small county in South Carolina which runs the State. The President of the State Senate, Senator Edgar Brown, represents this county and the Speaker of

25 Harry Dent to Pat Gray. July 11, 1969. “South Carolina Politics, April – December 1969,” Folder 19, Box 3. White House File Series, 1. Subject File, 1969. Harry S. Dent Papers (Mss. #0158). CULSC.

161 the House, Sol Blatt, represents this county. The Speaker of the House called today and asked that a good, reasonable attorney from the Justice Department be sent down to talk with him and the members of the school board. He wants to show what has been done and what they plan to do, particularly with regard to a new technical education school which is being made a part of the Barnwell school system. I realize this may be some trouble, but if the Speaker and the President of the State Senate both blast us real hard publicly, this would be most harmful to us from a political standpoint. In addition, the Speaker did support the President in the last election and has been very good to our Republicans in the General Assembly.26

What this letter shows is that Dent took the local former enclave rulers’ response to the

Nixon administration’s desegregation enforcement inimical to the local opposition party formation. He attempted to contain their negative political repercussion from the White

House so that the Democratic authoritarian holdovers would not adversely affect the elections of the local opposition party candidates. Dent managed to do this better in South

Carolina than in the other two states, and the South Carolina Republican Party grew early into a disciplined white conservative organization.

ii. ’s Curbed Growth

Whereas South Carolina’s major party defections took place earlier in the middle of the 1960s and defined the party cleavage along racial divisions in the state, in the other two states there was no noted party defection of major elected statewide officials until later in the decade. In Georgia, the Republican Party growth remained curbed in contrast to South Carolina throughout the late 1960s to the 1970s. This was in part due to the national Republican Party leaders’ rejection of a party switch offer made by the state’s noted third-party supporter. The national Republicans did not immediately

26 Harry Dent memorandum to Attorney General and Jerris Leonard. July 10, 1969. “South Carolina Politics, April – December 1969,” Folder 19, Box 3. White House File Series, 1. Subject File, 1969. Harry S. Dent Papers (Mss. #0158). CULSC.

162 award the local Republicans with federal appointments in Georgia, making one of the

major Republican state party leaders withdraw from state politics.

- Third Partiers Not Invited: National and Local Responses to Lester Maddox’s Party

Switch Offer in Georgia

It was in 1970 that Lester Maddox, the incumbent Democratic governor who had already estranged himself from the national party during the previous years, signaled that he was interested in switching to the Republican Party. As a defiant holdover from the authoritarian enclave, the reactionary governor sought ways to sustain his political life in the state government. However, the Georgia constitution at that time had barred the incumbent governor from succeeding himself after one term. Maddox first challenged in court the state constitution’s gubernatorial term limit provision. He argued that the limit was unconstitutional and should be removed so as to allow him run for a reelection campaign. After the state supreme court affirmed the constitutionality of the term limit,

Maddox further appealed in the United States Supreme Court. The court denied certiorari to the case on March 2nd, 1970.27

With his attempt to challenge the constitution’s provision and remain in the

governor’s office now blocked by the court, Maddox announced his intention to run for

Lieutenant Governor. In doing so, Maddox publicly contemplated defecting to the

Republican Party in order to run in that party’s primary. The rumor that Maddox was

considering a party switch reached the Nixon White House by the middle of March.

Immediately before the Maddox announcement, Harry Dent wrote to Attorney General

John Mitchell. Dent reported that Maddox was considering party switch and wrote the

27 Maddox v Fortson. Supreme Court of the United States, March 2, 1970. 397 U.S. 14990 S.Ct. 999 (Mem) 25 L.Ed.2d 183: also see Lester Maddox, Speaking Out: The Autobiography of Lester Garfield Maddox, 1st ed. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975), 134.

163 reception of the state Republican Party leaders: “The Georgia GOP cannot afford to say he is not welcome, but they are not bending over backwards to get him, although they

believe this would doom the Democratic Party in Georgia.” Though the Maddox switch

was certain to bring white conservative votes to the state Republican Party based on a

latest statewide polls showing that “Lester could beat anybody for any office today,”

Dent was cautious about the repercussions the switch would bring to the national party

coalition. Dent continued:

I have informed [the RNC Chair Rogers] Morton he may have to speak for the national party on this matter if he will announce his candidacy for lieutenant governor Monday without saying which party, and he thinks chances are one in three that he will eventually go GOP.28

As the national Republicans had anticipated, Maddox waited for the local Republicans

officials to court his party switch. At the first press conference, Maddox did not

immediately leave out the possibility of running in the Republican primary for the

Lieutenant Governorship.

Jimmy Bentley, a Republican candidate running in the gubernatorial primary,

gave a rather positive endorsement to Maddox. Bentley stated to a reporter, “I wouldn’t object, … I’d welcome Lester to the Republican Party. We need everybody we can

get.”29 Bentley was Georgia’s former Democratic state comptroller who had walked out of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in protest and later switched to the

Republican Party. He had earned an endorsement of Howard Bo Callaway, the first

Republican U.S. congressman elected in 1964 from Georgia since the end of

Reconstruction and then Georgia’s Republican National Committeeman.

28 Very Confidential Memorandum for Attorney General from Harry S. Dent, March 14, 1970. Memoranda and Departmental Referrals, 1970 Memos to the Cabinet Members. Box 5. Staff Member and Office Files, White House Special Files. Papers and Other Historical Materials of Harry S. Dent. RNPL. 29 "Bateman Quits Gop Race for Governorship," Atlanta Daily World, Mar 15 1970.

164 However, not everybody passed the national Republican test of party switch approval. Dent and other Nixon political aides in the White House objected to the idea of allowing Maddox join the Georgia Republican Party, and they ordered Georgia

Republican leaders to stop making overtures to Maddox. On the next day following

Maddox’s first announcement for lieutenant governorship candidacy, Nixon political aide

Tom Lias reported to Dent the reception of Georgia Republican leaders regarding the

Nixon administration’s instructions. “Immediately after your telephone conversation with me,” Lias wrote, “I got Bo Callaway on the phone and relayed the message.” Lias continued the memo by noting Callaway’s reaction to the White House instructions:

Bo understands the message very clearly, but is quick to point out that under their open primary situation there isn't much they can do to stop the Governor if he would choose to make the move. It is Bo's gut feeling as of today that Maddox won't invade the Republican Party. Bo is quick to state, however, that Maddox is totally unpredictable and that any overt move to keep him out would probably tend to get him in.

Lias then informed Dent that Callaway asked to pass on a message to him:

There has been no overture made to Maddox yet by any responsible Republican official in Georgia, and the National Committeewoman has gone so far as to almost say publicly that he isn't welcome. This statement on the part of the National Committeewoman brought a flood of mail to Bo criticizing her for being unfriendly to the idea.

Callaway warned, however, by adding that there was a downside to the state Republican

Party’s entirely dismissing Maddox. According to the Lias memo, Callaway told him

“Maddox is unquestionably the strongest politician in the State today – even stronger than [U.S. Senator Richard] Russell – and the reason is the school issue. Bo says that if the Party embraced Maddox in Georgia, it would have immediate benefits in the State, but he understands the national implications and appreciates the clear direction which has

165 been forwarded from Washington and he will follow it to the letter.”30 As Callaway understood it, the expected boost in the local Republican vote from the Maddox switch,

on the one hand, and the maintenance of the national party coalition, on the other, were

two incompatible objectives to achieve. Following the instruction from Dent, the state

Republican leadership chose the latter over the former by making it publicly known that

the Georgia Republican leadership did not intend to court Maddox to join the Republican

Party. After putting the question of his party affiliation in speculation for more than a

week since the first announcement, Maddox held a second press conference and

announced his intention to remain in the Democratic Party.31

That Maddox’s interest in switching to the Republican Party were declined by the local Republican leaders following the instruction from Harry Dent demonstrates the notable influence the national Party leaders during Nixon’s first term had over who, of all the enclave holdover of the Democratic Party, was to be welcomed into the local

Republican Party. In the case of Maddox, the national Republican Party leadership disallowed his switch to the Republican Party despite the likelihood that his popularity among local white conservatives would boost Georgia Republican votes. Even though

Jimmy Bentley, the candidate backed by some of the Republican Party leadership in the gubernatorial primary, was open to the idea of Maddox switch, other local Republicans followed the instructions coming from Harry Dent in the White House. The national

Republicans regarded Maddox, who had campaigned for George Wallace in 1968, as a

30 Confidential Memorandum from Tom Lias to Harry Dent. March 17, 1970. Memoranda and Departmental Referrals, 1970 Memos to Haldeman. [2 of 3.] Box 4. Staff Member and Office Files, White House Special Files. Papers and Other Historical Materials of Harry S. Dent. RNPL. 31 "Maddox Will Seek No. 2 Georgia Post," New York Times, March 17, 1970.

166 potential source of undesirable disturbance to the national Republican Party coalition and

ultimately to Nixon’s reelection campaign.32

Had Maddox switched parties in 1970, the Georgia Republican Party would have grown as early and notably in size as that of South Carolina. In reality, Georgia saw relatively slow growth of Republican majority in statewide elections despite the state’s comparatively rigorous economic modernization. The state’s first Republican governor of modern times was elected only in 2002, and Georgia’s two major parties continue to be relatively competitive.

- Pursuing Black Voters in Atlanta Mayoral Race

While Dent’s efforts to reach out to South Carolina’s black leaders in Columbia went through the existing local Republican Party leadership, in Atlanta, the national party’s outreach was made through Hosea Williams, the organizer of the Southern

Christian Leadership Council. Atlanta’s fall 1969 mayoral election provided an opportunity for local Republican Party building in Georgia, and the national Republican leaders were actively involved in the race. The candidates in the non-partisan run-off election were the Republican alderman Rodney Cook and Democrat Vice Mayor Sam

Massell. In the run-off race, Cook lost to Massell. The national Republicans complained

later that their outreach to Atlanta’s black electorate through the Cook campaign and

Hosea Williams lacked coordination and efficiency.

Beginning early in the race, the national Republican Party carefully observed

local black electoral mobilization efforts. Julian Bond, the Democratic state legislator,

32 Maddox easily won both the nomination and the general election later that year and remained a staunch critic of his successor Jimmy Carter. As the president of the state senate, a position prescribed by the state constitution for the lieutenant governor, Maddox contended against Governor Carter the authorities over government reorganization. Gary M. Fink, Prelude to the Presidency: The Political Character and Legislative Leadership Style of Governor Jimmy Carter (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980).

167 had actively registered voters in advance of the election. Once Dent discovered this, he ordered his assistant Gordon Brownell to do the following:

Find out from the OEO [Office of Economic Opportunity] man if they have done anything about Julian Bond. Tell them the Under Secretary of Agriculture and the other __ [sic] people are terribly upset that Julian Bond has been able (or is going) to get his money and go around registering people to vote against our people. Tell him about that race we have in Atlanta going on right now. Give us a report as we have to answer to these people.

Brownell followed the instruction and handwrote the reply to Dent. “OEO is inspecting

this and hopes to stop it without any damage being done to GOP in Atlanta. Done

10/9.”33 Four days later, Dent ordered Brownell to take a follow-up action: “Call Under

Secretary Phil Campbell and give him a report on the OEO and Julian Bond in Atlanta.”

Brownell complied, “Done 10/13.”34 The Nixon White House was aware of the local black voter registration drive by Bond and intended to discreetly stop him through the federal government agency.

The national administration’s pressure to stop funding the local voter registration drive by Bond, as well as the national party assistance given to Cook, the

Republican candidate, rendered the supposedly non-partisan mayoral election quite

partisan. A post-election report written by Republican National Committee staffer Ed

Sexton reveals that the national party staff were aware of the local dynamics.35 Sexton

wrote:

The Massell campaign committee was screaming to the news media that the Republican National Committee, the State Republicans of Atlanta and the

33 Harry Dent memorandum for Gordon [Brownell]. October 9, 1969. Memoranda and Department Referrals, 1968 (1969)-70. Folder “1969 Brownell Memos” Box 1. Staff Member and Office Files, White House Special Files. Papers and Other Historical Materials of Harry S. Dent. RNPL. 34 Harry Dent memorandum for Gordon [Brownell]. October 13, 1969. Memoranda and Department Referrals, 1968 (1969)-70. Folder “1969 Brownell Memos” Box 1. Staff Member and Office Files, White House Special Files. Papers and Other Historical Materials of Harry S. Dent. RNPL. 35 Ed Sexton was a black Republican political advisor in the RNC. Dent, The Prodigal South Returns to Power, 183.

168 county GOP of Atlanta was [sic] helping Cook. For that reason, they said that the Democrat [sic] Party was going to endorse Massell and actively work for him. They were already helping him, but because they knew that this would really hurt Mr. Cook in the Black precincts because of the Republican label, if an open endorsement was made.

In addition, Sexton observed that Cook’s loss could have been avoided had the

campaign team worked effectively with Atlanta’s black voters. The incumbent Atlanta

Mayor Ivan Allen endorsed Cook over Massell, and Sexton attributed Cook’s loss to the charge of anti-semitism, which Massell, who was of the Jewish descent, alleged that

Mayor Allen used against him right before the run-off. Such a statement from Allen turned local black voters, as well as the Jewish electorates and the city’s liberals, against

Cook. Sexton continued the memo:

I am sure that we were going to get 20 to 30 percent of the Black vote, but when the Mayor made his statement on Sunday, moments later, at city hall, a call was made to all of the Black leaders of Atlanta and they all came together, and I mean ALL, to denounce Mayor Allen and his statement and Rodney Cook [underline and capitalization in original].36

Harry Dent concurred with Sexton on this point when he reported the mayoral election

results to the president:

Cook and his people worked hard, won the endorsement of both Atlanta newspapers, the Atlanta business establishment, the law and order candidate, the Negro candidate, and – unfortunately – Mayor Ivan Allen. Cook expected to hold the Negro vote against him to 5-1 or 4-1. However, it went 10-1 against him in a city with 47% Negro vote. … Also, Allen's endorsement caused some poor whites to vote against Cook. Cook has been a real strong friend of the black community as a City Councilman and State Legislator.37

Beside listing the anti-Semitism allegations as the cause of Cook’s loss, Sexton further argued that the national Republican Party’s funds and resources directed to the

36 Ed Sexton memorandum to Dick Richards. October 24, 1969. “Subject: Atlanta Election Runoff.” “Georgia Politics, September – December, 1969,” Folder 22, Box 1. White House File Series, 1. Subject File, 1969. Harry S. Dent Papers (Mss. #0158). CULSC. 37 Harry Dent memorandum for the President. October 22, 1969. Memoranda and Department Referrals, 1968 (1969)-70. Folder “Memos to the President 1969 [III] [1 of 2]” Box 2. Staff Member and Office Files, White House Special Files. Papers and Other Historical Materials of Harry S. Dent. RNPL.

169 Cook campaign were largely wasted and that the campaign’s outreach effort in Atlanta’s

black communities was inefficient because of lack of coordination between the national

party and the local campaign. The same internal RNC memo by Sexton reveals:

I do not know how much Dr. Tate [the black contender in the election], Hosea Williams, and Dr. Abernathy [of SCLC] were paid to work to endorse and to work for Mr. Cook, but whatever it was, we could have done much better job and been more effective in getting a larger percentage of the vote than that which we received, if we had only had firmer control of the distribution of the funds which were invested in the Rodney Cook campaign office.

Sexton found that the national party’s recommendations on campaign management for

the mayoral race never reached the Cook campaign team and its public relations

consultant, Roy Pfautch. As Sexton complained, “Too much of the National Committee’s

money is being wasted by sending field men out to assist and counsel with candidates and

their campaign staffs, and they then go and do just what they had originally planned to do

(which is usually against our counseling and recommendations). We are also not

informed of any changes in policy which they intend to make and which could change the

complexion of the election.” The post-election memo concludes with Sexton’s exasperation: “This could have been a great shot in the arm for the Republican Party in the South, but they, in no uncertain terms, BLEW IT! [Capital letters in original.]”38

Rodney Cook’s unsuccessful race made national Republican Party leaders aware of the need of more tightly controlled distribution of campaign resources by the

national party. As far as Georgia’s black leadership support for local Republican Party

candidates went, the RNC appeared to have taken this lesson seriously. A sizable minority of the black leadership continued to support the Republican candidates into the

38 Ed Sexton memorandum to Dick Richards. October 24, 1969. “Subject: Atlanta Election Runoff.” “Georgia Politics, September – December, 1969,” Folder 22, Box 1. White House File Series, 1. Subject File, 1969. Harry S. Dent Papers (Mss. #0158). CULSC.

170 1970s. Atlanta Daily World and Hosea Williams supported and George H.

W. Bush for the 1980 Republican presidential ticket over the state’s own Democratic incumbent president.39 The national Republicans pursued local black votes so long as

their support helped elect white Republican candidates.

- Local Republican Frustration and Bo Callaway’s Withdrawal from the State Politics

Aside from declining Maddox’s party defection offer and getting involved in

black electoral mobilization in Atlanta’s mayoral race, the national Republican Party

during this period made little headway with helping local and state Republican Party

leaders in Georgia. As a result, the party’s overall organizational growth in statewide

politics remained stalled throughout the 1970s. The local party leaders’ frustrations with

the national Republicans came from the administration’s personnel decisions for the

enforcement of public school desegregation and the lack of federal patronage.

In Georgia Republican national committeeman Howard Bo Callaway’s view,

the local disappointment primarily came from Nixon administration’s decision to appoint

two officials whose moderate orientations and past pro-desegregation records did not win

the approval of the conservative southern Republicans. Nixon appointed Robert Finch,

the California Lieutenant Governor, to the Secretary of Department of Health, Education,

and Welfare, and James Allen, the former New York Commissioner of Education, to the

U.S. Commissioner of Education in the same department.

“Our primary hope for any meaningful development lies within the realm of

education and the direction that HEW officials will take when dealing with school

systems in the South,” Callaway wrote to Dent weeks after Nixon was inaugurated. “I

39 "We Endorse Reagan and Bush," Atlanta Daily World, October 5, 1980; "Hosea Hits Carter; to Back Reagan," Atlanta Daily World, October 19, 1980.

171 can’t help but feel that we’ve been a little bit cheated in this regard. … the party of the

South were led to believe – in fact, promised – that their views would be considered. Not only were we not consulted, but the man we feared most received the appointment.”40

The Georgia Republicans’ resentfulness continued to simmer over the summer of 1969.

Many local school boards in Georgia maintained segregated schools and ignored

administrative orders from the federal Department of HEW to integrate the schools. As a

result, by the summer, federal funding to the non-complying schools was cut off and

defunded schools were shut down. The closures generated further frustration among local

residents.

While complaining the local irritation with the department’s personnel

appointments, Callaway also tried to defend the Nixon administration’s decisions to the

local residents over the summer. When Washington Post columnists Rowland Evans and

Robert Novak wrote that Callaway actively defended the administration’s court action

against the state of Georgia, Callaway immediately took caution on any possible state-

level repercussions resulting from the nationally circulated newspaper’s report. In the

Post column, Evans and Novak wrote that Callaway defended the Justice Department’s

suit because he “feels that the Republican Party can make inroads into the urban Negro

vote of Georgia by taking a positive political position on school segregation that favors

court action rather than fund cutoffs.” The National Republican committeeman’s defense

of the administration “would put the Republican Party squarely against Democratic

segregationist Gov. Lester Maddox,” the column opined and concluded, “Maddox’s

40 Howard H. Bo Callaway letter to Harry Dent. February 7, 1969. Harry Dent, 1970-72 Folder, Box II.B.7, Republican Party, Political, 1964-1976 Series. Howard H. (Bo) Callaway Papers, Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, University of Georgia Libraries, Athens, Georgia, 30602-1641 (Hereafter abbreviated as UGAL.)

172 public fury at the Justice Department’s threatened suit, Calloway [sic] believes, gives the

Republicans an opening they can’t afford to miss.”41 Since Callaway talked about the suit

in Washington D.C. at a closed meeting of SOS, an informal group of Republican

Congressmen, the press leak in the Evans and Novak report caught him by surprise.42

Three days later, Callaway wrote Dent a confidential letter in which he

complained that the Post column “Has not helped a bit ... The bad part is that I did say at the SOS meeting that I thought the suit was the best way to go, but not at all for the reasons given.” Callaway then clarified his intention in supporting the suit:

I don’t think the Republican Party should try to make inroads into the Urban negro vote at this time, but rather I think we should appeal to the people who elected us. I do think, however, that it is absolutely imperative that the Nixon administration be fair with the negro, and the Justice Department suit, if properly handled, combines being fair with the negro and saving our education.43

Whatever Callaway meant by being “fair with the negro,” his defense of the Justice

Department’s suit came from his partisan support for the Nixon administration, and not particularly from his support for school desegregation. He also understood that if the state

GOP appealed to urban black voters, the conservative white Republican voters would not support the national Republican administration. For Callaway, the Justice Department suit against the Georgia state government was a convenient middle ground solution that

protected the Republican base in the state.

41 “Bo’s Bombshell” in Evans Rowland and Novak Robert, "Nixon's Secret Mission," , July 20, 1969. 42 SOS was founded in 1953 by John Rohdes of Arizona and Peter Frelinghuysen of New Jersey. Marjorie Hunter, "'Fraternity System' of Exclusive Clubs in Congress Reminiscent of Campus," New York Times, March 23, 1969. 43 Personal and Confidential letter from Howard Callaway to Harry Dent. July 23, 1969. Harry Dent, 1970- 72 Folder, Box II.B.7, Republican Party, Political, 1964-1976 Series. Howard H. (Bo) Callaway Papers, UGAL.

173 In addition to the Nixon administration’s handling of the school desegregation,

the lack of federal patronage to the Georgia Republicans was another source of

frustration. Callaway complained:

My second major concern involves the decision to remove the post office appointments from politics. … [F]rom a strictly business standpoint, I know that this is the best step that could be taken if we ever hope to see the Post Office Department operate as an efficient, productive organization. On the other hand, … from the South’s standpoint, it was politically disastrous. Because of the South’s ‘one-party’ history, the Republican Party has never had the opportunity to build through patronage. Here was our first chance to begin a breakdown of local Democrat organization and for our District and County Chairmen to get a taste of political power. As of today, there are 26 postmaster vacancies and 25 rural carrier vacancies in Georgia – 51 opportunities to build and strengthen the Republican Party in areas where we need help the most.44

The lack of postal patronage should be compensated with something else, Callaway

argued. “The Administration must be prepared to give us something in return in order to

achieve our goal of building a meaningful Party in the South. Most importantly, we must

receive the assurance of access to the White House when these problems develop,” he

wrote.

However, the southern party chairmen’s repeated request for a meeting with the

President was not granted immediately after Nixon’s inauguration, because

administration officials feared that the meeting could invite “a bad story” coverage by the

press.45 Instead, Dent, the RNC chair Rogers Morton, and a few other cabinet officials met with the southern GOP chairmen in March.46

44 Howard H. Bo Callaway letter to Harry Dent. February 7, 1969. Harry Dent, 1970-72 Folder, Box II.B.7, Republican Party, Political, 1964-1976 Series. Howard H. (Bo) Callaway Papers, UGAL. 45 Alexander Butterfield memorandum to John Ehrlichman. “Re: Notes from the President (Action Item).” March 11, 1969. “1969 Southern GOP [III] [2 of 3].” Subject Files, 1968 (1969)-70. Box 10. Staff Member and Office Files, White House Special Files. Papers and Other Historical Materials of Harry S. Dent. RNPL. 46 Harry Dent memorandum to Bryce Harlow, John Erlichman and H.R. Haldeman. March 10, 1969. “1969 Southern GOP [III] [2 of 3].” Subject Files, 1968 (1969)-70. Box 10. Staff Member and Office Files, White House Special Files. Papers and Other Historical Materials of Harry S. Dent. RNPL.

174 Callaway had also suggested that he was willing to serve as an appointee of the

Nixon administration in one of the Department of Defense positions, such as the

Secretary of the Army. However, this request was not approved. Dent repeatedly pressed

for a federal appointment on Callaway’s behalf, but Peter Flanigan, a Nixon aide, notified

Dent of the department’s decision to reject the request. Flanigan wrote that the defense

secretary did not consider that Callaway was “up to this job,” and someone else had

already been proposed. Flanigan suggested that Dent should further press on the secretary

for another position in the defense department on Callaway’s behalf. Harry Dent obliged

and he privately wrote to the Secretary of Defense. In the letter Dent did not forget to

mention the political consideration that should be given to this appointment request:

If you could offer Bo Callaway the position of Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, this would be good for the President regardless of whether he accepts. Bo took care of the Southern area of the U.S. in the 1968 campaign at much personal expense. We have not sufficiently rewarded him for this, and evidently he has been disappointed in not appointed Secretary of Army. … He wants to run for the U.S. Senate if Senator Russell is not a candidate in 1972. A key position in the Defense Department would serve as a good launching pad, and Bo's military background would prove of value to the Department in this position.47

Despite repeated prodding from Harry Dent, however, Callaway was not appointed to a position in the Department of Defense until 1973, only after Nixon’s reelection campaign was over.

When Dent tried again to convince Callaway to run for the governor’s office in

1970, he made himself unavailable to the national party’s suggestion. Instead of running for the office himself that year, Callaway tried to bring in Jim Bentley, the local party defector, for the Republican candidacy while he remained in the party’s national

47 Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense from Dent. April 3, 1970. Memoranda and Departmental Referrals, 1970 Memos to the Cabinet Members. Box 5. Staff Member and Office Files, White House Special Files. Papers and Other Historical Materials of Harry S. Dent. RNPL.

175 committeeman position. Without a federal appointment and lacking locally popular

solutions for the school desegregation crisis, Callaway was intent on discontinuing his

pursuit of statewide public office by the beginning of 1972.48

Nixon’s assistant Patrick Buchanan reported his recent, extensive conversation

with Callaway at his Georgia home. Callaway had “irrevocably removed himself from

potential candidacy in Georgia for the foreseeable future,” Buchanan reported on his

meeting. Although Callaway told Buchanan that he would not run for the senate seat, he

advised that the Nixon administration should continue to work on the south for the 1972

campaign. The success of the presidential campaign in 1972 would depend on George

Wallace, Callaway said. According to the memo, Callaway stated, “The removal of

Wallace from the Presidential race is vitally important to our chances in the South and

nationally.” Callaway also advised that “Wallace can be ‘bought off’ – the operative term

– i.e., persuaded that running is not in his best interests, from any standpoint.”49 As the

next section on Alabama makes clear, the national Republican leaders in the White House

shared this view regarding Wallace.

After 1972, the Georgia Republican Party underwent a hiatus as Callaway

relocated to Colorado and the state party organization showed signs of internal disarray.

In 1976, Callaway was recalled to the national Republican scene to head President Ford’s

Reelection Committee, but his national assignments eventually ended in his resignation

after an allegation surfaced that Callaway requested favorable deals from the federal

48 Harry Dent memorandum for the President. February 18, 1970. “Georgia Politics; February – November, 1970,” Folder 38, Box 4. White House File Series, 1. Subject File, 1970. Harry S. Dent Papers (Mss. #0158). CULSC. 49 Memorandum from Patrick Buchanan. January 24, 1972. “Georgia Politics, January – October, 1972,” Folder 11, Box 12. White House File Series, 1. Subject File, 1972. Harry S. Dent Papers (Mss. #0158). CULSC.

176 government for his ski resort business in Colorado.50 After Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign in 1976, the Georgia Republican Party remained a minority in statewide politics for two more decades to come.

iii. Nixon’s Interventions in Alabama

- Nixon’s Interventions in the 1970 Alabama Gubernatorial Democratic Party

Primary

As soon as Nixon was inaugurated to the executive office, the Republican Party leaders in the White House debated the political need to intervene in Alabama state politics in order to check George Wallace and keep him from upsetting yet another presidential election. Nixon’s 1968 presidential election had taught him and his campaign team that Wallace’s third-party candidacy was a real threat to securing the southern vote for Nixon, and thus a national Electoral College vote majority. It became clear to Nixon that George Wallace’s third-party presidential ambitions had to be contained: Nixon could tolerate him running as Democrat, but not as a Republican or an independent. With the presidential election still two years away, Alabama’s 1970 governorship race, during which Wallace sought reelection, became a prime opportunity for Nixon and his national

Republican political aides to discredit Wallace’s electoral strengths before Wallace moved onto the national stage.

In the 1970 race, Wallace was aiming to reclaim the governor’s office from

Albert Brewer, the incumbent governor. Brewer, elected to the lieutenant governorship in

50 Letter form President Jerry Ford to Bo Callaway. July 3, 1975. “Howard Bo Callaway (1),” Box 488. White House Central Files Name File. Gerald Ford Presidential Library, Ann Arbor, (hereafter GFPL): Letter from President Jerry Ford to Bo Callaway. March 30, 1976. “Howard Bo Callaway (3),” Box 488. White House Central Files Name Files. GFPL.

177 1966, had succeeded the governorship from Wallace’s deceased wife in 1968, and sought reelection for a full term. Brewer soon ran into conflict with George Wallace, whose continued interest in the presidential campaign prompted him to take back the state executive office in 1970 so that Wallace could finance a 1972 presidential campaign. As both Brewer and Wallace sought nomination to the Democratic Party’s gubernatorial primary in 1970, the race also became deeply enmeshed in President Richard Nixon’s calculations for his reelection prospect in 1972.

Alabama state Republican leaders were aware of the potential threat that a

Wallace presidential campaign would bring to Nixon’s 1972 electoral prospect. James

Martin, Alabama’s Republican National Committeeman, wrote to Harry Dent on August

7, 1969, that he had initiated contact with Albert Brewer regarding the 1970 race. He opened the letter by informing Dent of a report that a local newspaper carried: “Enclosed is an article from the Birmingham Post-Herald regarding the possibility of George

Wallace running against our incumbent Governor Albert Brewer.” Martin continued:

I have discussed this matter with Governor Brewer, and he thinks there is a good possibility that Wallace will run for Governor in order to strengthen his base for running for the Presidency in '72. His strategy apparently will be [sic] concentrate on the Deep South states. It is the general feeling that while his strength has subsided considerably throughout the South, that he would have a reasonable chance to win the Governor's chair. With the growing crises developing in our school system he will have a climate favorable to him.

Then Martin disclosed to Dent the deal he offered to Brewer at the meeting:

I suggested to Governor Brewer that if he got into such a head-on clash with Wallace, he could count on substantial financial assistance from us Republicans. I further told Governor Brewer that in return we would hope that he would consider switching to the Republican Party in the event he was victorious, and that during the November election of 1970 he would not lift a finger against any candidate running for office on the Republican ticket. He seemed agreeable to this idea.

178 Martin concluded the letter by stating, “If you desire, I will try to keep you posted on

what is taking place in Alabama and we can work out some type of strategy. It could be

possible that if Wallace is defeated, it would be one thing that could bring about a

Republican South for there would be no place else for them to go.”51 Dent replied to

Martin five days later and informed him, “This matter is being worked on in a few

different ways.”52

Some of the few different ways that the national Republicans in the White

House worked on the Alabama situation are documented in published materials and in

archival records.53 Wallace biographer Dan Carter writes that the President and his political aids in the White House secretly funneled money to bolster the campaign of

Albert Brewer in the state’s Democratic primary through a Republican contact in

Alabama. Carried out before the Watergate scandal and the subsequent passages of the

Federal Election Campaign Finance Act, Brewer’s emissaries were sent to New York twice, once before the first primary and then again during the run-off, to pick up briefcases full of cash from Nixon’s agents. In Dan Carter’s account, the amount sent to

51 James Martin letter to Harry Dent. August 7, 1969. “Alabama Politics, June – December, 1969,” Folder 1, Box 1. White House File Series, 1. Subject File, 1969. Harry S. Dent Papers (Mss. #0158). CULSC. 52 Harry Dent letter to James Martin. August 12, 1969. “Alabama Politics, June – December, 1969,” Folder 1, Box 1. White House File Series, 1. Subject File, 1969. Harry S. Dent Papers (Mss. #0158). CULSC. 53 Harry S. Dent papers indicate that there was an individual named Bob Lee who served as the Alabama contact for the Nixon White House. Bob Lee, perhaps a pseudonym which Dent gave to an operative and whose real identity remains unclear, kept Dent informed of the state politics and carried out the local operations. Though Dent referred to Bob Lee in the memos Dent wrote to other White House staffs, much of the actual information Lee conveyed to Dent was not found in the archives, suggesting that the two did not rely on written communication. See, for example, Harry S. Dent memorandum to Robert Ehrlichman. July 31, 1969. 1969 Ehrlichman Memos [2 of 3]. Memoranda and Departmental Referrals, 1968 (1969)-70, Box 1. Staff Member and Office Files, White House Special Files. Papers and Other Historical Materials of Harry S. Dent. RNPL.

179 the Brewer campaign from Nixon totaled $400,000, covering one third of the candidate’s

campaign budget total.54

Despite such an attempt by the White House, Alabama’s Democratic primary voters returned George Wallace as the party’s gubernatorial nominee. After the

Democratic run-off primary settled on Wallace over Brewer on June 2nd, Rogers Morton, the chairman of Republican National Committee, suggested that the Alabama GOP should have its own gubernatorial candidate in the general election. The order coming from the Republican National Committee, however, was not received well among the

Alabama Republicans. Nixon’s political counsel, Murray Chotiner, reported the local reactions to Harry Dent five days after Alabama’s run-off primary. He wrote:

The GOP State Chairman of Alabama, Dick Bennett, … is unhappy over the statement by Rog Morton that the Republican Party should run a candidate for Governor against Wallace. This is upsetting to people for the following reasons. 1. Any decision or talk about running a Republican candidate for Governor should come from the people of Alabama and not from any national figure. 2. When a national figure suggests it, it looks as though the White House is involved in it. 3. If there is to be a confrontation (and that is not necessary) between the President and Wallace, it should not take place in Alabama. 4. A Republican candidate against Wallace in Alabama, under present circumstances, would result in an overwhelming Wallace victory, which could wipe out the Republican Congressmen. It is my understanding that our people in Alabama will appreciate it greatly if Rog can be turned off ‘on the kick,’ of running a GOP candidate.55

In the end, the Alabama Republican Party chose no gubernatorial contender against

Wallace in the general election, and Wallace won the state executive office for the second

54 The Brewer aid was told to confirm the identity of the Nixon agent with whom he met in a hotel lobby by exchanging secret codes. The aid asked, “Are you Mr. Jensen from Baltimore?” to which the agent would respond “No, I am Mr. Jensen of Detroit.” Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000), 389. 55 Murray Chotiner memo to Harry Dent. June 8, 1970. “Alabama Politics, January – October, 1970,” Folder 11, Box 4. White House File Series, 1. Subject File, 1969. Harry S. Dent Papers (Mss. #0158). CULSC.

180 time. 56 With Wallace’s third-party presidential candidacy in 1972 still remaining plausible, Nixon White House aids sought other ways to discredit the governor’s national ambition.

- The IRS investigates Wallace’s Brother

In the summer of 1969, when Dent and local Alabama Republican leaders were searching for Wallace’s political vulnerability, James Martin sent yet another “Personal and Confidential” note to Dent. This time, Martin reported a new development in the state politics:

This morning, through a mutual friend, Governor Albert Brewer informed me that the Internal Revenue Service is hot on the trail of former Governor George Wallace’s brother, Gerald Wallace. During my campaign for Governor [in 1966] we uncovered a vast liquor ring that was feeding thousands of dollars directly into George Wallace's campaign for President. We revealed this to the people of Alabama, but to no prevail. After the race I turned our records over to the Internal Revenue Department. It is the feeling of the Governor that this is of the essence and that the Internal Revenue Department needs to move with all haste in this matter so that it might be brought to light prior to the pending governor's race next year. There seems to be no doubt that George Wallace will run for Governor, and prepare to campaign in Southern states for the presidency in ‘72. As I have stated to you before, I think it is vital that we defeat Wallace, and we need your help in urging the Internal Revenue Department to move immediately and with all power necessary. This is a very confidential matter and no one knows about this except the Governor, his confidant, my secretary, and me.57

According to Dan Carter’s account, Nixon ordered the Justice Department and the

Internal Revenue Service to investigate possible corruption and government graft among

close associates of the Wallace administration. The federal agencies found that Gerald

Wallace profited from government kickbacks, but also that he did not fail to pay taxes for

the income generated from the state racketeering scheme. Lacking clear evidence to

56 Billy B. Hathorn, "A Dozen Years in the Political Wilderness: The Alabama Republican Party, 1966- 1978," Gulf Coast Historical Review 9, no. 2 (1994). 57 James Martin letter to Harry Dent. August 27, 1969. “Alabama Politics, June – December, 1969,” Folder 1, Box 1. White House File Series, 1. Subject File, 1969. Harry S. Dent Papers (Mss. #0158). CULSC.

181 charge Gerald on the account of tax evasion, the federal government had to drop the case.

Soon after, the Justice Department declared the case closed. George Wallace announced

at a press conference that he would seek his presidential candidacy as a Democrat in

January 1972. Although a clear paper trail between the Nixon administration’s

investigation on Gerald Wallace and his brother’s candidacy announcement has not been

established, Dan Carter suggests that there was an informal deal reached between the

governor and the Nixon White House to drop another third-party presidential candidacy

in exchange for dismissing his brother’s charge.58

- Rapprochement Attempt After the 1970 Gubernatorial Race

As soon as Wallace won back the governor’s office, he approached the Nixon administration through an intermediary to open communication. In the early spring of

1971, Dent was contacted by the envoys of George Wallace regarding the governor’s

rapprochement with the Nixon administration.59 Dent reported the fact that he was contacted by the agents, and reported the development to Attorney General Mitchell a couple of days later:

Jim Martin and other key Alabama people believe that Wallace will definitely run and that he will concentrate his campaign in the Southern States with occasional forays outside of the South for the purpose of showing Southerners that he is ‘telling it like it is’ to the rest of the country. Wallace has confided to some people that the economic situation will determine whether he will run and that an overt campaign on the race question will not be used. … My

58 Dan T. Carter, George Wallace, Richard Nixon, and the Transformation of American Politics, 1st ed. (Waco, Texas: Markham Press Fund, 1992), 42-3. 59 The envoys were General Counsel of the Federal Power Commission Gordon Gooch, and Alabama House Speaker Sage Lyons. Lyons was a college classmate of Gooch and a campaign manager for Wallace’s 1970 gubernatorial campaign. Dent Secretary memo to Harry S. Dent. February 3, 1971. “Alabama Politics: February – December 1971,” Folder 26, Box 7. White House File Series, 1. Subject File, 1971. Harry S. Dent Papers (Mss. #0158). CULSC.

182 recommendation is that some effort be made to establish liaison and that we try to determine what we can do to influence the ultimate decision he will make.60

In Dent’s memoire, he recounts that Nixon responded to the governor’s request

for a meeting when the president travelled to Mobile, Alabama to attend a ribbon-cutting

ceremony for the Tennessee-Tombigbee water project in May. The state governor was

also present at the ceremony and made a speech. In Mobile the Wallace aides informed

the White House team them that the governor was interested in accompanying the

president aboard the Air Force One in the return flight to Birmingham. Out of fear that

the newsmen could play up the trip as a “secret deal” trip, the Nixon aides invited

Wallace on-board together with the governors of Florida and Kentucky. When the

president joined the guests in the cabin lounge for a chat in midflight, he reportedly sat in

between Wallace and the Kentucky governor. In Dent’s own words, “There never was

any conversation between Nixon and Wallace about the presidency. All the conversation

was audible to [the other two governors.]” 61 While this particular version of the recollection on the Birmingham flight in his memoire could be Dent’s own posterior defense of the meeting, both Nixon and Wallace managed to meet for a brief moment.

Throughout the rest of 1971, Dent and his assistant, Wallace Henley, appear to have made other attempts to press George Wallace to drop his 1972 third-party candidacy.

In more than one instance, Dent and his assistants contacted Alabama’s local writers to expose Wallace’s scandals and corruptions to the state’s readership in order to tarnish the

60 Harry S. Dent confidential memorandum to the Attorney General. February 5, 1971. “Alabama Politics: February – December 1971,” Folder 26, Box 7. White House File Series, 1. Subject File, 1971. Harry S. Dent Papers (Mss. #0158). CULSC. 61 Dent, The Prodigal South Returns to Power, 165.

183 governor’s political credibility.62 It is impossible to determine from the available archival records of Dent papers if and precisely how these covert operations by Dent and his

Alabama contacts changed Wallace’s mind. Nevertheless, in January of 1972, when

Wallace announced that he was running for the Presidency, he made it clear that this time he would run in the Democratic Party primaries, and not on a third-party ticket.63 In the

end, George Wallace remained a contender in the presidential nomination race in the

Democratic Party until an assassination attempt permanently confined him to a

wheelchair. Even after he was physically incapacitated in 1972, however, Wallace kept

running for both national office and Alabama’s governorship until he retired from politics

in 1986.

- No Republican Effort for Black Voters in Alabama

In contrast to the other two states, there was no national Republican attempt to

reach out to black Alabamans throughout the late 1960s and 1970s. The reason for

Republican inaction toward Alabama’s black political elites was, again, George Wallace.

Nixon and his national political advisors initially explored the possibilities of getting involved in black electoral mobilization in Alabama. However, eventually they decided not to reach out to the black leaders out of fear that such an outreach could aid George

Wallace’s 1970 gubernatorial election instead of curbing it.

In mid February 1970, John Conyers, a Democratic U.S. House Representative from Detroit, Michigan, visited Montgomery for a fundraiser event for the National

62 Ibid., 159-60. A memo also suggests that Henley, together with Alabama National Republican Committeeman Jim Martin, once attempted to have Jack House, a biographer of George Wallace, write a book manuscript to expose Wallace scandals for an undercover payment of $6,000. Dent also had contact with Montgomery Advertiser-Journal newspaperman Harold Martin regarding a plan to publish his work on anti-Wallace reports. Wallace Henley memorandum to Harry Dent. May 10, 1971. “Subject: House book.” “Alabama Politics: February – December 1971,” Folder 26, Box 7. White House File Series, 1. Subject File, 1971. Harry S. Dent Papers (Mss. #0158). CULSC. 63 Carter, George Wallace, Richard Nixon, and the Transformation of American Politics, 42.

184 Democratic Party of Alabama. Later on, in a newspaper interview, Conyers criticized the

press for not adequately reporting on the NDPA movement, and he attributed the delay of

George Wallace’s gubernatorial candidacy announcement to the electoral threat that the

NDPA and its gubernatorial candidate posed to the former governor and the state

Democratic Party. The comment was publicized on at least a couple of African American newspapers, and Nixon and his White House aides took note of the Conyers comments.64

Larry Higby, H. R. Haldeman’s assistant, asked Harry Dent later on February 23, 1970 if

there were political actions that the White House should take to help the NDPA.65

Dent replied to Haldeman immediately the next day. “The formation of a Black lead party in Alabama would be in Wallace’s political interest because it would take them out of the Democrat primary,” Dent wrote. He warned that the black voters’ exodus from the Democratic primary would create a favorable condition for Wallace, because it would take away votes from his opponents in the primary. “Thus, we would favor getting the

Negroes into the Democrat primary because there every vote should be for Brewer and he will need all he can get to defeat Wallace.”66 The Nixon White House decided not to aide

the Alabama black independent party in the 1970 gubernatorial election out of fear that

such moves would enable, rather than hinder, the election of Wallace to the state

executive office.

When the state Republican Party chairman, Richard Bennett, decided to both

add two black representatives to the state executive committee and appoint a black

64 "Conyers Says Press Ignores Balance of Power in Alabama," Philadelphia Tribune, February 21, 1970; "Conyers Hits News Blackout of New Demo Party in Ala," Afro-American, February 28, 1970. 65 Larry Higby memo to Dent. February 23, 1970. “Alabama Politics, January – October 1970,” Folder 11, Box 4. White House File Series, 1. Subject File, 1970. Harry S. Dent Papers (Mss. #0158). CULSC. 66 Dent to Bob Haldeman, February 24, 1970. “Alabama Politics, January – October 1970,” Folder 11, Box 4. White House File Series, 1. Subject File, 1970. Harry S. Dent Papers (Mss. #0158). CULSC.

185 national convention delegate in 1972, his initiatives were met with vehement opposition within the state party. So strong was the opposition that both Dent and Bennett had to convince the local Republicans of the need for black support for Nixon’s reelection in

1972.67 That was the extent of black leadership incorporation in Alabama.

- National Involvement in Local Republican Party Creates Discordance

The interventions of Dent and other political assistants of Nixon White House in

Alabama state politics in the years leading up to 1972 created rifts among Alabama

Republican Party leaders. The Alabama GOP, already organizationally underdeveloped and electorally weak, was further driven into internal discordance after the 1970 gubernatorial race ended. The state Republican leadership split became palpable in the

1972 Republican candidate nomination race for the U.S. Senate to unseat incumbent

Senator John Sparkman. In the primary, three prominent Republicans sought the endorsement of the White House: they were Red Blount, the Postmaster General in the

Nixon administration, Republican National Committeeman Jim Martin, and State

Representative Bert Nettle. Both Blount and Jim Martin reached out to Harry Dent and complained that Dent was giving favorable treatment to the other. In a memorandum

Dent wrote to John Ehrlichman, Dent explained the situation, observing, “Blount’s problem is that he wants 101% for Red and no one else. … I still think he [Blount] should

67 Dent memorandum to . February 1, 1971. “Alabama Politics: February – December 1971,” Folder 26, Box 7. White House File Series, 1. Subject File, 1971. Harry S. Dent Papers (Mss. #0158). CULSC: Richard Bennett letter to Harry Dent. June 6, 1972. “Alabama Politics: January – September 1972,” Folder 6, Box 11. White House File Series, 1. Subject File, 1972. Harry S. Dent Papers (Mss. #0158). CULSC. Also see Dent, The Prodigal South Returns to Power, 177. In his political memoire Dent recollects directly talking to the Alabama GOP committee that the addition of black representatives to the party committee was “the wise thing to do,” and he successfully assuaged the tension.

186 be nominated, but I resent his self-sidedness and hope the President isn’t misinformed.”68

Eventually Blount was nominated by the state Republican Party for the race. Yet because

of his prior complaints to the White House, it appears that Nixon was advised not to

publicly endorse the Blount candidacy.

Dent reported the progress of the campaign to White House Chief of Staff

Haldeman in the fall of 1972: “Red Blount is in an uphill battle, but shows good sign of

closing the gap. … On balance, this race at present is about even, and may be won by a

small margin.” Dent further observed:

The two most significant factors, short of a Wallace endorsement for either candidate, seem to be: 1. The President’s coattails. Definitely Blount’s major advantage. 2. The black candidate. The NDPA is no fly-by-night entity, having been born and having ballot position in Alabama in 1968. Their candidate is a [M]obile man by the name of LeFlore, a long-time civil rights activist. … But a strong vote for LeFlore would be Blount’s advantage. The NDPA got more than 10% in 1970, and that much from Sparkman could help this time.69

However in the November election, despite Nixon’s coattail with statewide popular vote margin of nearly 47 percent over McGovern, Blount lost to Sparkman 30.2% to 56.9%.

These episodes of the Nixon White House’s repeated involvements in

Alabama’s candidate nomination politics for the statewide office and their consequences illuminate many problems in the state’s transition from the one-party authoritarian enclave rule to a consolidated democracy following the enactment of the Voting Rights

Act. For George Wallace, the reign of state governorship and his continued bid for the

White House complemented his political base in the state. By staging a national

68 Harry Dent to John Ehrlichman. November 15, 1971. “Red Blount’s Complaint.” “Alabama Politics: February – December 1971,” Folder 26, Box 7. White House File Series, 1. Subject File, 1971. Harry S. Dent Papers (Mss. #0158). CULSC. 69 Harry S. Dent Memorandum for H.R. Haldeman. September 18, 1972. “Subject: Senate Races in Alabama and Louisiana.” “Alabama Politics: January – September 1972,” Folder 6, Box 11. White House File Series, 1. Subject File, 1972. Harry S. Dent Papers (Mss. #0158). CULSC.

187 campaign with an electoral appeal to curtail the progress of federal civil rights acts, he

solidified the support of the reactionary conservative electorate in Alabama. Furthermore,

to finance the presidential campaigns, he needed to hold onto the state government. The

authoritarian holdover’s continued quests of two public offices – state governorship and

the presidency – complemented each other. Yet as Wallace himself probably knew, it was

not that important whether he actually had a feasible plan for winning the general election

in the presidential race. The extortion effect of continually threatening to run a third-party

presidential bid was one of critical ingredients of influence Wallace could bring on the

Republican president, and for that purpose he needed to hold onto the Alabama executive office. His clientelistic rule in the state government, as evidenced by his brother’s alleged racketeering scheme, was another source of power: the exchange of quid pro quo between the governor and the state’s industrial and corporate representatives, the latter receiving

government contracts in return for donating funds for Wallace’s presidential campaigns,

worked because he kept his ambition for the national executive office, regardless of

whether it was actually within reach.

The Nixon White House’s multiple interventions to eliminate George Wallace

from third party presidential candidacy in 1972 did not lead to the early formation of a

robust local opposition party in Alabama. Wallace’s clientelistic administration of state

government and the internal rift among the state Republican leaders, appear to have

curbed such development. The Republican Party remained out of power from the state

executive office while Wallace remained in the statewide politics. As soon as Wallace

left the state government, Guy Hunt, an early supporter of Ronald Reagan, was elected in

1986 as the first Republican governor since the end of Reconstruction.

188

Conclusion

This chapter investigated the national Republican Party’s political interventions

in the three enclaves. The national party interventions were guided by the national party

leaders’ calculations to secure Nixon’s reelection in 1972 and inadvertently reshaped the

relations between the state party elites and national democracy. First, the national

Republican leaders were highly selective about which major elected officials were

welcomed to defect and join the state Republican Party. Past third-party supporters were avoided because they would have destabilized the national party coalition, even though

their party switch was expected to increase the local Republican vote. Second, the

national Republicans sought black support for the party so long as it helped the election

of local white Republican candidates. If the national party’s appeal to the local black

electorates adversely affected the electability of Republican candidates, such an appeal

was rescinded immediately. There were no active efforts to recruit and train black

candidates who would seek public office on Republican ticket. Lastly, the effort to satisfy

the local conservative Republican leaders in order to maintain their support for the

national administration was a difficult task because the political requests of the local

leaders could not always be fulfilled. When these requests were not satisfied, local

opposition party growth tended to remain curbed well into the 1970s.

George Wallace’s continued attempt to run a third-party campaign for the

national executive office and the Nixon White House’s frequent local political

interventions to stem that enclave holdover’s presidential pursuit, in the end, arrested the

progress of local opposition party formation in Alabama and Georgia. The national

189 Republicans courted the support of the black leadership only when it would aid the election of the local white candidates. As the local Republican Party was taken over by the white conservatives, the black political participation in the party diminished.

Furthermore, the Nixon administration’s proclivity for reaping the authoritarian enclave defenders’ vote enabled these local enclave holdovers to reorganize themselves as

Republican Party defectors, or third-party enclave defenders. Thus, Paul Frymer and John

Skrentny’s theory of electoral capture of the African American voters during the Nixon administration is complete only when it takes into account the third party presidential bid of the enclave defenders, such as George Wallace.

Nixon administration’s southern strategy, in sum, centered less on enticing the local Democratic leaders switch to the Republican Party and assisting the development of robust state Republican Party, than on curtailing the third party movement of Wallace.

The national interventions did not actively promote democratic consolidation of the former enclaves, as the national Republicans prioritized stemming Wallace’s third-party bid over effecting the African American political representation in the state and national government leadership. Thus the development of Republican Party’s organizational growth in the south during this period was contingent on such national-state elite interactions. The national Republican interventions in the three states during this time period illuminates the early phase of nationalized yet stalled effort to build the state

Republican Party.

190 Chapter Five. The Visions and Limits of Jimmy Carter’s Democratic Party in Georgia and Nation, 1972-80

“You doubt if Wallace really seeks or expects to be elected president but wants to be in a position to determine who is the nominee. If he is seeking the presidency, it is a situation where two friends seek the same goal and we can expect to have a good clean contest to decide who could best represent the people of the United States. If he seeks to become a broker then I don’t believe the people of this country want either Carter, Jackson, Humphrey, Kennedy, Wallace or any other candidate to act for them in selecting the nominee.” Charles Kirbo to Jimmy Carter.1

“[N]ot all of the factors which have produced the current level of disharmony originated in the Administration. In fact, many of the tensions have a Congressional ancestry rather than a Presidential one. The growing institutional independence of Congress, the ‘democratization’ of the House and reduced power of committee chairmen, the evaporation of party loyalty, … Many seeds of difficulty were sown long before your campaign for President was announced, let alone the advent of your Administration itself.” Frank Moore.2

As a former authoritarian enclave, Georgia’s democratic consolidation into

national democracy was by far the most thorough when compared to Alabama and South

Carolina, because its governor overcame the Democratic Party’s disinclination to

nominate presidential aspirants of enclave origin. As the previous chapters demonstrate,

in Alabama the authoritarian holdover governor and his supporters reorganized

themselves by continually threatening that they were willing to run third-party campaigns

for the presidency. In South Carolina, the governors and party elites reinstituted

themselves in official posts of the national party committees. In Georgia, the governor

and his political aides reconstructed the national Democratic Party committee and

managed to seize control of the national executive. By 1976, Georgia elected its former

1 Charles Kirbo to Jimmy Carter. December 9, 1974. “Correspondence, Kirbo, Charles [1]” Folder, Governor Carter’s Personal Working Files. Box 3. Carter Family Papers. Jimmy Carter Presidential Library (hereafter JCPL) 2 Administratively confidential memorandum for the President from Frank Moore, Dan Tate and Bill Cable. “Subject: Congressional Relations.” Undated [circa February 1978]. “Congress/President” Folder, Office of the Chief of Staff Files, ’s Confidential Files. Box 34a. Presidential Papers of Jimmy Carter, JCPL.

191 governor, Jimmy Carter, to the presidency. This did not happen overnight or without institutional change. This chapter addresses the unique case of Georgia by examining how its former governor’s control of the national executive office occurred and why the

Carter presidency faltered by 1980.

Unlike the preceding three chapters that compared the party institution changes in the three former enclaves, this chapter examines the Democratic Party mostly at the national level, though not exclusively the Democratic National Committee, upon which

Jimmy Carter attempted to build a new national party coalition before and after he was elected president. Instead of cross-state comparisons, this chapter addresses the following three questions about the governor from Georgia, who, for the first time in over a century, seized the national executive office as a former enclave officeholder and completed the subnational democratic consolidation.

First, how do state party elites of enclave origin overcome the institutional disadvantages placed on their executive ambitions? Between 1972 and 1980, from the time the McGovern Fraser Commission reform guideline compliance process concluded in Georgia and until Carter lost the reelection for the White House to Ronald Reagan,

Carter attempted to build and maintain a new Democratic Party presidential coalition of mayors and governors. This was the Democratic coalition that nominated and elected

Carter in 1976. Second, what are the institutional pitfalls that could impair the enclave successor’s national governance? Once in the White House, the locally based national party coalition found itself bound by severe institutional limitations because President

Carter and his aides in the White House failed to forge working relations with the newly reformed congressional Democrats. Thus, Carter’s Georgia-based outreach to the national

192 Democratic Party did not establish new and stable arrangements of party institutions that were robust enough to rule the nation in the midst of economic and foreign crises. Lastly, what had become of the relations among President Carter, the state party, and the governors in the three states by 1980? As the southern elites established new and distinct ways of influencing national politics through presidential elections, their relations with the national government differed from the time of the enclave defense in the middle of the 1960s. This last section sheds light on the emergent relations.

The literature often attributes the failure of President Carter’s party building to the president’s lack of interest in the party affairs. Rarely have changes in multiple political institutions following the enclaves’ democratization been given sufficient scrutiny in relation to Carter’s presidential party leadership. According to Daniel Galvin,

President Carter was a party predator who exploited existing party organizations for his own reelection efforts and policy initiatives, and eschewed party building. Examples of

Carter’s predatory acts on the party includes the administration’s reliance on the

Democratic National Committee to remind the party’s candidates of the administration’s policy accomplishments, and the presidential effort to maintain relations with the state party leaders without making organizational investments in the state party.3

In Galvin’s view, Carter’s exploitive behaviors were explained by his status as a majority party president: Carter did not find presidential party building as an urgent

problem, because he already had majority party support in electoral votes and government control. Instead, Carter, a former navy engineer, ostensibly placed priorities elsewhere: on attending to the mechanical defects of the government and details of public

3 Daniel Galvin, Presidential Party Building: Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 211-3.

193 policy prescriptions to meet the pressing needs of the day, including rising inflation and

energy shortages.4

Does a majority party president’s complacency in party organization building justify their predatory acts, as Galvin argues? When Carter’s party leadership is examined in light of the southern political elites’ adaptations to the demise of enclave rule and the reform politics from the 1970s starting from his pre-presidential party leadership, he was not just a politician disinterested in party organization building, but a party reformer whose leadership in the state party reform in Georgia opened his path to a national campaign. Understated in Galvin’s account is the fact that Carter’s party-building priorities emphasized forging a coalition of Democratic governors and mayors across the country, rather than buttressing the president’s relations with the congressional

Democratic Party, which had undergone major reform in the years before Carter was inaugurated. The reasoning behind Carter’s seemingly predatory behavior towards his party apparatus appears institutionally more complex than the simple contentment of his role as a majority party president. In contrast to his Democratic predecessor, Carter no longer had the luxury of congressional southern committee chairs as predictable and negotiable counterparts in the federal legislature, the very institution that had been maintained by the continued hold of authoritarian enclave representatives in Congress.

Nelson Polsby offers similar insights to the basic line of argument presented in this chapter. Polsby contends that Democratic Party reforms in the presidential nomination process between 1968 and 1972 prompted Carter, a strategic politician who sought the office of the presidency under the new rules of the game, to build “personal following and [invest] most of his resources” early in the primary season so that he could

4 Ibid., 205.

194 run ahead of the rest of the Democratic candidates.5 Upon his election as a “factional leader” and a Washington outsider, Carter appointed a Cabinet that indicated his

“disbelief in the interest group composition of the Democratic Party.”6 Writing within a

few years after Carter exited from the White House, however, the evidence Polsby

gathered in support of his argument is limited to newspaper interviews and public records

from the days of Carter presidency. Polsby’s account does not include the political circle

of Carter’s White House aides, almost all of who hailed from Georgia, because their

records were not available to him then. While the argument of this chapter does not

necessarily contradict Polsby’s claims, it expands on some of Polsby’s insights by

directly drawing on the political memorandums that Carter and his political aides wrote

and left behind, rather than what they publicly stated to the press.

Subsequently, this chapter offers a view slightly different in angle from those

of Galvin and Polsby. It posits that Carter’s arm’s length attempt at party organization

building once he was elected to the White House originated from his background as a

former governor of a Deep South state, who reformed the Democratic Party in state and

nation. Not just Carter, but other southern party elites’ political adjustment to the

subnational democratization brought about changed relations between the president of

enclave government origin and the party. Without taking these institutional shifts into

account, President Carter’s stalled attempt of reconstructing Democratic Party cannot be

fully explained.

The new national Democratic Party that Carter envisioned was based on a

coalition of mayors and governors that did not always work in tandem with the

5 Nelson W. Polsby, Consequences of Party Reform (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 128-9. 6 Ibid., 104.

195 congressional Democrats. The rift between the president and the post-reform Democratic

majority Congress exacerbated the problem of governance that mired the nation

throughout the latter half of 1970s, eventually offering opportunities for Ronald Reagan’s

rise in the three states and across the South.

While trying to work with the Democratic gubernatorial and mayoral coalition,

Carter relied on the same political consultants who had worked with him from the days of

Georgia gubernatorial campaigns, the office of Georgia governor, his presidential

campaign, and the four years in the White House. The extensive reliance on in-house paid

pollsters and media managers was also prevalent among Carter’s Republican

contemporaries. What distinguishes Carter nonetheless is that almost all of Carter’s major

White House political advisors and consultants had roots and personal connections to

Georgia because he appointed his former aides and consultants from his days in the state

governor’s office. The selection of his Georgia associates to the national office was

necessitated both by Carter’s presidential candidate status as a southern enclave successor

and as an outsider in the nation’s capital. These political personnel decisions severely

constricted the range of available options the White House deemed viable in approaching

the national Democratic Party. By 1980, Carter and his close political aides, such as

Hamilton Jordan, Charles Kirbo, Frank Moore and Gerald Rafshoon, found that the new

national Democratic coalition they tried to forge out of Georgia was limited to a few

neighboring states.7 Even the support of these southern state elites was not strong enough to overcome the media savvy campaign that Ronald Reagan and his supporters conducted in the states.

7 All of the White House aides listed here worked for Carter since the late 1960s. Gary M. Fink, Prelude to the Presidency: The Political Character and Legislative Leadership Style of Governor Jimmy Carter (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980).

196 The rest of the chapter demonstrates three obstacles Carter and his Georgia

team of advisors had to address in overcoming the national Democratic Party’s

preference against southern presidential aspirants: Wallace, the Democratic National

Committee and Carter’s own outsider campaign. First, Cater had to establish himself as

an alternative presidential candidate to the Wallace supporters and win their support in

the Democratic presidential nomination contest. As the previous chapter demonstrated,

George Wallace’s third-party campaign posed a threat to Nixon’s reelection effort for the

1972 election. To a comparable extent, for Carter, the Alabama governor remained a competitor for Democratic presidential nomination through the 1970s. Carter could not disavow the Wallace supporters because the primary voter base of the two overlapped.

Carter, in other words, needed to walk the thin line between the authoritarian past and the new south he aspired to create.

Second, Carter had to work on reforming the Democratic National Committee that by then had overseen two consecutive losses in the presidential elections. Carter and his aides contended that the leadership of the DNC should be reshuffled in order to represent more governors and mayors. The DNC at that time included a larger number of the members of U.S. Congress, who had overwhelmingly supported the past two presidential nominees of the party. Pressing through the Democratic Governors’

Conference, Carter changed the composition of the DNC and was appointed as a DNC campaign chairman for the 1974 election. At the same time, Carter took advantage of

Georgia’s state government public relations program and publicized himself before the national audience.

The third section examines the downside of the 1974 election for the future

197 president. Once in the White House, Carter found himself lacking institutional support in

Congress for his policy initiatives. The Democratic congressional caucus had undergone major institutional reforms demanded by a young generation of liberal legislators, many of whom were elected in 1974. Carter, as President, did not succeed to establish a good working relationship with the reformed Congress. The failure of governance during the

Carter presidency proved fatal for the first term president as he sought reelection in 1980.

Notwithstanding Patrick Caddell’s optimism that the South would again provide a home base in 1980, the Democratic coalition of mayors and governors proved elusive. The chapter concludes with a brief summary of where the relations among the president, governors, and the state party ended up at the end of Carter presidency.

i. Carter’s Southern Problem: Slow and Deliberate Overtaking of Wallace the

“Spoiler” Candidate in the Post-Reform Nomination Contest

George Wallace’s continued presidential aspirations presented problems not only to the Republican President Richard Nixon in 1972, but also to Carter who sought to gain electoral support in the South. Already in the early summer of 1972, Carter’s political assistants were aware of the conflict that could arise between Carter and Wallace.

A week after the failed assassination attempt on George Wallace, Hamilton Jordan,

Carter’s closest political aide, reported the reactions of other southern governors and their staff members to the shooting and its impact on Wallace candidacy as he observed them at a meeting of southern governors’ assistants. Jordan reported: “Generally, it was the consensus that the shooting of Wallace would result in tremendous public and local pressure being exerted on many Southern delegates to support Wallace on the first ballot

198 – and that he will probably improve his delegate situation considerably among

uncommitted delegates from rural areas.” In Jordan’s view, the outpouring sympathy vote had strengthened Wallace’s resolve to continually influence the national party through his pursuit of the presidency. Jordan analyzed that unless Wallace would be given opportunities to bring input into the Democratic Party platform and the nomination process, he would choose to run another third-party campaign. “An attempted assassination and a close escape might have a humbling effect on some persons. However,

… he is very bitter and more determined than ever before to be the “spoiler” in this election year,” wrote Jordan. For nearly four years, the national Republicans had intervened in Alabama statewide politics to preclude Wallace’s third-party bid: Jordan, who presumably had no knowledge of such Republican operations, also perceived that

Wallace’s candidacy that year had “spoiler” effect on other major party candidates that

sought southern votes, regardless of what party label Wallace chose.

Jordan then advised Carter what action he should take in case there was no

clear majority winner in the first round of nomination votes at the convention: “For

McGovern to be denied the nomination,” Jordan continued the memo, “Wallace is going to have to firm up his support in the South and the border states and those uncommitted

Southern delegates who are not disposed to vote for Wallace are going to have to have an alternative on the second and third ballots.” Jordan suggested that if Carter were to offer himself as an alternative southern candidate to Wallace, he might better do so not in the first round but in the second or third: “In view of Wallace’s attempted assassination and the tremendous public sympathy for him,” he concluded, “it might be a mistake for a

199 person to offer as an alternative to Wallace on the first ballot.”8 As the next section makes clear, Carter and his Georgia assistants did not go so far as to put Carter on the presidential nomination vote in 1972 and instead explored whether McGovern would choose him as a running mate to balance the ticket.

A few years later as Carter prepared his presidential campaign for 1976,

Wallace’s prolonged candidacy prompted the Georgia governor to establish himself as a more promising alternative to the authoritarian enclave defender. In contrast to the

Republican White House’s direct interventions in Alabama state politics to curtail

Wallace’s third party presidential candidacy, Carter and his Georgia team sought to

persuade Wallace supporters that Carter, and not Wallace, best represented their interests.

A few days before Carter made a formal announcement of his presidential candidacy in

December 1974, Charles Kirbo, one of Carter’s close political advisors in Georgia, wrote

to Carter about how he could persuade the Wallace supporters to side with him. He wrote,

“Many of the people out over the state, farmers, workers and racist, need to be guided in

a gentle way in how to abandon Wallace,” and Carter must find ways to “slowly and

deliberately take over the Wallace type voter ... It must be done gently and without

ridiculing Wallace.”

There were a number of justifications that Carter could use to persuade the

Wallace voters. Wallace, in Kirbo’s view, needed to be portrayed as “a candidate that’s

run three or four times and has gotten no where” and has been “unsuccessful in

establishing himself as a candidate who can win and govern.” Carter should also

emphasize to his supporters, Kirbo advised, that Wallace nonetheless “deserves credit for

8 Hamilton Jordan to Governor. May 22, 1972. “Correspondence, Jordan, Hamilton [2]” Folder, Governor Carter’s Personal Working Files. Box 3. Carter Family Papers. JCPL.

200 having demonstrated to the politicians and to the congressional leaders that the farmers,

the working people and the small businessman must be treated fairly and will leave either

party if necessary to make this voice heard.” What disconcerted Kirbo even more was the

presidential candidate nomination process in which the Alabama governor still tried to

have influence. Kirbo continued the memo:

It appears at the present time that Wallace will continue to campaign with the hopes of collecting enough delegates to have an influence on who is nominated. … I do not believe that the people of the nation want their presidential nominee selected in that manner. … The interests of the farmers and the working people and the small businessman cannot be protected and their voice cannot be heard through a broker. … You doubt if Wallace really seeks or expects to be elected president but wants to be in a position to determine who is the nominee. If he is seeking the presidency, it is a situation where two friends seek the same goal and we can expect to have a good clean contest to decide who could best represent the people of the United States. If he seeks to become a broker then I don’t believe the people of this country want either Carter, Jackson, Humphrey, Kennedy, Wallace or any other candidate to act for them in selecting the nominee. If a handful of political brokers select the nominee in some back room, you can expect to hear a name that you have heard over and over again.9

He advised Carter that he should persuade the Wallace followers of the pitfalls of

brokered presidential nomination contests, which Wallace appeared to prefer to having no

southern input in the nominee selection. If the presidential candidate were to be chosen

by a brokered nomination contests, Kirbo warned, the chosen candidate would not

represent the interests of the Wallace supporters. Carter should emphasize to the Wallace followers the pitfalls of such brokered convention, Kirbo advised.

Enticing Wallace supporters to side with Carter eventually worked for Carter: he prevailed over Wallace in the post-reform presidential nomination contest of 1976.

Only after Carter secured the needed majority delegate vote for the national convention

9 Charles Kirbo to Jimmy Carter. December 9, 1974. “Correspondence, Kirbo, Charles [1]” Folder, Governor Carter’s Personal Working Files. Box 3. Carter Family Papers. JCPL.

201 did Wallace publicly endorse the presumptive nominee from the neighboring state.10 As

Carter toured Alabama with Governor Wallace by his side that fall, Carter echoed

Wallace’s conservative populist rhetoric: he touched on balanced federal budgets, fiscal moderation, strong defense, bureaucratic efficiency and “an end to this welfare mess” as he addressed the receptive audience. Carter told a crowd at a suburban shopping center near Birmingham, “We Southerners believe in work, not welfare.” Although no explicitly racialized words were used, these topics touched on the resentments of the white conservative voters: Carter amplified the governor’s conservative agenda as Wallace listened and applauded from his wheelchair on the stage.11

Even after Carter was elected to the White House, Wallace’s political career in

Alabama and beyond continued to give concerns to Carter and his political advisors. For

example, when Wallace decided not to run for the U.S. Senate seat in 1978, the final year of Wallace’s second term in the governor’s office, President Carter took a moment to write to him.12 It was a courtesy letter that commended the long-time public service of

Wallace, but this handwritten presidential note nevertheless reveals the extent to which

Carter remained concerned about the Wallace’s presidential candidacy even after he was elected to the White House.

ii. Governor Carter and the National Party

The 1972 contest was the first of Democratic presidential nomination process

10 James T. Wooten, "Old South Bows to New as Wallace Meets Carter," New York Times, June 13, 1976. 11 A New York Times reporter noted that “From the moment he arrived in downtown Birmingham, Mr. carter seemed at home. Governor Wallace’s effusive praise of him during his introduction to the meeting of small businessmen enhanced the feeling.” "Carter, with Wallace at His Side, Hails South's Basic Conservatism," New York Times, September 14, 1976. 12 Jimmy Carter to George Wallace. May 17, 1978. “Wallace, George, 1978.” Chief of Staff Jordan: Press -- President, 1979 through W.H. Staff Coordination/Changes Memo. Box 37. Presidential Papers of Jimmy Carter. JCPL

202 wherein governors and state party bosses were prohibited to impose unit rule over the

delegate votes of their home state. Although party reform substantially reduced the roles

of state party leaders, Carter actively sought to assert his own political ambitions and

choices in the national convention, even though at times such behaviors contradicted his

conservatism. This section examines three instances of political adaptation and party reform which Carter attempted, in order to overcome the national Democratic Party’s decades-long disinclination to nominate a formerly enclave defending office-holder to presidential candidacy, and gain influence on the national stage. First was the 1972

national convention, during which Carter tried to stop the presidential candidate

nomination of George McGovern while at the same time indicated his interest in being

his running mate. Second, in 1973, Carter and his political aides in the Georgia

governor’s office began a publicity campaign for the governor and Georgia’s industrial

development, using the state government budget for the Department of Industry and

Tourism. Carter’s aides were aware that the tourism and industry attraction advertisement

program helped the governor to publicize his name for the national and international

audience in preparation for the upcoming presidential election. Lastly, Carter and other

governors demanded that the DNC leadership be shuffled after the Democratic Party’s

1972 landslide loss to Nixon. Under the new DNC leadership, Carter was appointed to serve as a DNC campaign committee chairman for the 1974 election, which helped him form a coalition of governors and mayors for his later presidential campaign.

- Carter’s Attempts to Stop, and Run with, the McGovern Candidacy

During the 1972 presidential election, Cater and his political aides showed conflicted tactics on how they should approach the national political scene. Carter led a

203 movement to stop the nomination of George McGovern, while at the same time he

indicated interest in being McGovern’s running mate. Carter’s conflicting acts of seeking

to stop McGovern nomination while showing interests in being named as the vice

presidential candidate appears to come from Carter’s own incipient ambition for the

national office. Being inexperienced in the national political scene in 1972, however,

Carter and his political aides succeeded at neither. Nonetheless, they kept a close eye on the nomination and earned first hand experience with the post reform presidential nomination contest.

Less than two months before the national convention, Hamilton Jordan reported the sentiment of other southern governors and their staff members regarding the nomination contest that was unfolding across the nation. Jordan noted that McGovern was getting close to reaching the needed majority by putting together a small number of delegates in many states:

I was surprised and disturbed to find out the number of delegate votes McGovern has in many southern states. Not an extremely large number in any given state but anywhere from four or five to a dozen or so delegate votes in almost every state. And while we in the deep south [sic] are concerned and disturbed about the prospect of McGovern winning the nomination, many of the people I talked to from the border states (Maryland, Tennessee, Kentucky, etc.) had just as soon have McGovern as Humphrey. The only ones who are as concerned about McGovern’s Candidacy are persons from Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, etc.13

While the Deep South states overall were not for McGovern, his lead in non-southern states and the collection of a few delegates from other states made him closer to securing the nomination. Jordan noted that McGovern had mastered the post-reform nomination contest better than any other candidates did and his delegate vote strength came from the

13 Hamilton Jordan to Governor. May 22, 1972. “Correspondence, Jordan, Hamilton [2]” Folder, Governor Carter’s Personal Working Files. Box 3. Carter Family Papers. JCPL.

204 campaign’s sophistication at political organization in the state.

McGovern eventually appeared to have secured the national convention

delegate majority vote and sealed the nomination when he won all of the 271 delegate

votes in California’s winner-take all primary in early June of 1972. However, Carter and

other anti-McGovern factions contested the validity of the California primary law, and

the Democratic credentials committee momentarily ruled in favor of the challengers on

June 29th. It was two days before the credentials committee ruling came out that a

meeting was held between Carter and McGovern during McGovern’s stop in Atlanta, as

the candidate toured across the South.14

In preparation for the Atlanta meeting, Charles Kirbo sent Carter a memorandum listing matters he should discuss and negotiate with McGovern. Kirbo advised Carter to remain steadfast in pressing McGovern to accept some adjustments in the national party platform and to modify McGovern’s position on civil rights reform.

Then Kirbo admonished the governor for not standing firm enough in opposing these civil rights enforcements, and advised that Carter should not accept the vice presidency offer even if McGovern offers it. Kirbo wrote:

The chances of getting anything out of McGovern are so slim I do not believe it worthwhile to risk your political base here and in the South. If you remain moderate and progressive, non-racist but interested in the South and the southern viewpoint, I believe you will be more attractive to the South and also anyone who is otherwise interested in you on a national ticket.15

In reality, the vice presidency offer was not made to Carter either in the Atlanta meeting or at the national convention hall: the McGovern team picked , the

14 James T. Wooten, "Mcgovern Encounters Conservatism and Skepticism in Tour of the South," New York Times, June 29, 1972; James M. Naughton, "Mcgovern, in the South, Lays 'Racist' Tactics to Nixon," ibid., June 28,. 15 Charles Kirbo memorandum to Governor Jimmy Carter. June 27, 1972. “Correspondence, Kirbo, Charles [1]” Folder, Governor Carter’s Personal Working Files. Box 3. Carter Family Papers. JCPL.

205 United States Senator from Missouri, for that position until he withdrew in the following

month.

After the national convention in Miami concluded in the middle of July 1972,

Hamilton Jordan wrote a convention follow-up memo to Carter. Jordan offered his own

take on why Eagleton was chosen as the running mate for McGovern. His analysis provides an insight into how Carter’s Georgia advisor team understood the political dynamics of the national Democratic Party at the time of McGovern nomination. Jordan wrote, “Everyone with whom I talked … confirmed that you arrived in Miami very, very high on McGovern’s list. Also, that McGovern had every hope and intention of putting someone of a moderate-conservative persuasion on the ticket like you.” Nonetheless,

McGovern decided to pick Eagleton because the McGovern team yielded to pressures from American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organization President

George Meany, who preferred a labor candidate for vice president to a conservative southerner for the sake of balancing the ticket. The selection of Eagleton satisfied the pro-labor purists on McGovern’s team who sided with Meany. Jordan observed:

The one thing that happened that drastically changed McGovern’s thinking was George Meaney’s [sic] threat to sit out the election. Meaney’s loyalty to HHH [Hubert Horatio Humphrey] and his efforts on Humphrey’s behalf to win the California question only served to intensify his feelings about McGovern. ... McGovern and his staff became more and more concerned that labor’s support and their potential to raise huge sums of money for a Presidential election. Also, there was a growing feeling among McGovern’s staff that he could appeal to many ethnic rank and file labor people and Wallace voters in the large industrial state of the North by putting an urban Catholic on the ticket.

By accepting the labor-backed candidate, however, Jordan opined that the McGovern team placed the Wallace supporters and the south to the sidelines, despite the advise and warning Carter and Jordan gave. “With the selection of Eagleton I would have to

206 assumed that they have (1) failed to appreciate the tremendous influence Wallace has

across the country and particularly in the South or (2) written off the South for all

practical purposes and tried to appeal to the Wallace vote in the Northern states by

putting a Catholic with a good labor record on the ticket,” wrote Jordan.

Consoling his boss for not getting nominated to the vice presidency, Jordan

assured that “McGovern did not perceive or fully appreciate [Carter’s] strengths and

abilities,” even though Carter “had made [him]self available in a very responsible way if

Senator McGovern had asked.” Then Jordan conceded that “We were probably all

somewhat naïve about the process itself – it developed that 21 people participated in a

round table discussion for four hours as to who should be the running mate.” In reality,

Carter and his Georgia team knew none of those twenty-one people in the room close

enough to press them on to put the Georgia governor on the ticket.

Jordan concluded the memo with the following observation, which summarizes

the Carter team’s own apprehensions about the presidential nominee and the current state

of the national party institutions:

If you think about it, it was almost predictable that McGovern would choose a senator as opposed to a Governor. This has certainly been the tradition as Presidential nominees who come from the Senate would be more inclined to select a person they knew well and had worked with as opposed to a Governor with whom they had probably had very little contact. Think back – Humphrey chose Muskie, Johnson chose Humphrey, Kennedy chose Johnson, Stevenson chose Sparkman and Kefauver – all Senators. The most notable exception in recent history was Nixon’s selection of Agnew. I have some more thoughts which I will try to put down for you on paper regarding your own future.16

In addition to the labor pressure to pick a liberal candidate, Jordan analyzed, McGovern chose Eagleton as the vice presidential candidate because McGovern knew Eagleton from

16 Hamilton Jordan handwritten memorandum to Governor. Undated. “Correspondence, Jordan, Hamilton, [2]” Folder. Box 3. Governor Carter’s Personal Working Files. JCPL.

207 the . Jordan’s observation on this particular point, that if the party’s presidential nominee also served in the United States Senate, the person tended to choose a fellow Senator as the running mate, is noteworthy. This observation appear to have framed the Carter team’s understanding of the current state of the national Democratic

Party and the party’s presidential nomination politics. The Georgia team problematized the congress-centered composition of the national party committee and began to reform it in the following years.

Thus, after the 1972 election ended in landslide loss, Carter’s Georgia team increasingly sought political opportunities in forming a new party coalition of non-federal office holders in order to challenge the pro-McGovern politicians that remained in the national party committee. Before moving on to the DNC reform that followed the 1972 election, however, the next subsection takes a look at Carter’s state administration effort to overcome the lack of national publicity for the future candidate.

- State Publicity Contract and Writing Off Past Campaign Debt

Aside from working through the DNC, Carter also took advantage of his authority over the state government of Georgia in overcoming the disadvantage that presidential aspirants of former southern state government officeholders had in the national Democratic Party. In preparation for Carter’s presidential campaign, Hamilton

Jordan advised Carter to consider granting the Georgia Department of Industry and Trade advertising contract to the media agency of Jerry Rafshoon, another longtime political advisor to Carter and his past gubernatorial campaign consultant. In a memo, undated but written sometime in the early spring of 1973, Jordan suggested to Carter that the

208 department advertising program should be used to advance Carter’s presidential

candidacy plan at the national level and that only Rafshoon’s media agency could best

serve the purpose.

Jordan advised that the advertising budget for the Department of Industry and

Trade, which annually amounted to three-quarter million dollars, can be efficiently spent for his presidential campaign if placed in the right hands. The budget presents “a lot of

potential leverage when the state is placing ads in national magazines and buying time on

national television. The right person when buying $50,000 or $75,000 on the Today

Show can also arrange an invitation for you to appear as a guest, etc. We have not gotten

that kind of help and support from the present agency and are not going to get it unless

the agency handling the state’s business is aware of your plans,” wrote Jordan. Then

Jordan confided to Carter:

Rafshoon has told me several things that I am sure he would never say to you – as he only wants the account based on the merits of his presentation. First, if his agency got the state’s business, he says that he would bring in a top-notch man with executive experience and ability who would devote full time to the account and develop a close working relationship with General [Louis W.] Truman [then Department commissioner and a Lester Maddox appointee] and his people. Secondly, Rafshoon told me that if his agency got the state account, he would devote most of his personal time to your own efforts and use the leverage afforded by the account to get you favorable publicity in the national media. Jerry said he could “volunteer” this time – his time. Finally, I think Jerry is aware of the limitations of his own agency as relates to a national effort, but wants personally to play as large a part as possible and contribute to your effort. I believe that having the state account would provide him with the time and flexibility he would need. And although I have been one who has warned against the danger of our being in-bred and relying too much on trusted Georgia friends, Jerry is a very astute and creative person who certainly has something to contribute to your effort. I know that you would agree. … He told me that his only political interest for the next four years would be Jimmy Carter.17

17 Memorandum from Hamilton Jordan to Jimmy Carter. Undated. “Correspondence, Jordan, Hamilton [2]” Folder. Governor Carter’s Personal Working Files. Carter Family Papers. JCPL.

209 In the first round of department screening, fourteen media agencies competed

for the state contract. Four finalists, including Gerald Rafshoon Advertising, Inc., made it to the final presentation sessions in front of the department board, which were to be held on March 27, 1973.18 However, the four finalists apparently were not given equal

resources and equipments at the presentation session. In the department letter that

announced the time and venue of the presentations that were “determined by a random

drawing,” it stated that the department board assigned Rafshoon and another agency to a

fully equipped conference room, while the same letter assigned the other two companies

to a room on a separate floor in which “a screen is the only equipment available.” The

selection panel requested these agencies to “bring their own additional equipment.”19

The day after the four presentations were held, the three-quarter-million-dollar contract was given to Rafshoon’s media company.20

Besides the favorable presentation room assignment given to Rafshoon’s agency, there is some indication that even in the early round of selection, Rafshoon’s application received an insider help. Less than four weeks before the final presentation,

Rafshoon wrote a letter to , a Georgia banker and Carter appointee for the director of Georgia Department of Transportation.21 “I just wanted to say how much I

appreciate your helping me on the Industry and Trade account,” Rafshoon wrote. “I can

promise you that you will not be embarrassed by our presentation. It will be of the

highest quality. It's shaping up beautifully. Whether or not we make it, I will treasure the

18 Gerald Rafshoon letter to Jere Patterson, March 28, 1973. Folder “[Correspondence], 1/2/73 – 12/18/73.” Gerald M. Rafshoon’s Personal Files, Container 5. Gerald Rafshoon Papers, Jimmy Carter Presidential Library. 19 Ed Spivia letter to Gerald Rafshoon, March 21, 1973. Folder “[Correspondence], 1/2/73 – 12/18/73.” Gerald M. Rafshoon’s Personal Files, Container 5. Gerald Rafshoon Papers, JCPL. 20 Gerald Rafshoon letter to General [Louis] Truman, March 28, 1973. Folder “[Correspondence], 1/2/73 – 12/18/73.” Gerald M. Rafshoon’s Personal Files, Container 5. Gerald Rafshoon Papers, JCPL. 21 Fink, Prelude to the Presidency, 114.

210 help of people like you.”22 When Lance ran for the governorship in the following year with the endorsement of Carter, Rafshoon helped Lance’s publicity campaign.

The Jordan memo, in combination with the Rafshoon’s correspondence with

Bert Lance, reveals that Carter’s Georgia team intended to use the Georgia government agency budget not only to promote the state’s attractiveness as the destination for tourists and outside investors, but also to project Carter’s name in the national scene whenever possible. When, during Carter’s presidential campaign three years later, The Atlanta

Journal Constitution published an article criticizing Rafshoon’s lucrative fee paid under the state contract, the campaign team defended the department decision by publicly stating that Carter never “exerted pressure on the awarding of any state contract.”23 The

Carter campaign explained to the press that because the department board at the time

consisted of twenty members who were appointed by the governor for staggered terms, it

was impossible for Carter to have a decisive say in the selection process. Though Carter’s

direct involvement in the selection of the media agent was deniable, the aforementioned

archival records indicate that the contractor selection was not as competitive as the Carter

campaign claimed it was. To the contrary, it was the very intention of the Carter team to

take advantage of the state advertisement contract for Carter’s future presidential

campaign. Carter’s efforts to overcome the lack of publicity and satisfy his national

executive ambition were executed in part by utilizing state government funds.

Around at the same time as Rafshoon’s media agency bid for the Department of

Industry and Tourism advertisement contract, Carter and Rafshoon reached an agreement

to cancel the campaign debt that Carter had incurred to Rafshoon during the 1970

22 Gerald Rafshoon to Bert. March 3, 1973. “[Correspondence], 1/2/73-12/18/73.” Gerald M. Rafshoon's Personal Files, Box 5. Gerald Rafshoon Papers, JCPL. 23 "Carter Ad Man Won Rich State Contract," The Atlanta Constitution, April 4, 1976.

211 gubernatorial campaign. A handwritten letter by Carter to Rafshoon, dated from July

1973, reads:

I thank you for again helping with my campaign. Your contribution on the 1970 debt will aid us in settling it once & for all. (The Nixon economy has almost ruined us, but at least we’re settling up with cheap dollar.) I hate to be serious, but feel constrained to say that your friendship and support have been continuing bright spots in my political & personal life. Whether winning or losing. Therefore, I expect to call on you often in the future.24

Though the exact amount of debt Carter had owed to Rafshoon from the 1970 campaign could not be identified from the remaining archival record, the financial and political interdependence among Carter, his associates, and Rafshoon’s media company shows how Carter’s campaigns for the governorship and presidency were not only closely tied together, but they also complimented one another.

Rafshoon’s media advertisement in Georgia and nation was the publicity consultant’s bet for reconstructing the relations between the enclave-successor governor and the national party. Rafshoon was later appointed to the position of White House communications director after Carter was elected to the presidency. During an exit interview conducted after he resigned from the post to work for Carter’s 1980 reelection

campaign, Rafshoon reflected on his role as the media consultant in the White House.

When asked about Rafshoon’s role an image-maker in the administration, he told the

interviewer, “All I do is try to define what he is; to sharpen, to clarify, to use an old, old

cliché, tell it like it is.”25 What the above pre-presidency memos from the early 1970s reveal is that Rafshoon actually did more than helping the candidate define his image and message. As early as 1973, Rafshoon actively projected and advertised the Carter

24 From the desk of Jimmy Cater to Gerald Rafshoon. July 9, 1973. “Correspondence, Rafshoon, Gerald” Folder. Box 4. Governor Carter’s Personal Working Files. Carter Family Papers. JCPL. 25 Gerald Rafshoon exit interview by David Alsobrook, September 12, 1979. JCPL. 3.

212 governorship to a receptive audience beyond the territory of Georgia even at his

company’s own financial expense in order to overcome the precedent preclusions against

enclave rulers from gaining the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

- Democratic Party of Governors and Mayors: The Election of DNC Chair Robert

Strauss and Carter’s Appointment to the DNC Campaign Committee Chairmanship

The 1972 presidential election that ended in Nixon’s landslide victory and the

second consecutive loss for the Democratic Party soon prompted Democratic Party

leaders to demand change in the party at the national level. In early December 1972, the

Democratic governors met in St. Louis for the governor’s conference. There they voted

on a resolution to request the resignation of Jean Westwood, the DNC chairwoman

appointed by McGovern in the summer and a proponent of the McGovern Fraser party

reform.26 A majority of the Democratic governors adopted the resolution to endorse

Robert Strauss, a Texas lawyer and former DNC treasurer, to replace the chairwoman.

Of the thirty-two governors and governors-elect who were eligible to vote at the

conference, eighteen, mostly from the states in the South and the Southwest, supported

the resolution, while there were eight opposition votes and six abstentions. All three

governors of the former enclaves studied in the previous chapters, Jimmy Carter of

Georgia, John West of South Carolina, and George Wallace of Alabama who supported

the resolution in a proxy vote, endorsed Strauss.27 Jimmy Carter was among a group of

pro-reform governors who demanded Westwood’s resignation.

26 George Jr. Lardner, "Strauss Victory Capped Month of Effort," The Washington Post, December 11, 1972; Christopher Lydon, "Governors Back Westwood Rival," New York Times, December 4, 1972. 27 George Jr. Lardner, "Strauss Endorsed as Leader: Governors Call for Westwood Resignation," The Washington Post, December 4, 1972; Christopher Lydon, "Governors Weigh Party Post Fight," New York Times, December 3, 1972; "Governors Back Westwood Rival."

213 Robert Strauss, upon getting elected to the DNC chairmanship, accommodated

various factions within the DNC in order to unify the party. He even reserved one of the

twenty-five at-large positions on the DNC for George Wallace and a seat in the

twenty-five member DNC Executive Committee for a Wallace aide.28

In addition to pressing other governors to support Strauss, Hamilton Jordan advised Carter to help Morris Dees, a liberal Alabama Democrat and a fundraiser for

McGovern in the 1972 campaign, get appointed to the DNC treasurer position. Jordan wrote that while Carter should “not do anything over so as to not risk unnecessarily irritating Wallace,” he should press on the DNC chairman to consider Morris’s appointment. 29 Though Jordan’s move to help Dees’ appointment to the treasurer position at the DNC did not materialize in late 1972, Carter’s early move to work behind the scenes on behalf of Dees in the DNC appears to have helped establish his own ties with the Alabama social justice activist. In the 1976 presidential race, Dees was instrumental in raising pre-nomination campaign funds for Carter.30

In the spring of 1973, Strauss appointed Carter to the chair of the DNC’s

Campaign Committee.31 The appointment to the election campaign leadership position

elevated the Georgia governor to the national scene, as the job required him to travel

across the country and meet with local party leaders. More importantly, the DNC

Campaign Committee, which was an entity separate from congressional Democratic

Party’s campaign committees in the United States House and Senate, enabled Carter to

28 Philip A. Klinkner, The Losing Parties: Out-Party National Committees, 1956-1993 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 114. 29 Hamilton Jordan handwritten memorandum to Governor. Undated. “Correspondence, Jordan, Hamilton, [2]” Folder. Box 3. Governor Carter’s Personal Working Files. JCPL. 30 Christopher Lydon, "Fund-Raising Image of Strauss Strained by Party's Shortages," New York Times, September 15, 1976. 31 Seth S. King, "Governors Want New Prosecutor," ibid., May 1 1973; Jules Witcover, Marathon: The Pursuit of the Presidency, 1972-1976 (New York: Viking Press, 1977), 117.

214 cultivate a national network of Democratic candidates, organized interest representatives,

and supporters, without working through the federal legislature. This campaign network of state and local Democratic Party leaders, particularly mayors and governors, was the support base that Carter and his political aides in Georgia actively cultivated and that they

expected to count on as supporters for Carter’s presidential nomination. It was also

Carter’s reliance on this base of the Democratic Party that eventually invited the demise

of the Carter presidency later, because the base could not mend the rift between the future

President and the Congress when it came to federal enactments of public policies.

The Carter team’s idea to forge Democratic Party support based on mayors and

governors rather than congressmen and Senators was a departure from the previous

presidential party coalitions of McGovern, Humphrey, and Johnson. The Carter team

expected that formation of a new coalition would enhance the prospect of a Democratic

presidential victory, a feat that had eluded the party in the past two elections. Hamilton

Jordan for one more time articulated this point when he wrote a memo to Carter just

before Carter met with DNC chairman Robert Strauss to discuss the campaign committee

chair appointment in April 1973. Jordan again echoed his past observations on the reason

behind McGovern’s vice presidential choice of Eagleton from the candidate pool of

fellow Senators.

In the briefing memo, Jordan framed the problems in the current DNC

campaign committees as the division between the congressional candidates and the rest of

Democratic office seekers: while the congressional campaign committees have tended to

help the incumbent Democratic legislators, there was little coordinated national

assistance for the non-congressional candidates of the Democratic Party. In Jordan’s view,

215 this was because “Senators and Congressmen have a vested interest in doing this in order to keep their respective House of Congress in the majority and in power.” However,

outside of the congressional campaign committees, the party’s campaign coordination

was quite limited. He pointed out “Mayors and governors and other state officials have

been almost independent of one another, concerning themselves only with their own race

or races in their own state which are of interest to them.” The DNC’s concentration on

the congressional campaigns in turn has given favorable attentions on the members of the

U.S. Congress, particularly the Senators, in the party. “For too long a time, both national

Parties have been preoccupied with United States Senators. Consequently, many of the

prominent figures in the Democratic Party from the U.S. Senate have run previously for

the Presidency and lost,” Jordan pointed out.

Therefore, in discussing the ideas for the new campaign committee position

with Strauss, Jordan advised that Carter should suggest the following points:

It is important that the Democratic Party show new life and new faces and fully utilize its resources in the 1974 campaign. This means involving governors and mayors who are not up for reelection or who cannot seek reelection in an attempt to foster a greater sense of responsibility among governors, mayors and state officials for the election of other Democratic officials in other states and for the national party.

Jordan then added a potential difficulty for such a campaign committee involving the

governors and mayors:

The greatest liability to this scheme is that the established House and Senate Democratic campaign committees might fear that a viable campaign ’74 organization would encroach on their authority and possibly divert some monies that they are capable of raising. I think your approach with Strauss should be a positive one, saying that the efforts of governors and mayors should be to compliment their fund raising efforts, etc.

Jordan was fully aware of the potential competition arising between the Democratic

216 Campaign Committees in Congress and Carter’s new position as the campaign chair. He

nonetheless saw a political opportunity for Carter’s presidential candidacy in the latter.

Jordan suggested that Carter could suggest some ideas on possible party activities

involving Georgia Democrats. The ideas included sending Senator Herman Talmadge to

a “district of a liberal congressman living in an industrial area of explaining to the

factory workers why it is important that this Democrat be elected,” or Andy Young “to

the district of a conservative incumbent Democrat and working to secure black support.”

He also suggested that as the campaign chairman, Carter could make “available the full

resources of the Party to educate potential candidates on polling techniques, mass mailing,

fund raising, etc.”32 At the meeting with Strauss, Carter agreed to serve as the national campaign committee chairman for the 1974 campaign and then assigned Jordan to join the DNC headquarters and serve as Carter’s liaison. Jordan conveyed Carter his excitement to serve in the party position in DC and the importance of staying in close communication with the national party committee for Carter’s presidential aspiration. “It is critical that your presence at the DNC be left through me,” Jordan wrote in an overly assured tone.33

In the year and a half preceding the 1974 general election, the DNC campaign

committee held regional seminars for local candidates and field staff training in Chicago,

Atlanta, San Francisco, and Boston. The primary function of the DNC campaign

committee, according to Jordan, was to serve as the “focal point and clearinghouse for

campaign services,” and to inform non-incumbent Democratic candidates of the

32 Memorandum from Hamilton Jordan to Governor. April 24, 1973. “Correspondence, Jordan, Hamilton [2]” Folder. Box 3. Governor Carter’s Personal Working Files. Carter Family Papers. JCPL. 33 Confidential memorandum handwritten by Hamilton Jordan to Governor. Wednesday, undated. “Correspondence, Jordan, Hamilton [2]” Folder. Box 3. Governor Carter’s Personal Working Files. Carter Family Papers. JCPL.

217 campaign related services available from the DNC and Washington based organized

groups. The intended audiences of the seminars were primarily challengers because incumbent congressional candidates could seek financial and technical aids from the existing House and Senate campaign committees. Nevertheless, the Chicago session was attended also by the Congressional Campaign Committees and Democratic Study Group

representatives. Various organized interests, including labor unions and professional

associations, were also in attendance at the regional seminars. In addition to the four

regional seminars, Carter appointed a separate committee composed of local Democratic

officeholders and party leaders that would liaise among the key campaigns and the DNC

committee headquarters in DC. The local Democrats chosen for this committee included

Boston Mayor Kevin H. White for New England and school board president

Arnold Pinckney for the Midwest.34

The general election in the fall of 1974 took place in the wake of the Watergate scandal and the resignation of President Nixon. The election produced a historic groundswell of Democratic majority control in state executive offices and legislatures, and also in the United States Congress. This allowed non-federal office holders, especially mayors, governors, and non-incumbent congressional candidates to claim electoral victory and assert their own political credibility in the 1974 elections. The new trend of challenges from the Washington outsiders was palpable at the National

Democratic Conference held in Kansas City, Missouri in December right after the election. Adopted at the Conference was a Party Charter, the first of its kind for the

Democratic Party.35

34 David S. Broder, "Democrats Shift to '74 Drive," The Washington Post, January 28, 1974. 35 Christopher Lydon, "Democrats Hail Charter and Adjourn in Harmony," New York Times, December 9,

218 Carter eventually made public announcement of his intention to run for

president in the middle of December 1974, a week after the Kansas City conference.36

The 1976 Democratic National Convention, which ratified Jimmy Carter’s nomination,

was the final stage of the Georgia team’s efforts to consolidate a newly forged

Democratic Party coalition of mayors and governors. The Convention was a calm and

unified event, compared with the two previous quadrennial national conventions: Carter

had secured the convention votes needed for first ballot nomination a month before the

start of the convention in . Throughout the primary and delegate selection

caucus season, Carter told the press his belief that the national convention should not be

an occasion to make closed-door negotiations among party bosses, as Hubert Humphrey

reportedly sought such last minute nomination deals at the convention.37 Although other

candidates, such as Senators Henry “Scoop” Jackson and , were open for

brokering the choice of the candidate at the national convention among a few party

regulars, Carter insisted that the popular vote in the primaries and caucuses should dictate

the choice and the national convention merely ratify it.38

To render the open and popular choice of presidential candidate selection through primaries and caucus meetings predictable, however, it proved instrumental that

Carter and his Georgia team had formed a coalition of governors and mayors supporting the national candidate. That Carter had served as the 1974 DNC campaign committee chairman paid dividends in the form of local party elite endorsement for Carter, allowing

1974; Christopher Lyndon, "The Nation, in Summary: Democrats Go Back to the Old Ways, All of Them," ibid., December 15. 36 David S. Broder, "Georgia Governor Declares '76 Bid," The Washington Post, December 13, 1974; Wayne King, "Georgia's Gov. Carter Enters Democratic Race for President," New York Times, December 13, 1974. 37 David S. Broder, "Carter Warns Party on Deal: Carter Sees 'Suicide' in Bossed Convention," The Washington Post, April 28, 1976. 38 "The Real Drama in New York," The Washington Post, July 11, 1976.

219 him to lead in the nomination contests over other candidates. Ultimately, the endorsements of Democratic elected officials, many of them governors and mayors, sealed the early majority vote count of Carter delegates in 1976.39

iii. Congressional Committee Reform and the Democratic President, Unhinged

The 1974 congressional election produced the largest margin of Democratic majority in the federal legislature, particularly in the United States House of

Representatives. Elected primarily from the northeastern states, the liberal freshman class of “Watergate babies” demanded major reforms to the ways the Democratic Caucus and

the legislative process were run.

First on their list of caucus reforms was the congressional standing committee

system dominated by the southern chairmen, many of whom had defended the

authoritarian enclaves.40 The 1975 caucus and committee system reform strengthened

party leadership control over rank and file members and created within the committees

subcommittees bestowed with authority less dependent on committee chairmen. Though

the reform did not displace the seniority system for committee chairmanship appointment

and some southern committee chairmen remained in their positions even after reform,

their control over the legislative process was significantly reduced.41 The demise of the

southern committee chairmen and the rise of more vocal northeastern liberal Democrats

39 Edward Walsh, "Carter Endorsements Pour In," ibid., June 11, ; David S. Broder, "His Delegates Put at 1,514, Indicating a First-Ballot Win," ibid., June 10, ; "Carter: Tension in the Caucuses," The Washington Post, April 25, 1976; "Carter Is Confident," The Washington Post, April 21, 1976. 40 Nelson W. Polsby, How Congress Evolves: Social Bases of Institutional Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); On other rules changes brought by the 1975 reform, see Barbara Sinclair, Unorthodox Lawmaking: New Legislative Processes in the U.S. Congress, 4th ed. (Washington, D.C.: CQ Press, 2012). 41 David W. Rohde, Parties and Leaders in the Postreform House (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 28-31.

220 in the House party leadership meant that President Carter, elected two years later, did not

have the same stable institutional support in Congress that his Democratic predecessors enjoyed.

Carter’s own presidential Democratic nomination as a Washington outsider and his subsequent election to the national executive office in 1976 owed more to

endorsements from the new coalition of Democratic mayors and governors, and less to

the incumbent members of Congress. As Nelson Polsby’s research indicates, at the 1976

Democratic national convention, only eighteen percent of the Democratic U.S. Senators

and fifteen percent of the Democratic Representatives in the U.S. House participated as

voting delegates or alternates. This was a clear contrast to the forty-seven percent of

Democratic governors who participated in the national convention, suggesting that the

national convention was attended by almost half of the Democratic governors, many of whom endorsed Carter.42

The formation of Carter’s new Democratic Party coalition and the subsequent fall of southern committee chairmen meant, however, that Carter’s national governance

would face difficulties unknown to his Democratic predecessors, even with the

two-to-one Democratic majority control in Congress under a Democratic presidency.

Carter’s White House political aides gradually came to understand this institutional

estrangement between the national executive and the legislature.

When Congress failed to pass the Carter administration’s Consumer Agency

bill in February 1978, the congressional Democratic Party leaders requested a meeting

between the legislative liaisons in the White House and John Brademas, the House

Majority Whip. Carter asked his congressional liaisons to prepare a memo with regard to

42 See Table 3.5 in Polsby, Consequences of Party Reform, 114.

221 the congressional leaders’ demands made at the Brademas meeting. Frank Moore was the congressional liaison in the White House, and he had served as the former executive secretary to Carter in the Georgia governor’s office.43 Moore noted in the memo that the congressional discontent with the White House had been long in the making. In the memo, he reported:

[F]rustrations which produced the vehemence at that meeting have been simmering for quite some time; it is equally true that no single meeting will vent all those frustrations, and no simple way can be found to overcome them. We must remember, as well that not all of the factors which have produced the current level of disharmony originated in the Administration. In fact, many of the tensions have a Congressional ancestry rather than a Presidential one. The growing institutional independence of Congress, the ‘democratization’ of the House and reduced power of committee chairmen, the evaporation of party loyalty, and the growing political independence of individual Members have all contributed to the current situation. Many seeds of difficulty were sown long before your campaign for President was announced, let alone the advent of your Administration itself.

Finding the sources of congressional discontent outside of the presidency, Moore laid out the three categories of problems and their solutions as Brademas identified them at the meeting:

1. Logistical Failures. This category includes the obvious but persistent irritants such as unreturned phone calls, lack of notification on grants, and appointments. etc., lack of notification of visits to Members’ districts by high-level Administration officials, and so forth. 2. Political Failures. Many Members believe that this Administration has failed to use discretionary powers of the Executive Branch to benefit our Democratic allies in Congress. Again, grants and appointments are the items most frequently mentioned. 3. Esprit. Too many, perhaps a majority of Democrats, in Congress do not feel they share common goals with you or the Administration generally. They lack a feeling of camaraderie and common purpose. Some apparently have gone so far as to suggest that we are aloof and arrogant, but most just do not feel as close to us, and you personally, as they would like.

What Moore appears to have been unaware of was that the congressional discontent on

43 Fink, Prelude to the Presidency, 187.

222 the White House originated not only from sources outside of the White House, but also

from Carter’s own reform of the DNC that created a party base composed of his own

party coalition of governors and mayors independent of the congressional leadership.

Carter’s DNC reform spawned his presidential nomination, but it did not prepare him to

establish stable party institutions between the enclave-successor president and the

congressional party leaders. To solve these problems, Moore asked Carter that at least

eight more congressional liaison staff members be added in the White House. Carter

agreed to this proposal.44

Yet the warning from Brademas mended little of the overall relations between the president and the congressional Democrats during the remainder of Carter presidency.

The president and the reformed Democratic Caucus in Congress did not find ways to work together. When President Carter tried to draft the “crisis of confidence” speech at

Camp David in early July 1979, the first group of elected public officials that Carter invited to consult and discuss the energy and economic policies was the governors, not the congressional leaders. The President only later on brought the congressmen into the discussion in preparation for the speech.45

iv. Reconfigured National-State Party Relations in the Three States by 1980

By the time of Carter’s 1980 reelection campaign, the party coalition of mayors

44 Administratively confidential memorandum for the President from Frank Moore, Dan Tate and Bill Cable. “Subject: Congressional Relations.” Undated [circa February 1978]. “Congress/President” Folder, Office of the Chief of Staff Files, Hamilton Jordan’s Confidential Files. Box 34a. Presidential Papers of Jimmy Carter, JCPL 45 Jimmy Carter Presidential Daily Diary. July 5 and 6, 1979. JCPL. http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov/documents/diary/index.phtml Last access on December 23, 2015. Regarding the speech preparation, see the Alsobrook interview with Rafshoon. p.8. Gerald Rafshoon exit interview by David Alsobrook, September 12, 1979. JCPL. For Charles Kirbo’s recollection on the Camp David meetings, see the University of Virginia Miller Center oral history interview, January 5, 1983. p. 27. http://web1.millercenter.org/poh/transcripts/ohp_1983_0105_kirbo.pdf Last access on September 23, 2015.

223 and governors had slowly unraveled despite Carter’s efforts to keep them intact. This

subsection briefly examines where the three states’ governors and other state Democratic

Party elites stood in relation to Carter’s reelection campaign coalition in 1980. The

candidate endorsements for Carter in the 1980 presidential reelection campaign by the

Democratic governors and other major state party figures in Alabama, Georgia, and

South Carolina showed how far the three former enclaves had come since the middle of

the 1960s and the extent to which the former enclaves were incorporated into the national

democracy. The governors’ Carter endorsements indicate the various degrees to which

they placed themselves in Carter’s national Democratic coalition. As the statewide party

regular organizations disbanded in the early 1970s, campaigns for successful Democratic

gubernatorial nominations were supplanted by other political resources and skills, such as

hired political consultants and media advertisements in addition to the authority of the

party boss. Governors who were elected with extensive reliance on the hired consultants

and media advertisements tended to be independent of the regular party organizations,

and that independence freed them from being part of the president’s party coalition.

- Georgia

In Carter’s home state of Georgia, major political dissent against its former governor and the incumbent president came from Julian Bond and National Democratic

Committeewoman Marge Thurman. Bond tried to persuade the Georgia black leadership not to take part in the Democratic conference meeting in 1974, and he supported Morris

Udall over Carter in the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination.46 Marge Thurman,

46 Charles Kirbo to Jimmy Carter. December 9, 1974. ““Correspondence, Kirbo, Charles [1]” Folder, Governor Carter’s Personal Working Files. Box 3. Carter Family Papers. JCPL. Bond, who was once

224 once Georgia’s Democratic Party chairwoman and National Democratic

Committeewoman, did not actively support Carter and remained neutral during the 1980

race in an attempt to support Ted Kennedy. Carter reportedly ordered Governor George

Busbee to eliminate Thurman from the list of Georgia’s national convention delegates in

1980.47

While such dissenters remained in the Democratic Party, the national

Republican aid to the Georgia Republican Party leadership in the 1970s was limited, as the previous chapter demonstrated. The state Democratic Party, upon electing its former governor to the presidency, held onto power until 2002, when the state elected the first

Republican governor since Reconstruction. Georgia remains the most competitive two-party state to this day.

- South Carolina

Richard Riley, who won the governorship from his Republican predecessor in

1978, headed Carter’s 1976 presidential campaign in South Carolina. Like Carter, Riley

was a pro-reform state legislator in the early 1970s who took over power in the state

government after the fall of the Barnwell Ring.48 The Barnwell Ring’s monopoly in

Democratic gubernatorial nomination politics began shifting to an end when Sol Blatt resigned from the State House speakership in 1972.

Riley endorsed Carter in the 1980 campaign over Ted Kennedy. A Carter aide

drafted for an independent candidacy for president in 1976 by National Black Political Assembly, eventually worked for Udall campaign in Georgia. Thomas A. Johnson, "Blacks Urge Julian Bond as President," New York Times, January 22, 1976; David Morrison, "Carter Success Felt in Georgia Politics," The Atlanta Constitution, March 26, 1976. 47 “Why Marge is Out.” Atlanta Constitution. April 3, 1980. 48 oral interview with Jack Bass. December 3, 1974. Interview Number A-0163, Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) at the Southern Historical Collection, the Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

225 described Riley’s endorsement to the Carter campaign as the following: “The first thing

the Governor can do is place his ‘stamp of approval’ on the President. The main

importance of an endorsement is psychological,” the Administration official explained.

“It makes the candidate acceptable. The Governor is like an oak tree, and people like to stand under trees in a storm. He protects them.”49 However, South Carolina elected

Reagan in 1980 and has elected Republican candidates in every presidential election since then.50

- Alabama

Alabama’s 1978 gubernatorial election was the first time in two decades that

neither George Wallace nor his surrogates were on the ballot.51 The gubernatorial race that eventually elected , an owner of a dumbbell manufacturing company and a former state Republican fundraiser for Nixon, was a momentary departure from the previous sixteen years of state administration. In the previous decade and a half, George

Wallace reigned for three terms as a governor and one term a caretaker governor of his wife, and continually attempted to run third-party presidential campaigns from the office of the governor.52 The election of James enabled a four-year interval before Wallace

49 Steven V. Roberts, "Carter Taps Cache in Endorsement Season," The New York Times, November 13, 1979. 50 "Riley Wins in S. Carolina," New York Times, June 28, 1978. 51 Cornelia Wallace, the divorced second wife of George Wallace and niece of former governor James E. Folsom, had launched her own campaign for the governorship with anti-corruption appeals in 1978. But the bid floundered as her former husband did not endorse her and the campaign fund ran out. In the primary election she received 217 votes and ended in the last place. Howell Raines, "Cornelia Wallace's Bid for Governor Is Off to Rough Start--but with a Vengeance," ibid., August 7. 52 Of the total of thirteen candidates in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, there were three major contenders besides James: former governor Albert Brewer, Attorney General , and Lieutenant Governor Jere Beaseley. Rudy Abramson, "Wallace Being Ignored in Gubernatorial Campaign," Los Angeles Times, August 28, 1978.

226 came back to power for his fourth and final term in 1983.53

The critical difference that James’s 1978 campaign demonstrated vis-à-vis other candidates in the primaries and the general election was that the James campaign hired Deloss Walker, a Memphis based media consultant of Walker and Associates. The company’s profit came mostly from corporate advertising and public relations, though

Walker himself spent more than half of his time in advising election campaigns. Before the 1978 James campaign, Walker advised and successfully elected Democratic candidates of “moderate to left-of-moderate leanings” in the southern states. Walker earned credit in the successful campaigns of Democratic senatorial and gubernatorial challengers who defeated prominent office holders: those challenged and defeated by

Walker’s clients included prominent Washington political figures such as U.S. Senators

James Fulbright of Arkansas and William Brock of Tennessee. Walker explained in a magazine interview that his lopsidedly high success rate was because he carefully screened clients before committing to their campaigns. The screening process usually took multiple rounds of interviews, visits to the candidates’ home to spend time with them and their families, and to observe their interactions with the local voters. Because of the careful advance screening of the candidate applicants, Walker helped nearly all of the clients get elected and the high success rate augmented his professional reputation among holders and seekers of public office.54

Fob James was no exception to Walker’s strict advance screening rule. It took

53 Six months after James was inaugurated, he hired George Wallace to an unspecified position of consultant to the Governor on an $18,000 payroll. R. A. Y. Jenkins, "The New Governor of Alabama," New York Times, January 16, 1979. Fob James was also reelected to the governorship later in the middle of 1990s, this time as a Republican. 54 “Politics: Electing the Candidate Almost Every Time.” The South Magazine. May/June 1977. Walker & Associates – Deloss Walker Folder. Media, Promotion and Advertising, Box 3. Fob James Papers, Special Collections and Archives, Auburn University Libraries (hereafter AUL.)

227 Walker at least two months, presumably more, to commit himself to the James campaign

in Alabama.55 Once on the campaign, Walker projected James as a spokesman for the

New South with the campaign slogan, “It’s time for a new beginning in Alabama.” The slogan and campaign never directly criticized Wallace.56 Taking full advantage of

political advertisements and appearances on the statewide radio network and the

television, Walker effectively introduced Fob James to the Alabama electorate.

James’ opponent in the Democratic run-off primary was Bill Baxley, the state

Attorney General. Baxley had prosecuted the Klansmen responsible for the 1963

Birmingham Church bombings that killed four black children. He subsequently won the endorsement of the Alabama Democratic Conference (ADC), the moderate black political group that challenged the Wallace delegates at the 1972 national Democratic Party convention.57 After a period of making no public commitment to any of the candidates,

which resulted in much press speculation, Wallace publicly endorsed the Baxley

campaign during the run-off primary campaign.58

According to newspaper reports, the major candidates cautiously avoided

directly criticizing the current administration for fear of alienating supporters of the

popular governor.59 Yet Fob James’s modernized media campaign offset the effects that the ADC and Wallace endorsements for Baxley had on the primary voters. Alabama’s

Black Belt counties on the western side of the state overwhelmingly supported Baxley in the Democratic run-off primary, while James made significant strides in counties to the

55 Fob James letter to Deloss Walker, March 04, 1977. Fob James letter to Deloss Walker, May 10, 1977. Walker & Associates – Deloss Walker Folder. Media, Promotion and Advertising, Box 3. Fob James Papers, Special Collections and Archives, AUL. 56 Bill Peterson, "Alabama's Born-Again Democrats," The Washington Post, September 25, 1978. 57 "Support of Black Voters Key to Alabama Campaigns," The Washington Post, August 21, 1978. 58 J. M. McFadden, "James, Baxley in Ala. Governor Runoff to Succeed Wallace," ibid., September 7. 59 Abramson, "Wallace Being Ignored in Gubernatorial Campaign."

228 east of Montgomery, Bullock, Macon, Russell, and Barbour counties even though these

counties had a majority African American population.

Because Fob James was elected largely independent of Alabama’s state

Democratic Party apparatus, he owed little of his electoral success to the national

Democratic Party, particularly to the incumbent president and the DNC. During the 1980

presidential election, Governor James did not actively campaign on Carter’s behalf, while

his wife volunteered for the Moral Majority and the Reagan campaign.60

The ADC, on the other hand, endorsed Carter over Ted Kennedy in January

1980. Joe Reed, the Chairman of the ADC stated, “The blacks decided to stay on the

‘train from Plains,’ rather than jump on the ‘plane to Boston.’”61 With the decline of

National Democratic Party of Alabama, the insurgent black political organization, the

mainstream black Democratic group’s incorporation into the national Democratic Party

was complete, while the new state governor was estranged from Carter’s presidential

party coalition.

v. Conclusion

“By and large American people do not like Jimmy Carter. ... Ironically the

President in past years has received lower job ratings than he has now. However, he has

never, never had favorable/unfavorable personal rating as low and as negative as he

receives today.” Patrick Caddell, public opinion pollster and political consultant for

Carter’s presidential reelection campaign, sternly warned the gravity of public

60 Ernest B. Furgurson, "Alabama: Neck and Neck," The Sun, October 12, 1980; "A Survey of the Races, State by State," The Washington Post, October 5, 1980. 61 News release. “Statements made by Joe L. Reed, Chairman of the Alabama Democratic Conference.” January 21, 1980. Alabama folder. Chief of Staff Jordan: 1980 Campaign File, Alabama through Daily Reports, [10/22/80-10/30/80] Series, Box 77. Presidential Papers of Jimmy Carter, JCPL.

229 disenchantment with the president in his 1980 general election campaign strategy memo.

For an administration already struggling with inflation, a high unemployment rate, an

energy shortage and a prolonged hostage crisis in Teheran, Carter’s reelection prospects

were dim. Coupled with the economy and a foreign crisis spinning out of control, Caddell

analyzed that the estrangement of “Catholics, Jews, liberals, the young, et al” in the

northeastern states from the Carter camp to Republican and Independent opponents posed

serious difficulties for a national Democratic victory in November. With these dire

circumstances, how could Carter possibly win? “The answer is by no means hopeless,”

Caddell assured as he proposed his strategies. Number one on the strategy list was the

South: “The South must be secured. We need a base and the home region must be it.”62

How that could actually be done, Caddell never elaborates. The Carter

campaign did target the South, as well as New York and Pennsylvania, as top priority

states in the fall of 1980. In the less than three-month period between August 14, when

Carter was nominated at the 1980 Democratic National Convention, and November 4, the

day of general election, Carter took a total of twenty six campaign trips across the nation.

Of those campaign trips, Carter visited New York seven times, Pennsylvania and Ohio

five times each, and the southern states seven times. In the end, however, Carter secured

only his home state of Georgia and lost all other states in the South with narrow popular

vote margins. With all of south but Georgia lost to Ronald Reagan, the path to reclaim the

White House was closed to Carter.

Jimmy Carter and his Georgia political aides envisioned a new party coalition

of Democratic mayors and governors gaining voice in the national party committee in the

62 Patrick Caddell, Cambridge Survey Research 1980 Campaign Strategy Memo. Campaign Strategy - Caddell, Patrick, General Election folder. Chief of Staff Jordan: 1980 Campaign File, Alabama through Daily Reports, [10/22/80-10/30/80] Series, Box 77. Presidential Papers of Jimmy Carter, JCPL.

230 middle of the 1970s. What prompted the demand for reform within the DNC were the state level compliance processes of the McGovern Fraser Commission reform guidelines and the second consecutive presidential election loss in 1972. The governors responded differently to the nationally mandated reform on the state party structure and national delegate selection process. Governor Carter, who led the state party reform implementation process on his own terms, further set his future political career in the national Democratic Party. Carter was actively involved in the 1972 nomination contest, even though his bids to stop McGovern while also seeking nomination as McGovern’s running mate bore little success.

After the 1972 general election ended in Nixon’s landslide victory, Carter’s

Georgia advisor team sought to change the national party decision making body from the circle dominated by the congressional Democrats to a coalition of Democratic mayors and governors. The election of Robert Strauss as the DNC chair at the end of 1972 and subsequent appointment of Jimmy Carter to the 1974 National Campaign Committee exemplified this change. With the help of Gerald Rafshoon and the government advertisement contract, Carter also began to publicize himself and the state to a national

audience in preparation for his future presidential campaign.

In 1976, Carter was nominated and elected as the first Democratic president

whose political career originated in the public office of the southern enclave regime

before democratization. He won the party’s presidential nomination with the

endorsements of local and state Democratic officeholders. Once in the White House,

Carter continued to solicit the opinions and support of the Democratic governors

regarding the national economic and energy crisis. President Carter found that his office

231 lacked stable congressional institutions to support his agenda. The post-reform

Democratic congressional caucus, with increasingly liberal membership and augmented party leadership authority, did not enact legislation that the Carter White House deemed necessary to govern the nation.

Thus, Carter, while being a party reformer, nonetheless failed to govern at the national level because of the mismatch of party institutions. The failure originated not just from Carter’s role as a complacent majority party president who preyed on existent party organizations, but also from the institutional conflicts that arose between the president, who was supported to lead a coalition of local and state Democratic office holders, and the congressional Democratic caucus dominated by more liberal leadership.

Thus, even though the democratic consolidation of former authoritarian enclave Georgia was complete with the election of President Jimmy Carter and his peaceful exit from power in 1980, nationally, the party institutions that stabilized the relations between the

Democratic president and the Democratic majority in Congress remained tenuous.

232 Chapter Six. Subnational Democratic Consolidation in the Late Twentieth Century American Political Development

“Federalism and democracy are linked not ontologically, but via institutional mechanisms.” Edward L. Gibson.1

“Political dynamics related to the pursuit of power within party organization and the party system often shape clashes over the reform of democratic institutions.” Giovanni Cappocia and Daniel Ziblatt.2

By 1980, the three former authoritarian enclaves of Alabama, Georgia and

South Carolina reinstituted themselves into the national democracy and achieved subnational democratic consolidation, even though many of the authoritarian enclave holdovers remained in the state government. The preceding chapters demonstrated how the governors and party leaders of the three Deep South states adjusted themselves to the shifts in the party institutions that had once shielded the enclaves from national political interventions. This chapter first discusses the roles of the state party elites’ political adaptations in the course of subnational democratic consolidation and then relates the findings of the dissertation to a larger picture of nationalized American political parties and presidential nomination politics in the late twentieth century.

i. Political Adaptations of the State Party Elites

The authoritarian enclaves had secured their local autonomy and insulation from the national democracy through the three underpinning political institutions of the

Democratic Party. These institutions were: party nomination of non-interventionist

1 Edward L. Gibson, "Federalism and Democracy: Theoretical Connections and Cautionary Insights," in Federalism and Democracy in Latin America, ed. Edward L. Gibson (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 12. 2 Giovanni Capoccia and Daniel Ziblatt, "The Historical Turn in Democratization Studies: A New Research Agenda for Europe and Beyond," Comparative Political Studies 43, no. 8-9 (2010).

233 presidential candidates from outside the South, state party disorganization, and the seniority rule in the congressional committee chairmanship appointment. Following democratization, these institutions were displaced by the end of the 1970s. Those state party elites who successfully adapted to the shifts managed to stay in the seat of power and in turn shaped national politics through the national party committees and the formation of new presidential party coalitions.

The state party leaders lost the authority to negotiate the nomination of presidential candidates in the party’s national convention hall. The McGovern-Fraser

Commission’s reform guidelines on delegate selection and party structure took away the state party leaders’ authority to appoint and direct the delegate votes, as well as the influence they had with the other state party leaders over the choice of presidential candidates. The reform guideline compliance orders were met with generally hostile and apprehensive reactions from the governors, and the implementation process created its own politics in the state party. The governors were varied in their commitment to the reform implementation processes, depending on their relations with the national party and its usefulness for securing the prospect of their future political careers. Those close allies of the national party, including South Carolina Governor Robert McNair, seized every opportunity to protest and criticize the reform guidelines: yet McNair did so through the established party institutions. McNair and his fellow state party leaders were eventually incorporated into the official posts of the Democratic National Committee. The South

Carolina Democratic Party completed its delegate selection reform only a few months before the 1972 national convention, relatively late in contrast to the other two states.

Georgia’s Lester Maddox and Alabama’s George Wallace, who had strained

234 relations with the national Democratic Party, were absent from the reform

implementation process in those states. For Maddox and Wallace, the nationally

mandated reform of the state party structure did not improve their prospects for holding

onto power in the state government. In Alabama and Georgia, the delegate selection

reforms were implemented and enforced by a cooperative state party chair in Alabama

and a , both elected in 1970. The reform did not diminish the electoral popularity of the two segregationist former governors, however, as both Wallace and Maddox held onto power in statewide offices of the government.

The often-disorganized state Democratic Party apparatus that had maintained monopoly control over the state government began to be challenged by the state and local opposition party. The enclave Democratic Party increasingly received political interventions from the national Republican Party. Harry Dent, a former South Carolina

Republican Party chairman and an advisor in the Nixon White House, tried to improve the reelection prospects of Richard Nixon in 1972 by curtailing the potential third-party campaign of George Wallace, whose 1968 campaign had won the Electoral College votes of Alabama and four other neighboring states. Dent feared that Wallace’s another third-party presidential bid could diminish Nixon’s reelection prospects by winning a sufficient number of Electoral College votes that impedes the majority for Nixon. For

Wallace to run another presidential campaign, he needed the authority of the governorship and the key to the state coffers that came with the office. Thus Dent and other Nixon aides got involved in the 1970 Alabama gubernatorial Democratic primary by secretly funneling money to a Democratic opposition candidate in the hope of blocking Wallace from the seat of state governorship. In spite of the White House’s

235 clandestine entanglement in the Alabama primary, Wallace won the primary race and was eventually elected to the governorship in 1970. The Nixon administration’s political involvement in Alabama turned out to be futile, and the state Republican Party was left ever more discordant and electorally weak in the aftermath of the White House interventions.

The national Republican Party leaders declined an offer to switch parties by

Maddox, the Democratic governor of Georgia and a supporter of Wallace’s 1968 campaign, when Maddox indicated his interest in running in the Republican primary for the lieutenant governorship in 1970. Dent instructed the Georgia Republicans to stop making overtures to Maddox, out of fear that his polemics would invite denouncement from the moderate national Republicans and cost Nixon the reelection. The national

Republicans declined his party switch suggestion even though Maddox’s defection could have boosted the electoral votes in the Georgia Republican Party. The state party remained a sizeable minority throughout the next three decades until the Republican

Party won the governorship for the first time in 2002.

The national Republicans also made selective appeals to the local black leaders in the urban areas of the three states, but only to the extent that their votes would help elect local white Republican candidates. If the national Republicans found that such appeals could adversely affect the electability of the local white Republican candidates, the national Republican Party leaders ceased to make the appeals. Thus, when Nixon and his political aides once considered supporting the National Democratic Party of Alabama,

Dent advised that such a move would only help Wallace win the 1970 gubernatorial election, and the White House decided not to help the NDPA. There is no record of

236 national Republican involvement with regard to Alabama’s black voters throughout the

rest of the 1970s. In contrast, in Georgia the national Republicans directed campaign

funds to some of the prominent black political elites in Atlanta in an effort to help a white

Republican candidate win the 1969 mayoral election. There continued to be a sizeable

minority of Atlanta’s local black Republican support throughout the 1970s. Despite these

national Republican involvements in the black urban communities, there were no active

efforts to recruit and train potential black candidates on the Republican ticket in President

Nixon’s first term in office.

In South Carolina, the robust growth of the Republican Party began following

the party switch of U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond in 1964 during the Barry Goldwater

campaign. After the state elected Richard Nixon in 1968 amidst the Wallace surge in the

other Deep South states, the state Republican Party leadership was given official

positions in the national Republican Party committees. Dent, also a former senatorial aid

to Thurmond, was the prime example of such national incorporation, having been

appointed to the position of special counsel to the president. The state Republican Party

leaders coordinated the Republican gubernatorial candidate selections in 1966 and 1970,

and the party rapidly grew into a base of conservative white voters. In 1969, Dent tried to

cultivate and maintain cordial relations with a black civil rights leader and long time supporter of the Columbia Republican Party Committee through granting federal small business loans to her. Yet the state party’s campaign in the following year for a conservative gubernatorial candidate displaced the local black support.

Nixon’s southern strategy, in sum, was less a national effort to entice the state

Democrats so that they would defect to the Republican Party, than a series of national

237 interventions to improve the president’s own reelection prospects in four years. Moreover,

the administration’s interventions did not promote democratic consolidation of the three

states, since the national interventions neither assisted the development of robust local

Republican Party organizations nor created durable support for the party among the

African American electorate in the three states.

As the national Democratic Party reform mandate and Nixon’s southern strategy increasingly affected the state party politics, the state party elites responded in various ways to reach out and influence the national party committees. Some of these

state party elites, such as McNair, Dent, Wallace and Maddox, have been mentioned

already. It was Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter who ended the national Democratic

Party’s disinclination to select a presidential nominee who previously had held public office in the enclave regimes before democratization. Carter’s presidential ambition was quite a long time in the making, though the nationwide mistrust of the national government in the wake of the Watergate scandal gave a final push to the successful presidential candidacy as a Washington outsider. Thus, Carter’s party reform that began before the Watergate revelation, starting from his gubernatorial tenure in Georgia and continued into his 1976 presidential campaign, deserves attention. Carter’s rise to the national stage also have paved the way for new politics of presidential nomination in the rest of the twentieth century.

Succeeding to the Georgia governorship after Maddox in 1971, Carter’s electoral base in the 1970 gubernatorial primary included Maddox’s conservative constituencies. Nonetheless, Carter took charge of the McGovern-Fraser party reform guideline compliance process in Georgia. Although the state party reform hardly ranked

238 as the top priority in the agenda of his gubernatorial campaign, it was implemented by the major political advisors of the newly elected governor. Compliance with the nationally mandated party reform improved Carter’s future career prospects, and he soon set his sights on national politics. Carter and his Georgia advisors sought to stop George

McGovern’s presidential candidacy in 1972, while indicating contradictory interests in being chosen as McGovern’s vice presidential running mate. Carter failed in both attempts that year.

When the Democratic Party had lost two consecutive presidential elections in

1972, Carter and other governors began to demand that the national Democratic Party decision making authority should shift from the circle of congressional Democrats who supported McGovern’s presidential candidacy to a coalition of Democratic mayors and governors. As part of this demand, former DNC treasurer Robert Strauss was elected to the Democratic National Committee chair with the active endorsements of the

Democratic governors. Strauss then appointed Carter to the DNC campaign committee for the 1974 election, and this new position enabled him to travel beyond his home state and meet with local party leaders across the nation. The 1974 campaign elected an unprecedented number of non-incumbent candidates who owed their electoral victories to the national party and its campaign chair, as well as to the Watergate scandal. When

Carter ran his own presidential campaign, he collected the debts the 1974 candidates owed him and the national party. Carter secured the presidential nomination early in the

Democratic Party nomination race with endorsements from governors and local elected officials.

In preparing for the presidential campaign, Carter and his team of Georgia

239 political aides not only worked through the Democratic National Committee, but also

utilized the Georgia state government’s industry and tourism advertisement program to

publicize the state and the governor to the national and international audience. Though

the media agency selection of the state advertisement contract was made on merit basis

by an independent panel, Carter’s media consultant Gerald Rafshoon was given favors

over his competitors at the proposal presentation and won the advertisement production

contract. The record shows that Carter and his close political aides were aware that this

arrangement tacitly allowed them to use state funds to publicize the governor’s name

beyond the borders of Georgia. A few months after the state program contract was

awarded to Rafshoon, he wrote off a debt that Carter owed him from a prior campaign.

Carter’s presidential campaign relied on a small group of personal, yet professionalized

staffers from Georgia.

Once elected to the White House, however, Carter and his Georgia aides found

it difficult to pass legislation as the Democratic majority Congress had been reformed by

liberal junior Democrats elected mostly from the northeastern states. The mid-1970s

reform of the congressional Democratic Caucus resulted in the creation of subcommittees

and empowerment of party leadership. The reform unhinged the Congress from the

Democratic president. Before the enclave democratization, Carter’s Democratic predecessors mostly relied on the southern committee chairmen in the enactments of major bills in exchange for preserving enclave authoritarianism and autonomy. However,

President Carter, nominated and elected by a coalition of Democratic governors and mayors after democratization, lacked strong party support in Congress. Such institutional mismatch between the president and the Congress exacerbated the crisis of national

240 governance towards the end of the 1970s.

The core theoretical argument of this dissertation is that as the states underwent the processes of democratic consolidation, the president and the national party leaders increasingly involved themselves in the state party procedures and the statewide election campaigns of the governors, a feat that had remained impossible before democratization.

The modes and frequencies of national intervention varied depending on the electoral prospects of the national leaders and the local party elites’ varied reliance on party

organizations. The national interventions and the subnational response determined the

trajectories of these enclaves’ democratic consolidation, as new relations were forged

between politicians seeking and holding the national executive office, and the governors

and state party elites.

The national involvement in the gubernatorial campaigns and party procedures

did not always achieve the intended results. Notwithstanding the variable success of the

national interventions at yielding the intended results, they also prompted varied responses from the state party leaders, inducing them to adapt to the shifting electoral landscape in the local campaigns and to form new presidential party coalitions.

Importantly, the governors and party elites demonstrated their political will to follow national party instructions only when compliance improved prospects for their future political careers, including their long foregone bid for the White House. When the state party elites found that compliance would not improve their future prospects of holding onto power, the national interventions yielded little to no fruit in persuading them to become supporters of the national party.

When the enclave succeeding elites earned close allies in the national executive

241 office, or forged new presidential party coalitions and won the office, they typically

fended off electoral challenges to their home domains from both within and without,

creating varied patterns in the endurance of the local Democratic Party and the

Republican takeover in each state. When Georgia governor Carter broke the precedent of the Democratic Party’s aversion to nominating and electing a presidential candidate with prior experience of public service in the enclave regime, he had not only reformed the party in his state but also altered the leadership of the national Democratic Party committee from one dominated by congressional leadership to a coalition of governors and mayors. In Georgia, especially in the southwestern corner of the state where Carter’s birthplace and his 1976 presidential headquarters are located, the Democratic Party still dominates the local and congressional offices to this day. The state elected the first

Republican governor since Reconstruction only in 2002, relatively late in comparison to the other two states. The statewide two-party competition remains far tighter in Georgia

than that of Alabama or South Carolina.

Following the same logic, the various ways in which the state party elites

constructed the post-1964 state Democratic Party in response to the national interventions

affected the development of state and local Republican Party organizations in the other

two states throughout the 1970s. During this period, only South Carolina saw the robust expansion of the Republican Party in statewide office-holding.3 The South Carolina

Democratic Party was institutionally incorporated into the Democratic National

Committees, yet after the Barnwell Ring leaders stepped down from the major positions

3 The state governors from 1964 to 1980 were all Democratic Party politicians but for one: James Edwards of South Carolina, who was elected in 1974 after his Democratic opponent in the general election turned out to be ineligible to serve in the office because he did not fulfill the state constitution’s residency requirement.

242 in the state legislature in the early 1970s, they could no longer hold the majority in the state. Coupled with the Nixon White House’s coordination with the state Republican

Party through Harry Dent, it grew early into a bastion of white conservative voters. In

Alabama, George Wallace remained in the governor’s mansion for three out of four terms from 1971 to 1987. Only after Wallace retired from politics did Guy Hunt, a Republican gubernatorial candidate and an early supporter of Ronald Reagan, win the state executive office. The personalistic and clientelistic governance of the state, and the accompanying disorganization of the state parties, which were the hallmarks of Wallace governorship, continue to this day in Alabama.

ii. Subnational Democratic Consolidation and Nationalization of Political Parties

Another theoretical concern that this dissertation examined is the decline of the political party organization thesis. Why did the party elites of the three states continue to be active in the national parties, even though the party decline thesis has argued for their purported demise since the end of the 1960s? One key answer already given by the previous party scholarship was the nationalization of political parties, meaning that the parties have resurged in forms different from the locally based confederation of traditional party organizations. One of these studies has pointed out that congressional party leaders have gained control over party decisions to provide their rank and file congressional candidates with campaign services, such as funds, electoral mobilization technology and campaign workforces. Others have noted the national network of intense policy demanders and party actors in selecting and nominating the most electable presidential candidate even before the presidential nomination process starts, and the

243 presidential party leadership in building party organizations.

The state parties that presidents and governors constructed out of the

authoritarian enclaves in the sixteen-year period after democratization were, by and large,

more closely incorporated into the respective national parties. This dissertation has aimed

to contribute to the existent discussion on party nationalization by arguing the following two points. First, after 1968 presidents and national party leadership became increasingly involved in the state parties primarily to secure the president’s reelection. Such national interventions in the statewide politics were hardly attempted under the authoritarian enclave rule.

Secondly, after democratization, the traditional party bosses of the enclaves could no longer negotiate the choice of presidential nominees in the convention hall. The southern governors were no longer passive endorsers of agreeable non-southern presidential candidates, or for that matter, supporters of non-winning southern candidates.

Instead, some of the southern party elites have become active pursuers of the national executive office themselves. The democratization in their home territories, as well as the internal reform of the Democratic National Committee, allowed the Georgia governor to successfully run for and seize the White House, with the help of modern and professional campaign consultants. Other state party leaders, who did not easily shed their authoritarian legacies, have influenced the national parties through running third party campaigns or being appointed to the official posts of the national party committees and in the national administration. The southern governors’ continued hold in the national institutions of the two major parties allowed them to adapt to the changing electorates after 1964, and reshaped the presidential party coalitions.

244 Seen in this light, Carter’s presidential campaign and his presidency are not

achievements that merit historians’ accolades, but they should be seen as an early example of a Washington outsider’s presidential campaign that rendered the subsequent national governance go awry. Following Carter, the remaining twentieth century presidents who served two full terms – Reagan and , both former governors – had no governing experience in the nation’s capital prior to their elections to the White

House, and for the most part their presidencies suffered from divided government.

Further research needs to be done to confirm the contention that their presidential

campaigns unfolded under similar institutional settings like Carter’s and suffered from

congressional gridlock for similar reasons. This dissertation concludes with a suggestion

that since Carter’s time, former governors’ presidential campaigns have been the overall

norms rather than exceptions, and the governors of the formerly authoritarian enclaves increasingly have gained influence in the national party committees and the presidential party coalitions.

245 REFERENCES

Archives Consulted

Presidential Libraries White House Phone Records, Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library and Miller Center at the University of Virginia (Digital Archives, Texas) Papers and Other Historical Materials of Harry S. Dent, Richard Nixon Presidential Library (Yorba Linda, California) White House Central Files Name File, Howard Bo Callaway, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library (Ann Arbor, Michigan) Governor Carter’s Personal Working Files: Carter Family Papers; Gerald Rafshoon Papers; Presidential Papers of Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter Presidential Library (Atlanta, Georgia)

National Archives and Libraries Records of the Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection (McGovern Fraser Commission Record), the Democratic National Committee collection, National Archives and Record Administration (Washington, D.C.) Historical Newspaper Collections, Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.)

State Level Archives Howard Bo Callaway Papers, Richard B. Russell Library, University of Georgia (Athens, Georgia) Governor George B. Busbee, Work Files, Georgia Department of History and Archives (Morrow, Georgia) Harry Dent Papers, Special Collections Library, Clemson University (Clemson, South Carolina) Fob James Papers, Special Collections Library, Auburn University (Auburn, Alabama)

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250 CURRICULUM VITAE

Ayako Hiramatsu was born on December 13, 1982, in Fukuoka City, Fukuoka, Japan, to Nobuyasu Hiramatsu, a physics professor, and Fumiko Hiramatsu (nee Fumiko Yamauchi), a high school English teacher and a writer. She spent most of her childhood in Fukuoka.

Ayako completed the first year of International Baccalaureate Program at Impington Villlage High School, in Impington, Cambridgeshire, the United Kingdom, in June 2000. After returning to Japan, she graduated from Shuyukan High School in March 2002.

In March 2006, She earned her bachelor’s degree in International Studies at the Liberal Arts College, International Christian University, in Tokyo, Japan. Her undergraduate education includes a ten-month study from August 2004 to June 2005 as an exchange program student at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where she concentrated on American Foreign Policy.

Her graduate school training began at the Graduate School of Law and Politics, the University of Tokyo, where she earned a master’s degree in law in March 2008. Her master’s theses is titled “Analysis of Ideological Caucuses in the United States House of Representatives: The Intra- and Inter-Party Politics Under Republican Majority Control, 1995-2000.” The revised version of the thesis was published in The Journal of the Association of Political and Social Sciences, (Kokka Gakkai Zasshi) Vol.CXXII, No. 5/6, June 2009.

She entered the PhD Program at the Department of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, in August 2009. She became a PhD candidate in American Politics after passing the comprehensive exams in Comparative Politics in February 2012, and American Politics in June 2012. She is to be conferred her doctor of philosophy degree on August 26, 2016.

251