How George Did It

A narrow loss is always tough to take, but after their losing battle against George Wallace, the dejected campaigners for Alabama Governor Albert Brewer had more than ordinary cause for bitterness. "This state has not matured as much as I thought it had; we've got a hate state," complained George Bailey, one of Brewer's top aides. "This was the dirtiest campaign I've ever observed," said Brewer. "If it takes that to be Governor, then I'll pass it up."

It was a dirty campaign, as Wallace successfully resorted to a racist theme and pandered to white fears and hatreds in winning the Democratic primary runoff, thus assuring his election in November. He repeatedly raised the specter of a "bloc vote" that would "control politics in Alabama for the next 50 years" if he lost. When his audience seemed less sophisticated, George spelled it out: "the black bloc vote." His newspaper ads bluntly urged whites to "vote for your own kind." Vicious rumors also were spread--apparently without Wallace's approval and certainly without any foundation--about the sex lives of Brewer, his wife and two daughters. Mrs. Brewer broke into tears in a Montgomery department store after hearing some of the stories.

"Mr. Clean" Strategy. While the election outcome did little to help Alabama's image, blanket denunciations of the state's voters are unfair. Wallace got only 51.5% of the total. His margin was a mere 32,000 votes out of the 1,074,000 cast--a comedown from the 72,000 votes by which he won a similar runoff in 1962 and the 237,000 by which his late wife Lurleen won the Democratic primary for Governor in 1966. More than half a million voters refused to go along with George this time, although possibly half of those were blacks. In one black precinct in Jefferson County, Brewer's margin was 2,149 to 24; in a Montgomery precinct, it was 2,829 to 227. The Governor's other strength came mainly from affluent suburbs and middle-and upper-class white neighborhoods of large cities, where the new, enlightened Alabama is taking shape. The decisive vote turned out to be that of the blue-collar workers, who responded heavily to Wallace's populism and racism.

Brewer, a calm, effective but unexciting Governor, must bear some of the blame for his loss. After shocking Wallace by topping him in the seven-man Democratic primary last month, Brewer campaigned for the runoff in such a low-keyed manner that Wallace grabbed all of the attention. A racial moderate --from the Southern viewpoint--Brewer had no desire to embrace the black vote openly or to engage in racial arguments with Wallace. His strategy was a lofty "Mr. Clean" approach that even ruled out attacks on the previous Wallace administrations. "You can't fight Wallace with one hand tied behind your back," complained one Brewer aide of this tactic. But Brewer countered that any attempt to respond to Wallace's kind of campaign "would only create deeper chasms and accentuate the divisiveness" in the state.

Good Grief. Brewer was content to argue that Wallace would be only a part-time Governor while seeking the presidency. He promised to cut auto-license fees from $13 to $3 and to remove the state sales tax fronr drugs and medicines, calling them "a tax on pain and misery." His ads sometimes replied to Wallace attacks with such opening lines as "Good grief, Mr. Wallace," which sounds sissified in Alabama. His toughest stand was to charge indirectly that a Wallace administration might become a corrupt one, telling voters that "political hacks are trying to defeat me because they want to get back into your pockets."

But there was no way for Brewer to outpromise Wallace, who embraced the Brewer pledges and also proposed, among other things, to lower automobile-insurance rates, reduce the cost of gas, telephones and electricity, erect new medical schools and build four-lane highways in rural areas. He even implied that he would eliminate the sales tax on food, which would cost the state about $55 million in annual revenue.

When the results were in at his election-night headquarters, Wallace was his cocky old self as raucous rebel yells greeted his joyful summation: "Alabama still keeps her place in the sun, and Alabama will continue to be heard from." Translated, he meant that George Corley Wallace still enjoys political fair weather and expects to be anew the irrepressible voice of Alabama.

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