Wallace: Chickens Home to Roost

This is the sixth in a series examining the candidates for the presidency.

A new, mellower George Wallace? Not the fellow who was stumping last week in Chicopee, Mass.--or "Chickapoo," as he once called it. There was space for 1,250 people in the meeting room of the Highpoint Motor Inn, but 2,500 turned up, so the feisty Alabama Governor simply went through his routine twice--an impressive performance for a man of 56 who is confined to a wheelchair, totally paralyzed from the waist down and partly deaf. It was vintage Wallace, and the crowd loved it.

"Until the briefcase toters with the pointy heads are all thrown into the Potomac River," he harangued, "we'll live in fear of criminal thugs on the one hand and federal judges on the other." He lambasted the "filthy rich" and their tax-free foundations. He lashed the Eastern press and "the welfare rip-off artists." In an area where unemployment is 14%, he blasted the multinational companies for taking jobs out of the country. He blamed the Federal Government for not helping the shoe industry because it is "too busy busing little children in Springfield."

That sort of speech always roused the good ol' boys back home. It was sour mash and corn syrup, ridicule and wit, all the local grievances stirred to a bitter brew. And it went down as well in Massachusetts as it did in Alabama. The Bay State, the only one in the union to vote for McGovern in 1972, seems tailor-made for Wallace in 1976. He craftily plays down his chances in the March 2 primary and then adds--with something between a twinkle and a leer: "What if I did get a good vote? It would be a pretty potent message, wouldn't it? It would give them St. Vitus's dance in other campaign headquarters."

That prospect is certainly making his rivals squirm. Some analysts expect Wallace could win as much as 25% of the Massachusetts vote (assuring him a quarter of the state's 104 delegates to the National Convention). As Wallace put it last week to TIME Atlanta Bureau Chief James Bell, "A lot of chickens I talked about for years have come to roost in Boston. They're roostin' all over in Detroit and San Diego and even some in Boston."

The plumpest chicken, of course, is busing. It overshadows all other concerns, and Wallace has been agin' it longer than any of the candidates. In Boston, where the antibusing vote is estimated to be between 35% and 40%, Wallace can no longer be considered a candidate of the extremes. He has moved closer to the mainstream; he is careful, for example, not to let his attack on busing be misconstrued as criticism of blacks. He claims sensible people of both races agree with his stand.

The best-heeled Democratic candidate--he has raised some $5.3 million to date--Wallace plans to spend $75,000 in Massachusetts. He has little visible organization in Boston, but then he does not have to. The antibusing movement that has sprung up in Boston in the past two years keeps phones ringing all over the city as they tout Wallace.

Busing is not Wallace's only issue. He constantly bewails the plight of the middle class who, he says, pay all the taxes and get all the abuse. He fears that the middle class will be "radicalized" if inflation is not brought under control. Since returning from his first European trip last fall, Wallace has stressed the need for good relations with U.S. allies. But he still fervently opposes most foreign aid, and he is caustic about detente. "I think the Russians have out-detented us." If he were President, he says, the U.S. would be the "No. 1 offensive and defensive power on the face of the earth. When you get that way, you can always negotiate. If you're not that way, you are always at the mercy of those you cannot trust."

Wallace moved into Massachusetts with one solid success under his belt. Though his support was supposed to have eroded in the Deep South, there was no sign of it in the Mississippi caucuses at the end of January. Wallace won 45% of the precinct vote and will probably pick up much of the 27% uncommitted bloc. His nearest rival was former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, who received only 14%--less than expected by his backers. Sargent Shriver, who is remembered for the programs he initiated as director of the poverty program, cut into Carter's constituency, winning an estimated 50% of the black vote and 12% of the total.

Hired Guns. Helping to get out the vote in Mississippi was a new kind of Wallace operative. Steve St. Amand, 25, worked in Edmund Muskie's 1972 presidential campaign, but he had no qualms about switching to Wallace because he wants the political experience. While he labored in Mississippi, 17 other "hired guns," all under 30 and earning $12,000 a year, were organizing elsewhere for Wallace. The candidate could not care less whether they agree with him. Says Wallace's director of communications, Joe Azbell: "What we want from these young people is expertise and hard work, and we get it."

But one Southern state does not make a sweep. Even if Wallace does well in Massachusetts, he faces tough battles with Carter in the South Carolina caucus on Feb. 28, the Florida primary on March 9 and the North Carolina primary on March 23. Wallace is not overly confident of whipping Carter, but he denies that a loss would put him out of the race. His strategy is to accumulate delegates until he reaches the convention with a sizable bloc. Besides, he told TIME: "I'll stay in because as long as I'm in, I keep 'em honest."

Fearful Aloft. Wallace insists that 1976 will be his last campaign. "For one thing," he explains, "I'm tired of flying through thunderstorms." He has leased a $47,000-a-month BAC 1-11 (it has been named Trust the People) that transports 23 people in oil-baron style. But Wallace is still fearful aloft. Nor, at 56, can he count on his health holding up for another campaign (see MEDICINE). If he is denied the Democratic nomination--a virtual certainty--he is not sure what he will do. Though splinter groups want to run him on a third-party ticket, he has not yet given them the nod, and he may never do so. He would have no chance of winning, and if he were to draw votes about equally from the two major parties, he would not be in a position to serve as kingmaker for either of them.

Beyond 1976, he professes to have no political ambitions. During a two-hour talk aboard his plane, he told Bell: "What I want is to get this country away from some people's belief that they can get something for nothing. Things are better than they were in 1968 and 1972 in the sense that the candidates who called me a radical for attacking Big Government and busing and demanding law-and-order are now saying the things I said. By 1980 everybody will have accepted my ideas."

What is more, there may even be another Wallace available to keep flogging those ideas. The Governor denies that his comely wife Cornelia, 37, has any political ambitions. Cornelia, who seems to have inherited a flair for politics from her uncle, former Alabama Governor "Kissin' Jim" Folsom, puts it somewhat differently. She and George, she reports, have never "seriously discussed" whether she might run for Governor, as did Wallace's first wife Lurleen, who was elected and died in office. "The election is three years away," says Cornelia, "and there's plenty of time to talk about it." It looks as if George Wallace, whatever his intentions, may not escape politics for quite a while.

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