Hey!
I've been thinking about this for a while, and formed an account to write this. I apologize if its a bit ASB-y, but basically the POD is a combination of Lurleen Wallace not getting cancer in 1961 and the US's population being a bit more conservative on civil rights in the late 1960s. This makes Wallace more confident, as he has a strong base in Alabama to come back to even if he loses the election, and it also makes right-wing democrats in general (notably Sam Yorty in California) more willing to support him. For his part, Yorty was certainly a... character. He was a member of a segregated club, and had a not-nice response to the Watt Riots in 1965, and he also endorsed Nixon twice, so it's not like he'd dislike Wallace all that much, nor was he all that loyal to the Democratic Party, running every single time without the blessing of the Democratic Party, and in 1965 against a Democratic Candidate. I actually got the idea from New Campaign Trail - in the Wallace v Goldwater v McCarthy 1964 one, he can get Yorty as a running mate. He was also really bored of being mayor, doing basically nothing after 1971. Anyway, I'll stop my rambling here.
CHICAGO, April 4th - Yesterday, in conjunction with a rally held by American Independent Party Candidate, former governor of Alabama and segregationist politician George Corley Wallace Jr. in the Chicago Stadium, William George Meany, the President of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, commonly known as the AFL-CIO, has officially declared the neutrality of the organisation in the upcoming presidential election. This comes after President Lyndon Baines Johnson unexpectedly withdrew his candidacy for the Presidency after a shockingly close result in the New Hampshire Primary last month, leaving United States Senator for Minnesota Eugene Joseph McCarthy and United States Senator for New York Robert Francis Kennedy as the current frontrunners in the Democratic Party Primaries.
The candidate of the American Independent Party declared his intent to increase protection for American Industry and repeal parts of the Taft-Hartley Act, such as those allowing right-to-work laws and prohibiting closed shops, to a raucous crowd, primarily consisting of white Steelworkers and other AFL-CIO members. This comes as a repudiation of the Southern political tradition of anti-Union politics, and flies in the face of Alabama’s position as a right-to-work state. However, analysis by the Associated Press suggests that in a political scene so dominated by segregation and state’s rights, this is not expected to cause the candidate to lose any support among his base. It remains to be seen if this will have the intended effect of syphoning support away from the Democratic Party.
Candidate Wallace said the following when asked for his reasoning behind this announcement: “I have always fought for the working man against the elite that despises him. Though Alabama is a right-to-work state, I have always stood behind the men who work to make this country great, and the unions who fight for them. We have been endorsed in Alabama by nearly every local in our state: textiles workers, paper workers, steel workers, rubber workers, you name it. We’ve been endorsed by the working people of our state. Regardless of what they might say, your national leaders, my wife carried every labor box in 1966, when she ran for governor of Alabama in the primary and the general election, when she was elected the first female governor in Alabama’s history. I also was endorsed by labor when I was elected governor in 1962. Alabama is a large industrial state - Birmingham is the Pittsburgh of the South - and you can’t be elected governor there without the support of organised labor.”
Richard Joseph Daley, the Democratic Mayor of Chicago since 1955, could not be reached for comment by the Associated Press.
George Herman: Many on the left blame you for the election of George Wallace to the Presidency of the United States in 1968. They say that if the AFL-CIO had stood behind Hubert Humphrey it could’ve stopped the haemorrhaging of the union vote from the Democratic Ticket to that of the current President. What do you have to say about that?
George Meany: The AFL-CIO is a very decentralised organisation, something which is required due to the fact that it represents tens of millions of workers in dozens of industries. I don’t have that much influence in it, nor does the AFL-CIO have that much influence over its constituent unions. The AFL and the CIO are very different institutions by themselves, which almost derailed the merger in the first place. I personally voted for and supported Humphrey, as did many of the member unions of the AFL-CIO, but many unions themselves supported Wallace, and I have nothing against that. He combined Humphrey’s pro-union policies and Nixon’s law and order, while at the same being stronger than both in both. He was the perfect candidate for the rank-and-file, and for much of the leadership too. You saw that with both the UMW and the Teamsters supporting Wallace’s candidacy, two unions over whom I have no control.
Herman: Do you think the President has kept his word to the unions?
Meany: I think he’s done the best he can. He’s put new tariffs and restrictions on imports, which has helped both unions and industry, and he stood up against Japan, which may be poor foreign policy, but it also worked to help the unions. He also introduced his amendment to Taft-Wartner within his first hundred days, and I have nothing but praise for that amendment, but he hasn’t been able to secure the necessary congressional support. I believe that his coalition of segregationists, conservatives and organised labour is not sustainable.
Herman: What do you think is needed for the amendment to pass?
Meany: For there to be a chance for that amendment to pass into law, President Wallace needs a strong showing in the midterms - something that doesn’t look very likely. He’s proven unable or unwilling to negotiate with liberals, and conservatives are not likely to support union rights - which is why the unions have always supported liberal candidates. I hope that those who voted for Wallace will realise their mistake, and return to supporting candidates that have their interests first.
CHICAGO, April 6th - After the assassination of Martin Luther King on the 4th, riots have erupted throughout the United States, with special damage coming to the Windy City. Having come off one of the largest rallies ever held in Chicago the previous day, candidate Wallace was forced to delay his plans to travel back to Montgomery, and addressed a crowd of reporters outside his house. He called on the Mayor to protect the “good, hard working people of Chicago” from the “mobs of looters and rioters”, and to give the Police “permission and orders to disperse the barbarians.” When asked to comment about the assassination of Martin Luther King, the candidate dodged the question, stating that “there has been a total abdication of responsibility in this country over the past five years. The riots - both now and last summer - are simply the final straw in what we can accept. When I am President, I will crack down severely on disorder and I will wield the power of the federal government to protect Americans and not to force integration on the states.”
Mayor Richard Joseph Daley held a press conference that same day where he condemned the riots as well, and called on their perpetrators to return to their homes or “face severe consequences”. Alongside announcing a number of temporary restrictions, such as enacting a curfew for those under twenty one, closing the streets to automobile trafficking and halting the sales of guns and ammunition, he was asked by a reporter of the Tribune on his response to Wallace’s statements earlier in the day. The mayor responded that he agreed with the candidate’s sentiment, stating that there must be no toleration for disorder and disobedience of the law under any competent administration, but that his words were “divisive”. This has widely been recognized as a not-so-subtle jab at the Johnson Administration, which has presided over a period of chaos and civil disobedience unheard of in American history.
The mayor was also asked who he was endorsing for President, where he replied that he was a faithful member of the Democratic Party, but did not elaborate. He did, however, announce his support for Wallace’s policy to strengthen labour unions and his support for law and order - both of whom are incredibly popular amongst his base in the white working class of the city. The apparent reluctance of one of the most powerful men in the Democratic Party to support either of the two candidates who seem most likely to win the election - McCarthy and Kennedy - and his long-held distaste of the liberalism that pervades both candidacies has left questions in the air as to the unity of the Democratic Party.
WASHINGTON, April 11th - Called by the President on the 5th to get moving on the Civil Rights Bill, in committee since 1966, the House Rules Committee, chaired by William Meyers Colmer (D-MS6) a noted segregationist and signatory to the 1956 Southern Manifesto, was poised to finally approve the bill for voting in the house. However, a filibuster by southern members of the committee, rules-lawyering by the Chairman, and immense pressure from conservative and ethnic groups for both Democrats and Republicans, meant that by April 10th the bill was rejected by the committee by a narrow margin and on bipartisan lines. It seems that representative Colmer’s argument that “the United States does not bow down to, nor does it negotiate with, terrorists” touched a chord with the committee, though it was denounced by liberals on both sides of the aisle as inflammatory and offensive.
This represents a major defeat for the President, who had directed much of his political capital towards pushing for the bill, but an immense victory for the conservatives and dixiecrats in Congress, who have been able to prevent the entrance of another civil rights bill onto the floor, where it would most likely pass with ease. It also represents another stunning victory for American Independent Party Candidate George Corley Wallace Jr., just a week after the AFL-CIO declared its neutrality in the campaign and Mayor Richard Joseph Daley of Chicago seemed to agree with him on law and order. The candidate had flown in from Chicago to lobby against the bill, and was successful in uniting the southern caucus and getting enough non-southern representatives to stall for long enough for the proposal to become moot.
Due to the strong response of both local and federal authorities against the riots which preceded this decision, and followed the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, have not picked up in any significant form due to this decision. The President is reported to be furious, but his focus on containing the civil unrest and organizing a response with local and state authorities meant that he was unable to use his own persuasive skill to push the assignment pass the committee and onto the floor, and analysts suggest it may be too late. The Washington Star was able to reach candidate Wallace for a statement and, when asked on what he thought of the Kerner Commission’s findings, he said: “Any attempt to take away responsibility from the monsters who engaged in this cruel and uncalled for violence is detestable, and, as I see it, tantamount to treason. However, I do recognize that living conditions in large northern cities - those bastions of civil rights - are detestable, and will therefore appoint Robert Moses as my Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. His record in New York is impeccable, and it was one of the few cities not to suffer these devastating riots.”
LOS ANGELES, April 21st - Samuel William Yorty, the Democratic Mayor of Los Angeles, has announced his endorsement of the Candidate of the American Independent Party for President of the United States of America, George Corley Wallace Jr. At a rally held by the Candidate at Long Beach Arena, the Mayor was introduced by the candidate, who announced Yorty as the American Independent Party’s nominee for Vice President of the United States of America, and praised his response to the 1965 Watts Riots, which he credited for the lack of civil disturbances in Los Angeles since the assassination of rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Though the Mayor has feuded extensively with the Democratic Party - having endorsed Richard Nixon for President in 1960, and celebrated after Republican Governor Ronald Reagan defeated Democratic Nominee and Incumbent Governor Edmund Gerald “Pat” Brown in 1966 - this comes as a shock nonetheless.
The Mayor then gave a speech to a crowd of around ten thousand Angelenos, almost exclusively white, where he pledged to bring his fight against the “little ruling clique” to the nation’s capital and to export Los Angeles’ success to cities across America, to towering applause. The arena had a noted lack of confederate flags - once a mainstay in Wallace’s rallies, but less and less prominent in recent times as the candidate has tried to expand his attractiveness beyond the south. Confederate sympathisers were replaced in large part by members of the John Birch Society, who have come out in force in support of Wallace as the “only candidate willing to fight for America”, though the organisation itself is yet to endorse any specific candidate, in large part due to Wallace’s friendliness with unions and organised labor.
After the rally, the two candidates held a press conference, where Sam Yorty defended himself against accusations of racism for supporting Wallace’s candidacy. “George Wallace is not a racist - in fact, he was supported by the NAACP in his first run for governor in 1958. We both simply believe that people should have the right to associate with whomever they want to, and that local affairs should be left for state and local governments, not decided by the eastern establishment and its clique in Washington he said, and Wallace added that “Mayor Yorty here has succeeded in defeating the brutes in Los Angeles with his strong reaction to the Watt Riots of ‘65. I sincerely believe that we will be able to return peace, prosperity, law and order to America, if our ticket wins the Presidential Election. And, unlike the Republicans and the Democrats, we won’t do so by selling our souls to Moscow and bowing before the bust of Stalin.”
Herman: You shocked almost all of America when you declared that you would be joining George Wallace’s campaign for President as his running mate. Can you explain why?
Yorty: Well, Herman, George Wallace came to me even before he did that speech in Chicago, before Johnson left the race. He offered me the Vice Presidency then and there
Herman: Really? Why did you wait a month until you accepted? What changed your mind?
Yorty: Well, I’ve fulfilled my promises to the people of Los Angeles. I brought peace back to the streets after the Watts Riot, I fixed waste management and I expanded the freeway system. I’ve been looking for ways to work to better the lives of more Californians and Americans ever since - I ran for Governor in ‘66, after all - and being Vice President would give me a platform to expand what worked in Los Angeles to the rest of the country’s towns and cities. However, Wallace looked like a fantasy back in March, so I decided to make sure he had a shot before joining his campaign.
Herman: Do you think he has a shot at winning?
Yorty: Yes, I do. You’ve seen the polls - he has a majority of the Union Vote, and he looks poised to sweep the south. I doubt we’ll win the election outright, but we’ll take it to the house, and who knows what’ll happen then?
Herman: Don’t you think the state delegations will vote for the Democratic Party’s candidate? They have a majority, after all.
Yorty: I’ve been in the Democratic Party all my life, and so has Wallace, and I can tell you that they’re not happy with McCarthy. You saw what Mayor Daley of Chicago said after the riots. Wallace has also proved able to deal with Congress - you can thank him for keeping that bill in Committee earlier in the month. We have a great shot at winning.
Herman: What do you have to say for people who are afraid of a Wallace-Yorty administration?
Yorty: I’d like to tell them that they have nothing to worry about. We’re here to protect America from its enemies, domestic and foreign, not betray its citizens.
ATLANTA, May 7th - Back in the south after a trip that took him from Washington in the District of Columbia to Los Angeles in California, the First Gentleman of Alabama held a rally in Atlanta yesterday outside the State Capitol, being introduced by the Governor of Georgia, Lester Garfield Maddox Sr., to the rousing cheers of the crowd, who announced his endorsement for the candidate’s campaign. Wallace looked back in his element, as the crowds chanted the tripartite motto of his successful 1962 gubernatorial campaign and waved confederate flags. Unlike in Chicago, the candidate barely mentioned unions, but vehemently reinforced his support for the working man, and promised to stop “stealing from hard-working Americans to pay for hippies and bums to live off of others” to loud applause.
Denouncing the War on Poverty as a cowardly attempt by a deeply unpopular presidency to buy votes from the dregs of society, he promised to guarantee good wages and ample employment to those who want to work, and to stop “using their tax dollars to subsidize degeneracy and laziness”. An attempt by the Wallace campaign to unite organized labor and fiscal conservatives, it remains to be seen how successful this will be, as these two voting blocks have been at each other’s throats since their founding. It seems to have been well received by the latter, but AFL-CIO president George Meany criticized them, though Wallace remains incredibly popular with the rank-and-file.
Of more interest, however, is the manner in which Wallace opened his rally. Denouncing the Warren Court’s decision in Engel v. Vitale (1962) as “an attack on Christianity'' and calling it “the work of lobbyists in Moscow”, he introduced fellow southerner and segregationist Jerry Laymon Falwell Sr, a Baptist pastor and televangelist from Lynchburg, Virginia, who has grown famous as the host of the Old Time Gospel Hour on Radio and Television. Falwell led the thousands of people in the rally in prayer. In his sermon, he called for the great “moral majority” of America to unite in defense of their values against secular liberalism and their proponents, the “pseudo-intellectual elites” who “look down in disgust on the average American”.
Falwell’s decision to endorse Wallace has caused an outpouring of support from pastors and congregations of the Southern Baptist Convention, though no major figures have yet come in support of Wallace’s campaign, including Billy Graham, whose endorsement Wallace is said to have sought. However, this is widely expected to strengthen Wallace’s dominance in the south.
WASHINGTON, May 13th - Following his victory in preventing the Civil Rights Bill from being put to a vote in the floor of the House, Southern officials from both the Democratic and the Republican Party have come under immense pressure to endorse George Corley Wallace Jr, the candidate of the American Independent Party, for President of the United States. As the only man to have achieved any meaningful success in the fight against the expansion of civil rights in America, and at the head of a candidacy that seems more likely by the day to have a shot at winning the Presidency, the offices of these senators and congressmen, and even statewide officials, have been flooded by thousands of letters from their constituents, asking them to support his candidacy, some even going as far as asking them to join the American Independent Party - “to give President Wallace a base in Congress” according to one letter from an Alabamian to Senator John Jackson Sparkman.
Well over a hundred congressmen - both senators and representatives - signed what many have called the second Southern Manifesto, endorsing the candidate of the American Independent Party for President, denouncing the President’s inability to defend Americans from riots and disorder and to bring the war in Vietnam to a favorable conclusion, as well as his policies to use tax dollars to subsidize “unacceptable behaviors” - echoing Wallace’s language in Georgia. Extensive lobbying from labor unions and lingering resentment over desegregation delivered both the senators from West Virginia - Robert Carlyle Byrd and Jennings Randolph - as well as the rest of the state’s delegation - to Wallace’s camp, over fears of McCarthy being the party’s nominee and the United Mine Workers’ endorsement of Wallace a month prior.
Of note was the presence of one of the few Republican senators in the South, James Strom Thurmond Jr of South Carolina, who had joined the Party during the 1964 Republican Campaign of Barry Morris Goldwater. Though he had previously intended to extract concessions from President Nixon, he was forced by hundreds of thousands of letters from his constituents throughout South Carolina to support Wallace’s candidacy. This represents a great rebuke of the so-called “Southern Strategy”, which after being driven to complete defeat in 1964 seems to have lost its greatest supporter in the form of the Senator from South Carolina. Though this is a major victory for the Wallace Yorty Campaign, none of the congressmen have switched to the American Independent Party, and they represent less than a fourth of congress. Nevertheless, candidate Wallace called it the “turning point of his campaign” and a “historic moment”.
Harman: Mr. Nixon, you have won all primary contests so far for the Republican Party Nomination. Do you think you will be the first since Grover Cleveland to be able to become President after losing a previous run?
Nixon: Yes, I do. The party is behind me, and the American people are behind me. They want an end to the chaos that has pervaded America in these past seven years of rule by the Democratic Party, they want a Government they can trust, and they want a return to pragmatic and common-sense conservatism, not the continuation of the failed liberal policies of the current administration.
Harman: What do you have to say about George Wallace’s campaign? He has been in the news quite a lot recently.
Nixon: I’d like to remind his supporters what happened when Teddy Roosevelt ran as a third-party candidate in 1912. He split the Republican vote, and though they together got over fifty percent of the electorate, Wilson won in a 40-state landslide with 435 electoral votes. I am the only candidate that can defeat the Democratic Party in this election, and splitting the vote will only hand the Presidency to whoever is nominated at their convention. I’d ask them: is supporting Wallace really worth having McCarthy in the White House?
Harman: Are you making a play for the South in this election? Many have suggested that Thurmond’s dissension means that that will not be a possibility.
Nixon: Wallace looks strong in the South now, yes, but that’ll change when it comes to election season. The South’s voted for the Republican Party before, it’ll vote for the Republican Party again. Especially with Johnson out of the race.
Harman: Wallace has also focused heavily on law and order, earning praise even from the Democratic Mayor of Chicago, Richard Joseph Daley. You have promised to fix the problem with policies that are generally in the same vein as his. Do you think his strong position on law and order will allow him to challenge the election in the north?
Nixon: I think Wallace is trying to embrace too many groups at the same time - southern segregationists, voters concerned with law and order and unionized workers all have very different ideologies and policy priorities, and are all over the place on the political spectrum. Besides, the voters don’t want Bull Connor’s tactics to be used in their cities, which is certainly what Wallace will enforce. Using hounds to attack children is something that should be left in the past.
LOS ANGELES, June 5th - Los Angeles Police working at the Ambassador Hotel to protect candidate Robert Francis Kennedy, the victor of yesterday’s Primary, under orders from mayor Samuel William Yorty apprehended Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, a Palestinian-Jordanian man, late last night as he attempted to enter the hotel with a Iver-Johnson Cadet revolver. The mayor, known for his rivalry with the Kennedy family ever since he endorsed Richard Milhous Nixon for the Presidency in 1960, had ordered the increased police presence to “protect the candidate against any threats against his person”, but it was seen by many as a politically charged attempt to intimidate Kennedy’s supporters and to keep them away from their candidate.
The officer who ordered a search of Sirhan, Sergeant Thomas Stanley Smith, said that he looked “suspicious” and that he was “fiddling with his pocket”. He said the suspect tried to resist the search, and was reaching his hand to his gun when another officer, Francis Joseph King, pulled out his baton and “hit him behind the head”, which “knocked the man out cold”. Sergeant Smith found a loaded gun, and told Officer King to inform the candidate before going to the precinct. A search ordered in Sirhan’s apartment early in the day found a spiral notebook, which Thomas Reddin, the Chief of the LAPD, declared to be “deeply disturbing” and included “overt celebrations of communism”, “anti-semitic rhetoric” and “virulent hatred for Senator Kennedy”. It also included a passage which read “My determination to eliminate R.F.K. is becoming the more and more [sic] of an unshakable obsession...Kennedy must die before June 5th.”
Mayor Samuel William Yorty was quick to praise the Los Angeles Police Department, calling Sergeant Smith and Officer King “heroes”, and has instructed the Board of Commissioners to consider giving them the Medal of Valor. His running mate, the First Gentleman of Alabama and candidate for the Presidency for the American Independent Party, George Corley Wallace Jr, in California for a rally held in archconservative Orange County, was equally quick to place the credit on Mayor Yorty as well, extolling his “strong and principled approach to law and order in the City of Angels” and noting Sirhan’s status as an immigrant who refused American citizenship, saying that “it is fundamental that we keep people like that, who hate our country and our values so thoroughly, outside our borders.”
When called for comment by the Los Angeles Times, Senator Kennedy’s campaign said that the candidate was “spending time with his family” and “shaken by the event”, but that he remained “dedicated to fighting for America.”
NEW YORK, June 19th - After a close and high-stakes campaign in the state of New York, Senator Kennedy’s adopted state, Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota has won a plurality of the vote in the state of New York, carrying 67 of the state’s 123 delegates. Senator Kennedy won 50, and Vice President Humphrey won 6. After a strong victory in South Dakota and a close one in California, Senator Kennedy seemed to be the favorite to win the election in his own home state, but even a wave of popular sympathy after the assassination attempt on the candidate was unable to change the fundamentals of the state, whose results were very similar to those of neighboring New Jersey, which also held its primary on the same day as South Dakota and California, and delivered a victory for McCarthy.
Many had speculated that a victory for Kennedy in New York would force McCarthy to concede the race and throw his support behind the former, but the upset has somewhat evened the playing field. With no more primaries left until the convention, both candidates remain well below the required 1,304 delegates to win the nomination, even together, and it has presented the Senator from New York with a strong blow to his claims of “electability”. President Johnson has maintained his support for Vice President Humphrey for the nomination, and it is expected that the party bosses will support his candidate. Kennedy and McCarthy now have two months until the Convention, scheduled to start in Chicago on August 26th, to convince them otherwise.
For his part, former Vice President Richard Milhous Nixon is widely expected to be the party’s nominee for the 1968 election, having won all primaries except for California, where Governor Ronald Wilson Reagan was the only name on the ticket. The Convention will be held starting on August 5th in Miami Beach, in the state of Florida, representing Nixon’s so-called “Southern Strategy”, which has remained doggedly pursued by the candidate. In a notable victory, Mr. Nixon was able to bring South Carolina Senator James Strom Thurmond back into the fold, as he withdrew his endorsement of the American Independent Party’s George Corley Wallace Jr, to consternation from South Carolinians, who have sent him hundreds of thousands of letters in complaint.
Both locations are under threat from Wallace’s appeal, who has maintained solid majorities in polls in the South and among Unionized blue-collar workers in the Midwest, including Chicago, since April.
Herman: Mr. Wallace, you have led the largest third party campaign since Theodore Roosevelt’s in 1912. You’ve portrayed yourself as a fiscal conservative, but are also strongly pro-organised labor. This has confused many, and so I want to give you an opportunity to explain yourself.
Wallace: It’s a fallacy that to be a fiscal conservative you need to be anti-labor. Just as I am strongly in favor of the men who make this country great with their hard work, I am also strongly in favor of maintaining a balanced budget, stopping wasteful government spending and minimizing the tax burden on those very same men. For example, Social Security as it currently exists is a system that I am against. It involves using money paid by those currently working to fund the retirement of those not, and this is not only immoral, but also completely unsustainable in the long term, because as birth rates fall and life expectancy rises, we have more retirees and less workers to support them. However, unlike Goldwater, I understand that Social Security is the only thing keeping large numbers of retirees from falling into abject poverty - I know, because I was born in poverty in rural Alabama - and I don’t want to eliminate it, lower benefits or harm it in any way, I just want to reform and strengthen it.
Herman: How would you reform and strengthen Social Security?
Wallace: I would create a trust fund, preventing social security taxes from being used for regular government purposes and saving them for future generations. These funds would then be invested - in what way I don’t know, I’ll have to work that out with Congress and my advisors because I’m not an economist - so that they grow with uhh… I think it’s called compound interest? Yeah, so they grow into the future, and allow the program to be sustainable long into the future, even after social security taxes are not enough on their own to cover all the costs of the program. This would prevent the accumulation of unfunded liabilities, and will make the program not only sustainable, but also moral and right, in my opinion.
Herman: Do you have any other proposals?
Wallace: Yeah, I’ll cut spending on government programs meant to support the lazy and the indolent at the expense of hard-working middle America, and I’ll use that money to pay back the national debt and lower taxes for the great majority of Americans. This will force the bums to do something useful for a change, prevent people from becoming dependent on government programs, keep the treasury healthy and allow for high and sustainable growth.
NEW YORK, June 26th - After a thirty-minute segment on CBS’s ‘Face the Nation’ this sunday raised as many questions as it answered about the candidate’s campaign and ideology, and in preparation for a rally to be held at Madison Square Garden this saturday, the American Independent Party and the Wallace-Yorty Campaign have unveiled a list of policy priorities, which represent the disparate goals of the various interest groups that the campaign is trying to represent.
It pledges a strong and uncompromising approach to law and order, including the granting of outdated military equipment such as armored vehicles to police departments throughout the nation, as well as block grants from the treasury to state and local governments for law enforcement purposes. In order to tackle the root causes of crime and disorder, the campaign promises to have HUD - to be headed by Robert Moses, who has endorsed the campaign - and Vice President Yorty work with state and local governments to export their successful policies in New York and Los Angeles to cities throughout the country in housing and infrastructure construction.
It also promises to amend the Taft-Hartley Act to prohibit right-to-work laws and remove a slew of other restrictions on union activity, in what would represent the greatest expansion of the power of organized labor in the country since the New Deal. This has caused a great challenge to union leaders, many of whom, like Walter Reuther’s UAW have condemned Wallace’s campaign as racist, but whose rank-and-file - primarily white, blue-collar industrial workers - have flooded the campaign since April. More than a dozen union leaders have already fallen after denouncing, or just refusing to endorse, Wallace, replaced with ardent supporters of the AIP candidate.
Representing its southern roots, the campaign promises to amend the civil rights act to protect the “right to free association”, to stop federal enforcement of busing and prohibit inter-district busing nationwide, to provide tax credits to support parents sending their children to private schools, to amend the Voting Rights Act to only prevent “overt racial discrimination” in voting, and get the federal government out of voter registration.
It has also promised to reform social security, cut government spending, lower taxes and pay down the national debt, as well as to “Vietnamize” the war, remove American ground troops from offensive roles by the midterms and from combat roles in general by the next general election. The campaign has stressed these are “goals”, not “promises”, and the situation may change.
SAIGON, July 11th - George Corley Wallace Jr, candidate for the Presidency of the United States for the American Independent Party, is in Saigon in the Republic of Vietnam, his first time out of the country since announcing his campaign five months ago. Since then, he has achieved significant success among voters in the south as well as among unionised blue-collar workers in the north, and has been attempting, somewhat successfully, to appeal to Western conservatives on social and fiscal issues. As Richard Milhous Nixon, the clear frontrunner for the Republican Nomination, gears up his campaign for the general election ahead of the convention, and the Democratic Party remains bitterly split between Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Eugene Joseph McCarthy and Robert Francis Kennedy for the nomination, Wallace has taken advantage of this slowdown in the campaign to burnish his foreign policy credentials.
Wallace travelled with former Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force General Curtis Emerson LeMay, who has endorsed the campaign, and met with COMUSMACV Creighton Williams Abrams Jr. as he visited the troops at Tan Son Nhut Air Base, outside Saigon. He talked about his experience as a crew member in a B-29 of the 468th Bombardment Group, stationed in the Mariana Islands as part of the 20th Air Force, which was commanded by General LeMay at the time. LeMay, for his part, criticised the approach of the Johnson Administration to the Air War as “useless” and “weak”, and repeated his vociferous opposition, as seen during his stint as Chief of Staff during the early years, to the Administration’s position to not use strategic bombing against North Vietnam.
He also met with President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu at the Independence Palace in Saigon, where they discussed military, economic and academic cooperation between America and South Vietnam. Having been given the authority to do so by his wife, the Governor of Alabama, they came to an agreement over cooperation between universities in South Vietnam and the University of Alabama, with the University creating a satellite campus in Saigon, staffed with American professors and maintained by the South Vietnamese government.
Wallace will remain in Vietnam for a few more days, as he will visit Elliot Combat Base, commonly known as the Rockpile, close to the border, to “gain on-the-ground knowledge of the Vietnam War” and “become prepared to manage the war when he becomes President”, before returning back stateside in time for a rally in Nashville, Tennessee, later this month.
Herman: You have endorsed George Wallace for President of the United States. Will you be playing a role in his potential administration’s policy for the Air War in Vietnam?
LeMay: Yes.
Herman: Can you elaborate?
LeMay: The future strategy of the United States Air Force is a matter of national security, so I cannot. However, I am able to tell you that we will be taking the kid gloves off.
Herman: What do you mean?
LeMay: I was in charge of the bombing of Japan during the end of the Pacific War as the commander of the Twentieth Air Force. We won because we didn’t discriminate between civilian and military targets, primarily because the Japanese were producing military equipment in civilian neighborhoods. And, of course, the nuclear bomb. I don’t see why our approach to Vietnam should be any different.
Herman: Are you saying you would drop the nuclear bomb on Vietnam?
LeMay: I wouldn’t be the one making those decisions. If we win the election, I mean. Personally, I don’t see why not, and I don’t understand the phobia the American population has against the use of nuclear bombs, as they saved hundreds of thousands of lives in Japan. To this day we are still using the purple hearts which were made for that invasion, and we aren’t even close to running out. I tried to convince the candidate to do so if he was in that position, but he wouldn’t budge. So, I’ve been instructed to tell you that a Wallace campaign would not drop the nuclear bomb on Vietnam.
Herman: So what will the approach be?
LeMay: If I get my way, the same we had in Japan. The reason we’re losing this war is that we’re trying to defeat the Communists without actually defeating the Communists. I was saying this from the very beginning, but McNamara ignored me. So, we’re going to Vietnamize the war by making the ARVN competent, and then we’ll bomb North Vietnam into the Stone Age. Unless they grow some sense and come running to us to plead for peace, of course.
That's the first update. I'll try to get another one out for you guys soon, but this took a while, so I can't guarantee anything. I can already see two questions popping up, so here's the preemptive answers:
- I believe that the establishment would not have gone with RFK because Johnson wouldn't allow it. They despised each other since, well, forever, and RFK would never lower himself to the point where LBJ would find himself satisfied enough to let the party go. And the party would have obeyed Johnson, as it always did, because the man was a menace. So Humphrey would get the nomination anyway, even with both Kennedy and McCarthy together. Also, McCarthy would not have supported Kennedy, nor would Kennedy McCarthy, because they also weren't friends with each other - McCarthy thought that Kennedy was an opportunist, and McCarthy was, well, McCarthy.
- LeMay wanted to support Nixon, yes, but Wallace would've given him a better deal, and Wallace ITTL looks like he has a shot at winning. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter, because LeMay wasn't really that popular even among conservative republican circles, who at this time were dominated by Reagan and, to some extent, Goldwater. It's just there for future reference, and so I could rope in him talking with the troops in Vietnam, and so the campaign has some setbacks. It can't be all sunshine and rainbows for George Wallace, after all.
A lot of it is stuff that Wallace never said, like the whole reforming social security thing, but that I'd think is reasonable as an attempt to appeal to fiscal conservatives without, you know, shooting himself in the foot like Goldwater did. I'd like to know how you think people would response, as well as, of course, the whole nukes thing. Oh yeah, and I didn't talk about quite a few things, like Warren's resignation, on purpose. I'm only going to be talking about things that are impacted by Wallace's different campaign - just because otherwise it'd just be full of IRL happenings. I'll probably have to change that when we get to him being president, but while LBJ is President there won't really be a very big difference. Feel free to ask questions, or give any feedback. Some things will be explained at a later date.
I've been thinking about this for a while, and formed an account to write this. I apologize if its a bit ASB-y, but basically the POD is a combination of Lurleen Wallace not getting cancer in 1961 and the US's population being a bit more conservative on civil rights in the late 1960s. This makes Wallace more confident, as he has a strong base in Alabama to come back to even if he loses the election, and it also makes right-wing democrats in general (notably Sam Yorty in California) more willing to support him. For his part, Yorty was certainly a... character. He was a member of a segregated club, and had a not-nice response to the Watt Riots in 1965, and he also endorsed Nixon twice, so it's not like he'd dislike Wallace all that much, nor was he all that loyal to the Democratic Party, running every single time without the blessing of the Democratic Party, and in 1965 against a Democratic Candidate. I actually got the idea from New Campaign Trail - in the Wallace v Goldwater v McCarthy 1964 one, he can get Yorty as a running mate. He was also really bored of being mayor, doing basically nothing after 1971. Anyway, I'll stop my rambling here.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
AFL-CIO BREAKS WITH DEMOCRATS!
AFL-CIO BREAKS WITH DEMOCRATS!
CHICAGO, April 4th - Yesterday, in conjunction with a rally held by American Independent Party Candidate, former governor of Alabama and segregationist politician George Corley Wallace Jr. in the Chicago Stadium, William George Meany, the President of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, commonly known as the AFL-CIO, has officially declared the neutrality of the organisation in the upcoming presidential election. This comes after President Lyndon Baines Johnson unexpectedly withdrew his candidacy for the Presidency after a shockingly close result in the New Hampshire Primary last month, leaving United States Senator for Minnesota Eugene Joseph McCarthy and United States Senator for New York Robert Francis Kennedy as the current frontrunners in the Democratic Party Primaries.
The candidate of the American Independent Party declared his intent to increase protection for American Industry and repeal parts of the Taft-Hartley Act, such as those allowing right-to-work laws and prohibiting closed shops, to a raucous crowd, primarily consisting of white Steelworkers and other AFL-CIO members. This comes as a repudiation of the Southern political tradition of anti-Union politics, and flies in the face of Alabama’s position as a right-to-work state. However, analysis by the Associated Press suggests that in a political scene so dominated by segregation and state’s rights, this is not expected to cause the candidate to lose any support among his base. It remains to be seen if this will have the intended effect of syphoning support away from the Democratic Party.
Candidate Wallace said the following when asked for his reasoning behind this announcement: “I have always fought for the working man against the elite that despises him. Though Alabama is a right-to-work state, I have always stood behind the men who work to make this country great, and the unions who fight for them. We have been endorsed in Alabama by nearly every local in our state: textiles workers, paper workers, steel workers, rubber workers, you name it. We’ve been endorsed by the working people of our state. Regardless of what they might say, your national leaders, my wife carried every labor box in 1966, when she ran for governor of Alabama in the primary and the general election, when she was elected the first female governor in Alabama’s history. I also was endorsed by labor when I was elected governor in 1962. Alabama is a large industrial state - Birmingham is the Pittsburgh of the South - and you can’t be elected governor there without the support of organised labor.”
Richard Joseph Daley, the Democratic Mayor of Chicago since 1955, could not be reached for comment by the Associated Press.
TRANSCRIPT FROM ‘FACE THE NATION’ ON CBS NEWS
APRIL 12TH, 1970
GUEST: WILLIAM GEORGE MEANY
APRIL 12TH, 1970
GUEST: WILLIAM GEORGE MEANY
George Herman: Many on the left blame you for the election of George Wallace to the Presidency of the United States in 1968. They say that if the AFL-CIO had stood behind Hubert Humphrey it could’ve stopped the haemorrhaging of the union vote from the Democratic Ticket to that of the current President. What do you have to say about that?
George Meany: The AFL-CIO is a very decentralised organisation, something which is required due to the fact that it represents tens of millions of workers in dozens of industries. I don’t have that much influence in it, nor does the AFL-CIO have that much influence over its constituent unions. The AFL and the CIO are very different institutions by themselves, which almost derailed the merger in the first place. I personally voted for and supported Humphrey, as did many of the member unions of the AFL-CIO, but many unions themselves supported Wallace, and I have nothing against that. He combined Humphrey’s pro-union policies and Nixon’s law and order, while at the same being stronger than both in both. He was the perfect candidate for the rank-and-file, and for much of the leadership too. You saw that with both the UMW and the Teamsters supporting Wallace’s candidacy, two unions over whom I have no control.
Herman: Do you think the President has kept his word to the unions?
Meany: I think he’s done the best he can. He’s put new tariffs and restrictions on imports, which has helped both unions and industry, and he stood up against Japan, which may be poor foreign policy, but it also worked to help the unions. He also introduced his amendment to Taft-Wartner within his first hundred days, and I have nothing but praise for that amendment, but he hasn’t been able to secure the necessary congressional support. I believe that his coalition of segregationists, conservatives and organised labour is not sustainable.
Herman: What do you think is needed for the amendment to pass?
Meany: For there to be a chance for that amendment to pass into law, President Wallace needs a strong showing in the midterms - something that doesn’t look very likely. He’s proven unable or unwilling to negotiate with liberals, and conservatives are not likely to support union rights - which is why the unions have always supported liberal candidates. I hope that those who voted for Wallace will realise their mistake, and return to supporting candidates that have their interests first.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
MAYOR DALEY AND CANDIDATE WALLACE CONDEMN RIOTS
MAYOR DALEY AND CANDIDATE WALLACE CONDEMN RIOTS
CHICAGO, April 6th - After the assassination of Martin Luther King on the 4th, riots have erupted throughout the United States, with special damage coming to the Windy City. Having come off one of the largest rallies ever held in Chicago the previous day, candidate Wallace was forced to delay his plans to travel back to Montgomery, and addressed a crowd of reporters outside his house. He called on the Mayor to protect the “good, hard working people of Chicago” from the “mobs of looters and rioters”, and to give the Police “permission and orders to disperse the barbarians.” When asked to comment about the assassination of Martin Luther King, the candidate dodged the question, stating that “there has been a total abdication of responsibility in this country over the past five years. The riots - both now and last summer - are simply the final straw in what we can accept. When I am President, I will crack down severely on disorder and I will wield the power of the federal government to protect Americans and not to force integration on the states.”
Mayor Richard Joseph Daley held a press conference that same day where he condemned the riots as well, and called on their perpetrators to return to their homes or “face severe consequences”. Alongside announcing a number of temporary restrictions, such as enacting a curfew for those under twenty one, closing the streets to automobile trafficking and halting the sales of guns and ammunition, he was asked by a reporter of the Tribune on his response to Wallace’s statements earlier in the day. The mayor responded that he agreed with the candidate’s sentiment, stating that there must be no toleration for disorder and disobedience of the law under any competent administration, but that his words were “divisive”. This has widely been recognized as a not-so-subtle jab at the Johnson Administration, which has presided over a period of chaos and civil disobedience unheard of in American history.
The mayor was also asked who he was endorsing for President, where he replied that he was a faithful member of the Democratic Party, but did not elaborate. He did, however, announce his support for Wallace’s policy to strengthen labour unions and his support for law and order - both of whom are incredibly popular amongst his base in the white working class of the city. The apparent reluctance of one of the most powerful men in the Democratic Party to support either of the two candidates who seem most likely to win the election - McCarthy and Kennedy - and his long-held distaste of the liberalism that pervades both candidacies has left questions in the air as to the unity of the Democratic Party.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
CIVIL RIGHTS BILL DIES IN COMMITTEE
CIVIL RIGHTS BILL DIES IN COMMITTEE
WASHINGTON, April 11th - Called by the President on the 5th to get moving on the Civil Rights Bill, in committee since 1966, the House Rules Committee, chaired by William Meyers Colmer (D-MS6) a noted segregationist and signatory to the 1956 Southern Manifesto, was poised to finally approve the bill for voting in the house. However, a filibuster by southern members of the committee, rules-lawyering by the Chairman, and immense pressure from conservative and ethnic groups for both Democrats and Republicans, meant that by April 10th the bill was rejected by the committee by a narrow margin and on bipartisan lines. It seems that representative Colmer’s argument that “the United States does not bow down to, nor does it negotiate with, terrorists” touched a chord with the committee, though it was denounced by liberals on both sides of the aisle as inflammatory and offensive.
This represents a major defeat for the President, who had directed much of his political capital towards pushing for the bill, but an immense victory for the conservatives and dixiecrats in Congress, who have been able to prevent the entrance of another civil rights bill onto the floor, where it would most likely pass with ease. It also represents another stunning victory for American Independent Party Candidate George Corley Wallace Jr., just a week after the AFL-CIO declared its neutrality in the campaign and Mayor Richard Joseph Daley of Chicago seemed to agree with him on law and order. The candidate had flown in from Chicago to lobby against the bill, and was successful in uniting the southern caucus and getting enough non-southern representatives to stall for long enough for the proposal to become moot.
Due to the strong response of both local and federal authorities against the riots which preceded this decision, and followed the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, have not picked up in any significant form due to this decision. The President is reported to be furious, but his focus on containing the civil unrest and organizing a response with local and state authorities meant that he was unable to use his own persuasive skill to push the assignment pass the committee and onto the floor, and analysts suggest it may be too late. The Washington Star was able to reach candidate Wallace for a statement and, when asked on what he thought of the Kerner Commission’s findings, he said: “Any attempt to take away responsibility from the monsters who engaged in this cruel and uncalled for violence is detestable, and, as I see it, tantamount to treason. However, I do recognize that living conditions in large northern cities - those bastions of civil rights - are detestable, and will therefore appoint Robert Moses as my Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. His record in New York is impeccable, and it was one of the few cities not to suffer these devastating riots.”
ASSOCIATED PRESS
MAYOR YORTY JOINS WALLACE AS VICE PRESIDENT
MAYOR YORTY JOINS WALLACE AS VICE PRESIDENT
LOS ANGELES, April 21st - Samuel William Yorty, the Democratic Mayor of Los Angeles, has announced his endorsement of the Candidate of the American Independent Party for President of the United States of America, George Corley Wallace Jr. At a rally held by the Candidate at Long Beach Arena, the Mayor was introduced by the candidate, who announced Yorty as the American Independent Party’s nominee for Vice President of the United States of America, and praised his response to the 1965 Watts Riots, which he credited for the lack of civil disturbances in Los Angeles since the assassination of rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Though the Mayor has feuded extensively with the Democratic Party - having endorsed Richard Nixon for President in 1960, and celebrated after Republican Governor Ronald Reagan defeated Democratic Nominee and Incumbent Governor Edmund Gerald “Pat” Brown in 1966 - this comes as a shock nonetheless.
The Mayor then gave a speech to a crowd of around ten thousand Angelenos, almost exclusively white, where he pledged to bring his fight against the “little ruling clique” to the nation’s capital and to export Los Angeles’ success to cities across America, to towering applause. The arena had a noted lack of confederate flags - once a mainstay in Wallace’s rallies, but less and less prominent in recent times as the candidate has tried to expand his attractiveness beyond the south. Confederate sympathisers were replaced in large part by members of the John Birch Society, who have come out in force in support of Wallace as the “only candidate willing to fight for America”, though the organisation itself is yet to endorse any specific candidate, in large part due to Wallace’s friendliness with unions and organised labor.
After the rally, the two candidates held a press conference, where Sam Yorty defended himself against accusations of racism for supporting Wallace’s candidacy. “George Wallace is not a racist - in fact, he was supported by the NAACP in his first run for governor in 1958. We both simply believe that people should have the right to associate with whomever they want to, and that local affairs should be left for state and local governments, not decided by the eastern establishment and its clique in Washington he said, and Wallace added that “Mayor Yorty here has succeeded in defeating the brutes in Los Angeles with his strong reaction to the Watt Riots of ‘65. I sincerely believe that we will be able to return peace, prosperity, law and order to America, if our ticket wins the Presidential Election. And, unlike the Republicans and the Democrats, we won’t do so by selling our souls to Moscow and bowing before the bust of Stalin.”
TRANSCRIPT FROM ‘FACE THE NATION’ ON CBS NEWS
MAY 5TH, 1968
GUESTS: SAMUEL WILLIAM YORTY
MAY 5TH, 1968
GUESTS: SAMUEL WILLIAM YORTY
Herman: You shocked almost all of America when you declared that you would be joining George Wallace’s campaign for President as his running mate. Can you explain why?
Yorty: Well, Herman, George Wallace came to me even before he did that speech in Chicago, before Johnson left the race. He offered me the Vice Presidency then and there
Herman: Really? Why did you wait a month until you accepted? What changed your mind?
Yorty: Well, I’ve fulfilled my promises to the people of Los Angeles. I brought peace back to the streets after the Watts Riot, I fixed waste management and I expanded the freeway system. I’ve been looking for ways to work to better the lives of more Californians and Americans ever since - I ran for Governor in ‘66, after all - and being Vice President would give me a platform to expand what worked in Los Angeles to the rest of the country’s towns and cities. However, Wallace looked like a fantasy back in March, so I decided to make sure he had a shot before joining his campaign.
Herman: Do you think he has a shot at winning?
Yorty: Yes, I do. You’ve seen the polls - he has a majority of the Union Vote, and he looks poised to sweep the south. I doubt we’ll win the election outright, but we’ll take it to the house, and who knows what’ll happen then?
Herman: Don’t you think the state delegations will vote for the Democratic Party’s candidate? They have a majority, after all.
Yorty: I’ve been in the Democratic Party all my life, and so has Wallace, and I can tell you that they’re not happy with McCarthy. You saw what Mayor Daley of Chicago said after the riots. Wallace has also proved able to deal with Congress - you can thank him for keeping that bill in Committee earlier in the month. We have a great shot at winning.
Herman: What do you have to say for people who are afraid of a Wallace-Yorty administration?
Yorty: I’d like to tell them that they have nothing to worry about. We’re here to protect America from its enemies, domestic and foreign, not betray its citizens.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WALLACE OPENS RALLY WITH PRAYER
WALLACE OPENS RALLY WITH PRAYER
ATLANTA, May 7th - Back in the south after a trip that took him from Washington in the District of Columbia to Los Angeles in California, the First Gentleman of Alabama held a rally in Atlanta yesterday outside the State Capitol, being introduced by the Governor of Georgia, Lester Garfield Maddox Sr., to the rousing cheers of the crowd, who announced his endorsement for the candidate’s campaign. Wallace looked back in his element, as the crowds chanted the tripartite motto of his successful 1962 gubernatorial campaign and waved confederate flags. Unlike in Chicago, the candidate barely mentioned unions, but vehemently reinforced his support for the working man, and promised to stop “stealing from hard-working Americans to pay for hippies and bums to live off of others” to loud applause.
Denouncing the War on Poverty as a cowardly attempt by a deeply unpopular presidency to buy votes from the dregs of society, he promised to guarantee good wages and ample employment to those who want to work, and to stop “using their tax dollars to subsidize degeneracy and laziness”. An attempt by the Wallace campaign to unite organized labor and fiscal conservatives, it remains to be seen how successful this will be, as these two voting blocks have been at each other’s throats since their founding. It seems to have been well received by the latter, but AFL-CIO president George Meany criticized them, though Wallace remains incredibly popular with the rank-and-file.
Of more interest, however, is the manner in which Wallace opened his rally. Denouncing the Warren Court’s decision in Engel v. Vitale (1962) as “an attack on Christianity'' and calling it “the work of lobbyists in Moscow”, he introduced fellow southerner and segregationist Jerry Laymon Falwell Sr, a Baptist pastor and televangelist from Lynchburg, Virginia, who has grown famous as the host of the Old Time Gospel Hour on Radio and Television. Falwell led the thousands of people in the rally in prayer. In his sermon, he called for the great “moral majority” of America to unite in defense of their values against secular liberalism and their proponents, the “pseudo-intellectual elites” who “look down in disgust on the average American”.
Falwell’s decision to endorse Wallace has caused an outpouring of support from pastors and congregations of the Southern Baptist Convention, though no major figures have yet come in support of Wallace’s campaign, including Billy Graham, whose endorsement Wallace is said to have sought. However, this is widely expected to strengthen Wallace’s dominance in the south.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
A NEW SOUTHERN MANIFESTO?
A NEW SOUTHERN MANIFESTO?
WASHINGTON, May 13th - Following his victory in preventing the Civil Rights Bill from being put to a vote in the floor of the House, Southern officials from both the Democratic and the Republican Party have come under immense pressure to endorse George Corley Wallace Jr, the candidate of the American Independent Party, for President of the United States. As the only man to have achieved any meaningful success in the fight against the expansion of civil rights in America, and at the head of a candidacy that seems more likely by the day to have a shot at winning the Presidency, the offices of these senators and congressmen, and even statewide officials, have been flooded by thousands of letters from their constituents, asking them to support his candidacy, some even going as far as asking them to join the American Independent Party - “to give President Wallace a base in Congress” according to one letter from an Alabamian to Senator John Jackson Sparkman.
Well over a hundred congressmen - both senators and representatives - signed what many have called the second Southern Manifesto, endorsing the candidate of the American Independent Party for President, denouncing the President’s inability to defend Americans from riots and disorder and to bring the war in Vietnam to a favorable conclusion, as well as his policies to use tax dollars to subsidize “unacceptable behaviors” - echoing Wallace’s language in Georgia. Extensive lobbying from labor unions and lingering resentment over desegregation delivered both the senators from West Virginia - Robert Carlyle Byrd and Jennings Randolph - as well as the rest of the state’s delegation - to Wallace’s camp, over fears of McCarthy being the party’s nominee and the United Mine Workers’ endorsement of Wallace a month prior.
Of note was the presence of one of the few Republican senators in the South, James Strom Thurmond Jr of South Carolina, who had joined the Party during the 1964 Republican Campaign of Barry Morris Goldwater. Though he had previously intended to extract concessions from President Nixon, he was forced by hundreds of thousands of letters from his constituents throughout South Carolina to support Wallace’s candidacy. This represents a great rebuke of the so-called “Southern Strategy”, which after being driven to complete defeat in 1964 seems to have lost its greatest supporter in the form of the Senator from South Carolina. Though this is a major victory for the Wallace Yorty Campaign, none of the congressmen have switched to the American Independent Party, and they represent less than a fourth of congress. Nevertheless, candidate Wallace called it the “turning point of his campaign” and a “historic moment”.
TRANSCRIPT FROM ‘FACE THE NATION’ ON CBS NEWS
MAY 19TH, 1968
GUEST: RICHARD MILHOUS NIXON
MAY 19TH, 1968
GUEST: RICHARD MILHOUS NIXON
Harman: Mr. Nixon, you have won all primary contests so far for the Republican Party Nomination. Do you think you will be the first since Grover Cleveland to be able to become President after losing a previous run?
Nixon: Yes, I do. The party is behind me, and the American people are behind me. They want an end to the chaos that has pervaded America in these past seven years of rule by the Democratic Party, they want a Government they can trust, and they want a return to pragmatic and common-sense conservatism, not the continuation of the failed liberal policies of the current administration.
Harman: What do you have to say about George Wallace’s campaign? He has been in the news quite a lot recently.
Nixon: I’d like to remind his supporters what happened when Teddy Roosevelt ran as a third-party candidate in 1912. He split the Republican vote, and though they together got over fifty percent of the electorate, Wilson won in a 40-state landslide with 435 electoral votes. I am the only candidate that can defeat the Democratic Party in this election, and splitting the vote will only hand the Presidency to whoever is nominated at their convention. I’d ask them: is supporting Wallace really worth having McCarthy in the White House?
Harman: Are you making a play for the South in this election? Many have suggested that Thurmond’s dissension means that that will not be a possibility.
Nixon: Wallace looks strong in the South now, yes, but that’ll change when it comes to election season. The South’s voted for the Republican Party before, it’ll vote for the Republican Party again. Especially with Johnson out of the race.
Harman: Wallace has also focused heavily on law and order, earning praise even from the Democratic Mayor of Chicago, Richard Joseph Daley. You have promised to fix the problem with policies that are generally in the same vein as his. Do you think his strong position on law and order will allow him to challenge the election in the north?
Nixon: I think Wallace is trying to embrace too many groups at the same time - southern segregationists, voters concerned with law and order and unionized workers all have very different ideologies and policy priorities, and are all over the place on the political spectrum. Besides, the voters don’t want Bull Connor’s tactics to be used in their cities, which is certainly what Wallace will enforce. Using hounds to attack children is something that should be left in the past.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
KENNEDY ASSASSINATION PREVENTED BY LOS ANGELES POLICE
KENNEDY ASSASSINATION PREVENTED BY LOS ANGELES POLICE
LOS ANGELES, June 5th - Los Angeles Police working at the Ambassador Hotel to protect candidate Robert Francis Kennedy, the victor of yesterday’s Primary, under orders from mayor Samuel William Yorty apprehended Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, a Palestinian-Jordanian man, late last night as he attempted to enter the hotel with a Iver-Johnson Cadet revolver. The mayor, known for his rivalry with the Kennedy family ever since he endorsed Richard Milhous Nixon for the Presidency in 1960, had ordered the increased police presence to “protect the candidate against any threats against his person”, but it was seen by many as a politically charged attempt to intimidate Kennedy’s supporters and to keep them away from their candidate.
The officer who ordered a search of Sirhan, Sergeant Thomas Stanley Smith, said that he looked “suspicious” and that he was “fiddling with his pocket”. He said the suspect tried to resist the search, and was reaching his hand to his gun when another officer, Francis Joseph King, pulled out his baton and “hit him behind the head”, which “knocked the man out cold”. Sergeant Smith found a loaded gun, and told Officer King to inform the candidate before going to the precinct. A search ordered in Sirhan’s apartment early in the day found a spiral notebook, which Thomas Reddin, the Chief of the LAPD, declared to be “deeply disturbing” and included “overt celebrations of communism”, “anti-semitic rhetoric” and “virulent hatred for Senator Kennedy”. It also included a passage which read “My determination to eliminate R.F.K. is becoming the more and more [sic] of an unshakable obsession...Kennedy must die before June 5th.”
Mayor Samuel William Yorty was quick to praise the Los Angeles Police Department, calling Sergeant Smith and Officer King “heroes”, and has instructed the Board of Commissioners to consider giving them the Medal of Valor. His running mate, the First Gentleman of Alabama and candidate for the Presidency for the American Independent Party, George Corley Wallace Jr, in California for a rally held in archconservative Orange County, was equally quick to place the credit on Mayor Yorty as well, extolling his “strong and principled approach to law and order in the City of Angels” and noting Sirhan’s status as an immigrant who refused American citizenship, saying that “it is fundamental that we keep people like that, who hate our country and our values so thoroughly, outside our borders.”
When called for comment by the Los Angeles Times, Senator Kennedy’s campaign said that the candidate was “spending time with his family” and “shaken by the event”, but that he remained “dedicated to fighting for America.”
ASSOCIATED PRESS
MCCARTHY WINS NEW YORK PRIMARY
MCCARTHY WINS NEW YORK PRIMARY
NEW YORK, June 19th - After a close and high-stakes campaign in the state of New York, Senator Kennedy’s adopted state, Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota has won a plurality of the vote in the state of New York, carrying 67 of the state’s 123 delegates. Senator Kennedy won 50, and Vice President Humphrey won 6. After a strong victory in South Dakota and a close one in California, Senator Kennedy seemed to be the favorite to win the election in his own home state, but even a wave of popular sympathy after the assassination attempt on the candidate was unable to change the fundamentals of the state, whose results were very similar to those of neighboring New Jersey, which also held its primary on the same day as South Dakota and California, and delivered a victory for McCarthy.
Many had speculated that a victory for Kennedy in New York would force McCarthy to concede the race and throw his support behind the former, but the upset has somewhat evened the playing field. With no more primaries left until the convention, both candidates remain well below the required 1,304 delegates to win the nomination, even together, and it has presented the Senator from New York with a strong blow to his claims of “electability”. President Johnson has maintained his support for Vice President Humphrey for the nomination, and it is expected that the party bosses will support his candidate. Kennedy and McCarthy now have two months until the Convention, scheduled to start in Chicago on August 26th, to convince them otherwise.
For his part, former Vice President Richard Milhous Nixon is widely expected to be the party’s nominee for the 1968 election, having won all primaries except for California, where Governor Ronald Wilson Reagan was the only name on the ticket. The Convention will be held starting on August 5th in Miami Beach, in the state of Florida, representing Nixon’s so-called “Southern Strategy”, which has remained doggedly pursued by the candidate. In a notable victory, Mr. Nixon was able to bring South Carolina Senator James Strom Thurmond back into the fold, as he withdrew his endorsement of the American Independent Party’s George Corley Wallace Jr, to consternation from South Carolinians, who have sent him hundreds of thousands of letters in complaint.
Both locations are under threat from Wallace’s appeal, who has maintained solid majorities in polls in the South and among Unionized blue-collar workers in the Midwest, including Chicago, since April.
TRANSCRIPT FROM ‘FACE THE NATION’ ON CBS NEWS
JUNE 23RD, 1968
GUEST: GEORGE CORLEY WALLACE JR
JUNE 23RD, 1968
GUEST: GEORGE CORLEY WALLACE JR
Herman: Mr. Wallace, you have led the largest third party campaign since Theodore Roosevelt’s in 1912. You’ve portrayed yourself as a fiscal conservative, but are also strongly pro-organised labor. This has confused many, and so I want to give you an opportunity to explain yourself.
Wallace: It’s a fallacy that to be a fiscal conservative you need to be anti-labor. Just as I am strongly in favor of the men who make this country great with their hard work, I am also strongly in favor of maintaining a balanced budget, stopping wasteful government spending and minimizing the tax burden on those very same men. For example, Social Security as it currently exists is a system that I am against. It involves using money paid by those currently working to fund the retirement of those not, and this is not only immoral, but also completely unsustainable in the long term, because as birth rates fall and life expectancy rises, we have more retirees and less workers to support them. However, unlike Goldwater, I understand that Social Security is the only thing keeping large numbers of retirees from falling into abject poverty - I know, because I was born in poverty in rural Alabama - and I don’t want to eliminate it, lower benefits or harm it in any way, I just want to reform and strengthen it.
Herman: How would you reform and strengthen Social Security?
Wallace: I would create a trust fund, preventing social security taxes from being used for regular government purposes and saving them for future generations. These funds would then be invested - in what way I don’t know, I’ll have to work that out with Congress and my advisors because I’m not an economist - so that they grow with uhh… I think it’s called compound interest? Yeah, so they grow into the future, and allow the program to be sustainable long into the future, even after social security taxes are not enough on their own to cover all the costs of the program. This would prevent the accumulation of unfunded liabilities, and will make the program not only sustainable, but also moral and right, in my opinion.
Herman: Do you have any other proposals?
Wallace: Yeah, I’ll cut spending on government programs meant to support the lazy and the indolent at the expense of hard-working middle America, and I’ll use that money to pay back the national debt and lower taxes for the great majority of Americans. This will force the bums to do something useful for a change, prevent people from becoming dependent on government programs, keep the treasury healthy and allow for high and sustainable growth.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WALLACE-YORTY CAMPAIGN UNVEIL POLICY PRIORITIES
WALLACE-YORTY CAMPAIGN UNVEIL POLICY PRIORITIES
NEW YORK, June 26th - After a thirty-minute segment on CBS’s ‘Face the Nation’ this sunday raised as many questions as it answered about the candidate’s campaign and ideology, and in preparation for a rally to be held at Madison Square Garden this saturday, the American Independent Party and the Wallace-Yorty Campaign have unveiled a list of policy priorities, which represent the disparate goals of the various interest groups that the campaign is trying to represent.
It pledges a strong and uncompromising approach to law and order, including the granting of outdated military equipment such as armored vehicles to police departments throughout the nation, as well as block grants from the treasury to state and local governments for law enforcement purposes. In order to tackle the root causes of crime and disorder, the campaign promises to have HUD - to be headed by Robert Moses, who has endorsed the campaign - and Vice President Yorty work with state and local governments to export their successful policies in New York and Los Angeles to cities throughout the country in housing and infrastructure construction.
It also promises to amend the Taft-Hartley Act to prohibit right-to-work laws and remove a slew of other restrictions on union activity, in what would represent the greatest expansion of the power of organized labor in the country since the New Deal. This has caused a great challenge to union leaders, many of whom, like Walter Reuther’s UAW have condemned Wallace’s campaign as racist, but whose rank-and-file - primarily white, blue-collar industrial workers - have flooded the campaign since April. More than a dozen union leaders have already fallen after denouncing, or just refusing to endorse, Wallace, replaced with ardent supporters of the AIP candidate.
Representing its southern roots, the campaign promises to amend the civil rights act to protect the “right to free association”, to stop federal enforcement of busing and prohibit inter-district busing nationwide, to provide tax credits to support parents sending their children to private schools, to amend the Voting Rights Act to only prevent “overt racial discrimination” in voting, and get the federal government out of voter registration.
It has also promised to reform social security, cut government spending, lower taxes and pay down the national debt, as well as to “Vietnamize” the war, remove American ground troops from offensive roles by the midterms and from combat roles in general by the next general election. The campaign has stressed these are “goals”, not “promises”, and the situation may change.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WALLACE VISITS SAIGON
WALLACE VISITS SAIGON
SAIGON, July 11th - George Corley Wallace Jr, candidate for the Presidency of the United States for the American Independent Party, is in Saigon in the Republic of Vietnam, his first time out of the country since announcing his campaign five months ago. Since then, he has achieved significant success among voters in the south as well as among unionised blue-collar workers in the north, and has been attempting, somewhat successfully, to appeal to Western conservatives on social and fiscal issues. As Richard Milhous Nixon, the clear frontrunner for the Republican Nomination, gears up his campaign for the general election ahead of the convention, and the Democratic Party remains bitterly split between Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Eugene Joseph McCarthy and Robert Francis Kennedy for the nomination, Wallace has taken advantage of this slowdown in the campaign to burnish his foreign policy credentials.
Wallace travelled with former Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force General Curtis Emerson LeMay, who has endorsed the campaign, and met with COMUSMACV Creighton Williams Abrams Jr. as he visited the troops at Tan Son Nhut Air Base, outside Saigon. He talked about his experience as a crew member in a B-29 of the 468th Bombardment Group, stationed in the Mariana Islands as part of the 20th Air Force, which was commanded by General LeMay at the time. LeMay, for his part, criticised the approach of the Johnson Administration to the Air War as “useless” and “weak”, and repeated his vociferous opposition, as seen during his stint as Chief of Staff during the early years, to the Administration’s position to not use strategic bombing against North Vietnam.
He also met with President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu at the Independence Palace in Saigon, where they discussed military, economic and academic cooperation between America and South Vietnam. Having been given the authority to do so by his wife, the Governor of Alabama, they came to an agreement over cooperation between universities in South Vietnam and the University of Alabama, with the University creating a satellite campus in Saigon, staffed with American professors and maintained by the South Vietnamese government.
Wallace will remain in Vietnam for a few more days, as he will visit Elliot Combat Base, commonly known as the Rockpile, close to the border, to “gain on-the-ground knowledge of the Vietnam War” and “become prepared to manage the war when he becomes President”, before returning back stateside in time for a rally in Nashville, Tennessee, later this month.
TRANSCRIPT FROM ‘FACE THE NATION’ ON CBS NEWS
JULY 15TH, 1968
GUEST: CURTIS EMERSON LEMAY
JULY 15TH, 1968
GUEST: CURTIS EMERSON LEMAY
Herman: You have endorsed George Wallace for President of the United States. Will you be playing a role in his potential administration’s policy for the Air War in Vietnam?
LeMay: Yes.
Herman: Can you elaborate?
LeMay: The future strategy of the United States Air Force is a matter of national security, so I cannot. However, I am able to tell you that we will be taking the kid gloves off.
Herman: What do you mean?
LeMay: I was in charge of the bombing of Japan during the end of the Pacific War as the commander of the Twentieth Air Force. We won because we didn’t discriminate between civilian and military targets, primarily because the Japanese were producing military equipment in civilian neighborhoods. And, of course, the nuclear bomb. I don’t see why our approach to Vietnam should be any different.
Herman: Are you saying you would drop the nuclear bomb on Vietnam?
LeMay: I wouldn’t be the one making those decisions. If we win the election, I mean. Personally, I don’t see why not, and I don’t understand the phobia the American population has against the use of nuclear bombs, as they saved hundreds of thousands of lives in Japan. To this day we are still using the purple hearts which were made for that invasion, and we aren’t even close to running out. I tried to convince the candidate to do so if he was in that position, but he wouldn’t budge. So, I’ve been instructed to tell you that a Wallace campaign would not drop the nuclear bomb on Vietnam.
Herman: So what will the approach be?
LeMay: If I get my way, the same we had in Japan. The reason we’re losing this war is that we’re trying to defeat the Communists without actually defeating the Communists. I was saying this from the very beginning, but McNamara ignored me. So, we’re going to Vietnamize the war by making the ARVN competent, and then we’ll bomb North Vietnam into the Stone Age. Unless they grow some sense and come running to us to plead for peace, of course.
That's the first update. I'll try to get another one out for you guys soon, but this took a while, so I can't guarantee anything. I can already see two questions popping up, so here's the preemptive answers:
- I believe that the establishment would not have gone with RFK because Johnson wouldn't allow it. They despised each other since, well, forever, and RFK would never lower himself to the point where LBJ would find himself satisfied enough to let the party go. And the party would have obeyed Johnson, as it always did, because the man was a menace. So Humphrey would get the nomination anyway, even with both Kennedy and McCarthy together. Also, McCarthy would not have supported Kennedy, nor would Kennedy McCarthy, because they also weren't friends with each other - McCarthy thought that Kennedy was an opportunist, and McCarthy was, well, McCarthy.
- LeMay wanted to support Nixon, yes, but Wallace would've given him a better deal, and Wallace ITTL looks like he has a shot at winning. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter, because LeMay wasn't really that popular even among conservative republican circles, who at this time were dominated by Reagan and, to some extent, Goldwater. It's just there for future reference, and so I could rope in him talking with the troops in Vietnam, and so the campaign has some setbacks. It can't be all sunshine and rainbows for George Wallace, after all.
A lot of it is stuff that Wallace never said, like the whole reforming social security thing, but that I'd think is reasonable as an attempt to appeal to fiscal conservatives without, you know, shooting himself in the foot like Goldwater did. I'd like to know how you think people would response, as well as, of course, the whole nukes thing. Oh yeah, and I didn't talk about quite a few things, like Warren's resignation, on purpose. I'm only going to be talking about things that are impacted by Wallace's different campaign - just because otherwise it'd just be full of IRL happenings. I'll probably have to change that when we get to him being president, but while LBJ is President there won't really be a very big difference. Feel free to ask questions, or give any feedback. Some things will be explained at a later date.
