Nearly fifty years after his third-party run in 1968,
George Wallace remains the most recent third-party candidate to successfully win a state, taking five in that same contest. Wallace had became nationally known for his combative, populist support for racial segregation in the south, notably for standing in the schoolhouse door to prevent black students from registering at the University of Alabama (before eventually moving aside after President Kennedy nationalized the Alabama National Guard and ordered them to allow the students to register). However, he failed in his strategy to tie the Electoral College and instead handed the presidency to Hubert Humphrey, who similarly had risen to national prominence because of his efforts on racial segregation— to end it. Wallace returned to the Democratic fold and prepared to return to the governor's office in 1970 with an eye towards challenging Humphrey in the primaries in 1972. However, the incumbent governor, Albert Brewer (who had succeeded Wallace's late wife Lurleen, who Wallace had convinced to run in his place in a naked attempt to end-run around term limits, upon her death), refused to bow out for Wallace and a bruising primary fight ensued. Brewer, a moderate who was a shining example of the generation of "New South" politicians coming after the end of Jim Crow, was backed to the hilt by the White House— although secretly, as President Humphrey remained personally unpopular in the state throughout his presidency.
With a combination of support from the national party and black voters who remembered how Wallace had proclaimed "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" less than ten years before, Brewer defeated Wallace for the Democratic nomination in spite of particularly nasty and racist attacks by the Wallace campaign. It was a tremendous blow to George Wallace's ambitions that marked the beginning of Wallace's effort (that would last the rest of his life) to rehabilitate his image. He quietly sat out the 1972 campaign, refusing offers to join the Reagan campaign and loyally proclaiming his intention to vote "straight-ballot Democrat" even as Reagan employed the law and order themes that Wallace himself had used four years earlier. Wallace similarly began to make amends with black voters and with Brewer ineligible to run in 1974, Wallace cruised to a victory in both the Democratic primaries and the general election in his triumphant return to the national stage.
Wallace wasted little time in laying the groundwork for getting the Democratic nomination in 1976, emerging as one of the top candidates to challenge Vice President Muskie by mid-1975. However, Humphrey's death changed the dynamics of the race dramatically. Most of the other candidates dropped out to support the new president, with Wallace being the only viable candidate besides Muskie to remain in the race. Despite a strong showing in the south, Wallace's loss was a foregone conclusion. Public musings about another third-party run led to Muskie privately promising Wallace that he would appoint a southern conservative to the next Supreme Court vacancy should he win a term of his own. Satisfied, Wallace announced that he would support the Democratic ticket and returned to Birmingham.
Re-elected in 1978, Wallace's national ambitions were not quite dead and he announced that he would seek the presidency for a fourth (and final) time in 1980. With a crowded field, Wallace initially emerged as one of the top-tier candidates, having strong networks of support still left over from his 1976 run. However, as the campaign progressed and candidates began to fall, Wallace slowly sunk in the polls, although adamantly refusing to withdraw even as he began to fall further and further behind in the delegate count. Finally, with South Dakota Senator George McGovern being the only candidate who could mathematically win the nomination, Wallace announced the end of his campaign and retired from presidential politics.
Retiring after the end of his third gubernatorial term being succeeded by Fob James, who years later would also run in a third-party bid for the White House, Wallace quietly spent the remainder of his life in Montgomery, Alabama. Publicly apologizing for his support for Jim Crow in the last few years of his life, George Wallace died peacefully in his sleep in May 2008, with yet another Alabama governor as the presumptive Republican nominee for president.
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