WI Jim Martin defeats Lister Hill in 1962?

In the 1962 Alabama Senate election Jim Martin came very close to unseating veteran Dem incumbent Lister Hill, in part by running way to his right on civil rights. Let's say Martin manages to win the seat. He joins John Tower as 1 of 2 Southern GOP senators. Can he hold that seat like Tower or will the Alabama Dems knock him off in '68? Does he start trying to build a party infrastructure earlier than OTL, seeing as IOTL Alabama just finished its Blue-Red transition in 2010?
 
Assuming the civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s gets passed as in OTL, and the Vietnam War happens, 1968 would be a very bad year for Democrats, and Martin could probably hold on to his seat. Alternatively, he might be selected as the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee to lure disaffected southerners away from Wallace. However, there is a distinct possibility that the threatened loss of the 'Solid South' would cause the Democratic Party to go much slower on civil rights, making the 1968 elections much different, or give up the South and focus on getting a strong Civil Rights agenda passed and making up the lost electoral votes in the West and Midwest (Kennedy could have won in 1960 without any Southern states if he'd carried California, Wisconsin, and Ohio. This could have meant Kennedy not going to Dallas and a very different timeline.
 
Just checked: Martin lost by roughly 6800 votes, so the smallest of butterflies should push him over the edge. In 1968 the Dems will presumably run then-LG James Allen (more conservative than many Republicans, a la Gene Taylor) as per OTL. How George Wallace reacts to a Martin victory would be interesting. Same for national Dems.

Martin, like Tower, probably tries to lock down his seat and then quietly encouraging the growth of a local GOP.

EDIT: Jim Allen is George Wallace's LG. So you can bet Wallace is going to throw everything he can at Martin in '68.
 
There's also the possibility that Wallace himself would run for the seat, either as a Democrat or an Independent. Either way, with Wallace out of the running, the South would be up for grabs, although it would take a more conservative Democratic candidate than Humphrey to win it.
 
George Wallace doesn't strike me as the sort of pol interested in being a senator.

So how do national Dems react? IIRC they didn't make a BFD about Tower the previous year, but Texas isn't Alabama. I'm sure the DC media will create even more buzz about JFK's Southern problem than IOTL by late '63. The logical next step would be elected a Deep South GOP governor, but dunno how that happens without ASB interference.
 
I doubt this affects civil rights much, but do the national Dems start worrying about their Southern hold slipping? IMO they'd only really start pantshitting if a Deep Southern state elected a Republican governor, which sounds highly unlikely at best to me.
 
An alternative could be if the GOP was a bit bolder in Mississippi in 1964.

Goldwater won the state with 87% of the vote and the GOP elected it's first House member since reconstruction. The only reason they didn't win more is because they only ran one candidate.

Had they nominated 5 house candidates and a senate candidate they might well have swept the board.

No more senator Stennis.
 
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