I just finished read Mighty Peculiar Elections: The New South Gubernatorial Campaigns of 1970 and the Changing Politics of Race by Randy Sanders. Sanders explores four successful southern Democratic candidates for the governorship in 1970 -- Dale Bumpers, Reubin Askew, John West, and Jimmy Carter -- and how they seemed to move past the George Wallace politics of the South's recent past by employing a "new populism" based more explicitly on class than race. It's all pretty interesting stuff, but the section on Jimmay Carter's campaign is interesting for simply showing some of the dirty, often racialized tricks Carter had in store for his "big city liberal" opponent in the primary, Carl Sanders.
Carter distributed a photo of Sanders being doused with champagne by a black Atlanta Hawks basektball player during a victory celebration, a photo that became known in the Georgia media as the "champagne shampoo." Some copies were passed out by Klansmen at KKK meetings. Five days before the Democratic primary, Carter visited an Augusta police station to support two policemen charged for shooting two black men during riots in Augusta. "The main thing I want you to know is that when I am governor of Georgia, you need not ever fear I will pull the rug out from under you when you try to enforce the law against any sort of rioters or lawbreakers," Carter told the crowd of policemen that gathered to hear him. After the election, Carter's press secretary Bill Pope told the Washington Post he had helped Carter run a "nigger campaign," the very sort of white supremacy-based campaign Carter's candidacy was supposed to represent a step beyond.
Carter, of course, was more liberal than his rhetoric suggested, but decided to run right because of his opponent's support among liberals, moderates, and African Americans. He decided instead to win among George Wallace voters, a move that left him filled with regret. After the election (which he won), he called Sanders to apologize. He "prayed for forgiveness." When he ran for president in 1976, his slogan was, "I'll never lie to you."
"You won't like my campaign, but you will like my administration," he told black Atlanta leader Vernon Jordan. And in fact, Carter's term as governor was an essential part of the racial transition in southern state politics. "I want to say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over," he declared in his inaugeral address -- a pronouncement that created front page news in the national media, coming as it did from a white southern governor.
Randy Sanders' point is most explicitly that these four candidates discussed in his book all took the 1970 gubernatorial elections in their southern states to employ a "new populism" based on "common folk" -- class, really -- instead of racial divisiveness. But in the conclusion, Sanders makes the clear point that by practicing "obfuscation" on controversial issues like busing and segregation, the candidates perhaps didn't so much help the South move past racism as much as make it an issue people just don't talk about. It's hard to say that isn't better than George Wallace screaming "segregation forever," but it does make for some mighty peculiar elections.
