Masters Theses

Date of Award

12-1973

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

Political Science

Major Professor

Lee S. Greene

Abstract

More than four out of every ten Tennesseans (44 percent) who went to the polls in the 1968 presidential election cast their lots with a dark horse, third party candidate. Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, running on the American Party ticket, finished a strong second in the statewide polling, receiving 425,237 votes. The winner in Tennessee, Republican Richard Nixon, received 474,086 votes, defeating Wallace by a margin of 48,848 votes. Democratic candidate Hubert H. Humphrey, running for the Presidency while serving as Vice President, finished last in the polling, receiving 352,834 votes. Nationally, Governor Wallace received more than 13 percent of the popular vote. Not since the 1924 candidacy of Robert M. LaFollette had a third party candidate received a higher percent of the popular votes cast. Running on the Progressive party ticket, LaFollette captured more than 16 percent of the popular vote. LaFollettte did not receive as many electoral college votes, however, as Wallace: 13 compared to 45. One has to backstop into history more than a half a century to the 1912 election in which former President Theodore Roosevelt garnered 88 electoral votes on his Progressive ("Bull Moose") ticket to find a third party candidate who received more votes in the electoral college than did George Wallace. Several works have been written about Governor Wallace. Very little has been written about the American party which he represented in 1968. TTie literature is particularly sparse concerning the party's activities and followers in Tennessee, both in 1968 and since. The little that has been written in these areas has appeared in somewhat unrelated and abbreviated form in newspapers and magazines. One of the major purposes of this study was to obtain as much information about the Tennessee branch of the party and its leadership as possible through the utilization of at-length personal interviews, telephone calls, and statewide distribution of a six-page questionnaire especially prepared for American party officers in the state. The performance by Governor Wallace and his supporters leads to much speculation and to many questions concerning Tennessee politics and the voters of the Volunteer State. For example: Who were the people who voted for Wallace? Were they Democrats, or were they Republicans? To what degree, if any, were Wallacites organized in 1968? How organized was the party during the 1970 elections? Why did the party's candidates fair so poorly in the 1970 Tennessee elections? Are Wallace's supporters now organized across Tennessee? Is the Wallace movement a continuation of a pattern of southern sectionalism in the views of the party's leaders? Why did voters bolt from the parties of their parents and vote for a third party candidate in 1968? What did the people who voted for Wallace hope to achieve? What were their political goals? Is the Wallace movement of 1968 sui generis, or may parallels and comparisons be noted between the southern-based movement and previous third party movements in this country? Who are the leaders of the party in Tennessee and what are their beliefs? The purpose of this study was to examine some of these questions through contact with the party's leadership such as the party's state chainman and other statewide party officials, state executive committee members, county chairmen, and influential members in the campaigns and elections of 1968 and 1970. Questionnaires were sent to the 90 top ranking and most active party leaders in Tennessee, all of whom classified themselves as members of the American party. The essential point of differentiation between "members" and "nonmembers" that this phraseology assumes was a personally announced and confirmed self-identification with the party and its goals. All persons who returned the questionnaires, 53.4 percent of the total sample, confirmed party membership and actually held office when contacted or had done so recently. American party leaders participating in this study were from a wide variety of backgrounds. They shared a common bond of party leadership but they were conspicuously unalike in many other important respects. Disregarding the party bond, the trait that emerged as even perhaps more overriding and common was a pronounced sense of independence. As noted in Chapter V, a large number of the respondents are political and social mavericks — or, as they would prefer to be called, "political independents." Consequently, the statistical profile, or "average" party leader's profile presented in Chapter V, although a composite of 24 separate social and political characteristics, should be viewed as "average" only in a statistical sense. Insofar as strictly statewide elections are concerned, the phrase "American Independent Party" contains the two mutually exclusive words "independent" and "party." One of the major findings Of this work, and one that is fundamental to many of the other findings, is that Tennessee American party members are too independent to overlook divisive differences, personal preferences, and points of view to form an effective political party in statewide elections. Compromise being a critical cohesive substance of American political parties, the continued reverence for independent action could lead to the disappearance of the American party in the state.

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