Lurleen Wallace faced
Republican U.S. representative
James D. Martin of
Gadsden, who had received national attention four years earlier when he mounted
a serious challenge to U.S. senator
J. Lister Hill.
Republican campaign Though no Republican had served as governor of Alabama since
David Peter Lewis vacated the office in 1874, Martin's Republican campaign appeared strong.
The New York Times predicted that Martin "not only has a chance to win the governorship, but at least for the moment must be rated as the favorite." Political writer
Theodore H. White incorrectly predicted that Alabama, instead of
Arkansas and
Florida as it developed, would in 1966 become the first former
Confederate state to elect a Republican governor. Martin was expected to cause Republican wins in down-ballot elections though there was no GOP nominee for lieutenant governor. The idea was reinforced by three legislators and a Democratic State Executive Committee member who defected to the GOP.
The New York Times said
Alabama Democrats had diverged from the national
Democratic Party so much and for so long that the party was no longer popular. Jim Martin bemoaned having to campaign against a woman and proclaimed that Wallace was a "proxy" candidate, a manifestation of her husband's "insatiable appetite for power." He declared the South must "break away from the one-party system just as we broke away from a one-crop economy" and vowed to make Alabama "first in opportunity, jobs, and education." At the state level, Martin questioned a $500,000 school book depository contract awarded to Wallace supporter
Elton B. Stephens of
Ebsco Investment Company, as well as "secret deals" regarding the construction of highways or schools" and "conspiracies between the state house and the White House." U.S. senator
Strom Thurmond and former U.S. senator
Barry Goldwater, the
1964 Republican presidential nominee, campaigned on behalf of Martin and GOP Senate nominee
John Grenier of Birmingham. Thurmond, who had carried Alabama in 1948 as the nominee of the
Dixiecrats, addressed an all-white GOP state convention, where he denounced the national Democratic leadership as "the most dangerous people in the country" and urged a "return to constitutional government." George Wallace was so irritated over Goldwater's appearance on Martin's behalf that he questioned why Goldwater could win only six states in the
1964 race against President Johnson. "Where were the Republicans when I was fighting LBJ?" Wallace asked. Goldwater shunned personal criticism of Wallace but repudiated Wallace's talk of a third party in the
1968 presidential election.
Democratic campaign Lurleen Wallace was instructed to run by her husband George Wallace, who had failed to lift the
Alabama Constitution's ban on consecutive gubernatorial terms and intended to serve as de facto leader while his wife occupied the governor seat. Amid the campaign, Lurleen underwent
radiation therapy and multiple surgeries for her cancer, regularly traveling to the
M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston due to Alabama's lack of adequate cancer treatment facilities. Though her husband knew of her diagnosis as early as 1961, she was not made aware until she went to the gynecologist for abdominal bleeding in 1965. She underwent radiation in December 1965 and had a hysterectomy in January 1966, subsequently beginning the gubernatorial campaign. It was during this 1966 campaign that George Wallace coined his famous line: "There's not a dime's worth of difference" between the two national parties." Wallace likened Republicans like House Minority Leader
Gerald Ford and
Chief Justice Earl Warren, who supported
civil rights legislation, to "vultures" presiding over the destruction of the U.S. Constitution. Lurleen Wallace used the slogan "Two Governors, One Cause" and proclaimed the words
Alabama and
freedom to be synonyms.
Results George Wallace's organization proved insurmountable despite an early poll that placed Martin within range of victory. Lurleen Wallace carried all Alabama counties except for
Greene in west Alabama, which she lost by six votes, and predominantly Republican
Winston in the north. She drew 537,505 votes (63.4 percent). Martin trailed with 262,943 votes (31 percent). A third candidate running to the political left of the major candidates, Dr. Carl Robinson, received 47,655 (5.6 percent). Martin had the best by showing of a Republican candidate for governor in Alabama since
Reconstruction. At Lurleen Wallace's January 1967 inauguration, she stated that her husband would be her "number one assistant".
Results by county ==Analysis==