White Revolt

No one but his campaign manager expected George Wallace to get 260,000 votes in the Wisconsin Presidential Primary. Consequently, political commentators face the same problem sports writers had with Cassius Clay. Like Clay, Wallace won a striking and unexpected victory, though in confusing circumstances: the Alabama Governor showed that a militant segregationist could poll a quarter of the votes cast in a Northern state.

Much of his vote, it has been argued, resulted from Republicans' attempts to embarrass John Reynolds, both as governor of the state and as a favorite son candidate standing in for the Johnson Administration. There is little doubt that many Republicans did in fact cross party lines (which is easy in Wisconsin) and voted for Wallace. In some upper-income suburbs north of Milwaukee, Wallace ran ahead of both Reynolds and the Republican favorite son, Congressman John Byrnes. Wallace also ran well in the farm and small-town heartland of Joe McCarthy, near Appleton and Oshkosh.

But it is unclear how many of Wallace's votes came from Republicans. If the state's usual political alignment is considered, there may have been as many as 150,000. Upcoming primaries in Indian and Maryland will indicate how many of these votes represent opposition to civil rights measures. Here, Republican voters must officially change their party registration to vote for Wallace. They will have the Wisconsin results in mind and will know that a vote for Wallace will indicate a specific and significant protest against the civil rights cause.

George Wallace's greatest success was not with conservatively minded Republicans, but with usually liberal Democrats. Wallace got 30 per cent of the vote in normally Democratic Milwaukee Country and did partcularly well on Milwaukee's south side, where voters mainly of Polish decent usually pile up heavy Democratic majorities.

Here there can be little doubt that the issue was civil rights. Many white voters do not want Negroes to move into their neighborhoods or go to school with their children. Many fear the civil rights bill, even though it does not touch on these questions. These fears have no place in political dialogue on the national and, usually, the state levels. Only in local campaigns do racial issues come into sight. On the same day George Wallace scored his success, three incumbent county supervisors on Milwaukee's south side were defeated, because, as one of them put it, his opponents "said that he was against housing for Negroes on the south side of Milwaukee, and he convinced them that I was a leader of a group trying to bring Negro housing to the south side of Milwaukee." It is hard to resist concluding that similar feelings played a part in Wallace's victory.

The extent to which the approximately 100,000 votes case by Democrats for Governor Wallace represents opposition to civil rights demands, also will be measured more closely in Indiana and Maryland. If large numbers of northern Democrats continue to vote for the nation's most notorious segregationist, President Johnson could be in more trouble in November than current opinion polls suggest. Wisconsin is only one of several Northern states where Johnson can not afford to lost many once-dependable Democratic votes.

Gains from white "backlash" seem to go almost entirely to Republicans. Last fall Republicans narrowed Democratic majorities sharply by a go-slow attitude on civil rights. Anti-Negro voters have little trust in the party that wins a large majority of Negro votes.

Barry Goldwater, of course, is the Republican candidate who could capitalize most from a white revolt; he is even on record against the civil rights bill. But any Republican stands to gain. Whether the Presidential candidate does so or not depends less on his statements and the Republican platform than on the politicians and professional bigots on the ward and precinct level--like the candidates for Milwaukee County supervisor. There they can appeal to the fears and fears and prejudices that are almost never discussed in national and state campaigns.