July 19, 1964 - Governor George Wallace of Alabama withdrew today his segregationist third-party bid for the Presidency.
In a move of great political significance, he thus ended a campaign that had been expected to cut deeply into the conservative, states’ rights appeal to Southern voters of Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, the Republican Presidential candidate.
Goldwater said at Phoenix, Ariz., that Wallace’s withdrawal was a “surprise” to him. “I never gave this Wallace thing much thought,” the Senator said, and then declined to amplify his views.
Wallace had been “committed” to run in 16 states.
“My mission has been accomplished,” Wallace declared. He credited himself with getting “a message to the leadership” of the Republican party “to return this country to the governmental principles upon which it was founded.”
The White House had no comment on the announcement. The Senate majority leader, Mike Mansfield of Montana, said: “This draws the lines more sharply.”
On CBS-TV’s “Face the Nation,” Wallace said that “I was the instrument” through which “the high councils of both major political parties” had been “conservatized.”
“Today we hear more states’ rights talk than we have heard in the last quarter century,” he said in a statement at the start of the broadcast. That his states’ rights, anti-civil rights message had been “heeded and will be heeded is evident,” he said.
“We shall look closely at the actions and attitudes in Atlantic City next month,” he went on. The Democratic National Convention opens there Aug. 24.
Although he declined explicitly to endorse Goldwater, it seemed unlikely that the Democrats could take a position satisfactory to Wallace.
“Whoever doesn’t represent the South in this campaign will not be President,” he declared. “So, if the President will not represent the South in his campaign, he will not be elected.”
The Governor characterized the civil rights stand of the Johnson Administration as “this political gimmick on this matter of race.” He denied that he or his staff had had any communication or had made any deals with the Goldwater forces.
Wallace said he thought “the American people are sick and tired of columnists and TV dudes who get on the national networks and instead of reporting the news as it is, and shame the devil, which is what they are supposed to do, try to slant and distort and malign and brainwash this country.”
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