Sept. 16, 1964 - Senator Strom Thurmond (pictured) confirmed today that he was bolting the Democratic party to work as a Republican for the election of Senator Barry Goldwater.
His break with the Democrats, the second for him in 16 years, was made public in a televised denunciation of that party and its leaders broadcast in South Carolina and in seven other Southern states.
“The Democratic party has abandoned the people,” he asserted. “It has repudiated the Constitution of the United States. It is leading the evolution of our nation to a socialistic dictatorship.”
Thurmond urged other Southerners to join him in a fight to elect Goldwater and to make the Republican party “a party which supports freedom, justice, and constitutional government.”
In a news conference held at station WIS-TV following the taping of the 15-minute broadcast, the Senator said he had already asked that his Senate desk be moved to the Republican side of the aisle. He said he had made the request of Sen. Everett Dirksen of Illinois, the minority leader.
Thurmond led South Carolina’s delegation out of the 1948 Democratic National Convention at Philadelphia when he was Governor of the state. He later won South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana as the States’ Rights, or Dixiecrat, Presidential candidate against former President Harry S. Truman.
His latest departure from the Democratic fold may increase pressure on some other Southern political leaders to join him and Governor Paul B. Johnson Jr. of Mississippi in the Goldwater camp.
John M. Bailey, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, had this to say of Thurmond’s defection: “No man has used a party designation longer and served its principles more poorly than Strom Thurmond in the Democratic party. I am sure his new party will find him ever the malcontent.”
Senator Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee, had a more measured response, stating: “Every American has a right of free choice.”
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