Steve Flowers: Back then, parties were really important in Alabama politics

By Steve Flowers

In most parts of the country, and definitely in Alabama, all politics is now nationally partisan. Alabama is a one-party state when it comes to national and state legislative elections. For about 80 years we were a one-party democratic state. Over the last 60 years, we have become a one-party Republican state in presidential elections.

Republican candidates will always win state offices in Alabama and the Republican candidate will always win Alabama. This is due to the philosophy of the two parties regarding national affairs. All politics is national.

When George Wallace was governor of Alabama, he ran for president across the country. On his Don Quixote trips as an independent, he often said that there wasn’t a dime of difference between the Democratic and Republican parties. Even in his demagogic rhetoric, he couldn’t say that with a straight face today. The Republican Party is very conservative. The Democratic Party is very liberal and most Alabama residents are very conservative. It’s that simple.

Some naive political writers want to blame or take credit for the election results on the leadership of the Alabama Democratic Party or the leadership of the Republican Party of Alabama. Alabama’s political parties have about as much relevance or influence on election results as an elephant or a donkey. They have no power or influence in elections. Its only material purpose is to set the relevant dates and rules. It doesn’t matter who is the leader of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party in Alabama, and it has always been that way. Criticizing party leadership in Alabama is like criticizing the PTO. They do a thankless, irrelevant and powerless job, and for anyone to believe that they are relevant to a political campaign shows a naivety in their understanding of Alabama politics.

There has been a presidential campaign in Alabama history in which party leadership made a difference. The year is 1948. The issue is race. Alabama and the South had clearly voted Democratic for president for 80 years. However, Democratic presidential candidate Harry Truman had come out strongly in favor of a pro-civil rights platform. The solid South was on the verge of falling apart.

Mississippi and South Carolina floated the idea of ​​incorporating the South into a party called the Dixiecrats. Although most white Democrats in Alabama were in favor of segregation, they were not enthusiastic about the idea of ​​expelling the party. Politically, there were two distinct groups in the state in 1948. There was a strong progressive faction encouraged by and loyal to the national Democratic Party of Jefferson, Jackson, and Roosevelt. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was revered in Alabama. Our entire congressional delegation was FDR New Deal Democrats.

However, the Democratic Party machine was controlled by the conservative Black Belters, allied with the later Dixiecrats. The chairman of the Alabama Democrats was the racist Gessner McCorvey. McCorvey issued a directive that no Democratic voter or delegate from Alabama could support a candidate committed to civil rights. Enforcement was through a signed lien. Alabamians selected a diverse group of delegates to the Democratic Convention, elected based on popularity or name identity. So when the Democratic National Convention nominated Truman and included civil rights in the platform, about half of the Alabama delegates followed McCorvey and left the convention, while the other half, who were progressives, stayed.

The racist group McCorvey joined with the other southern states and formed the Dixiecrat Party. They met in Congress at Boutwell Auditorium in downtown Birmingham and nominated Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. Thurmond and the Dixiecrats would occupy the five Deep South Southern states.

McCorvey and his racist Dixiecrats cleverly stole the state Democratic Party’s rooster symbol. In 1948, the candidates’ names were not on the ballot. You could only vote for the party. They had the choice to vote for either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. Alabamians had been pulling the tap for the Democratic Party their entire lives. Who they voted for, Truman or Thurmond, will never be known. The state Democratic Party, controlled by McCorvey’s Dixiecrats, had essentially hijacked the label “party.” I suspect that more than a few Alabamians who benefited from the New Deal felt they were voting for the National Ticket and Truman. But the McCorvey-controlled Alabama Democratic Party machine voted for Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond in Alabama’s Democratic primary.

Until next week.

Steve Flowers is Alabama’s leading political columnist. His weekly column appears in more than 60 Alabama newspapers. He served in the state parliament for 16 years. Steve can be reached at [email protected].