Alabama Upsets

The voters are inscrutable

"People in the South love their pollitics better than their food on the table," says Alabama Senator Maryon Allen. With contests last week for the governorship, both U.S. Senate seats and many lesser offices, Alabama's Democratic primary runoff--tantamount to election in a state where Republicans are still considered carpetbaggers--was a veritable feast. And the voters tried a little of everything. Experience counted, but then it didn't. A new face was helpful, but then it wasn't. The voters were inscrutable.

What mattered most was the departure of George Wallace, who could not legally succeed himself as Governor and decided not to run for the Senate. With his control removed from state politics after the mesmerizing years, the rules had suddenly changed.

At the beginning of the campaign, his most likely successor seemed to be Alabama Attorney General Bill Baxley, 37, a populist in polo shirt and plaid pants. But he lost last week to Forrest ("Fob") James Jr., 44, a former star halfback at Auburn University '55 and a millionaire manufacturer of sporting gear. James' victory showed that Jimmy Carter's tactics can still pay off, at least in the South. His lavishly financed $2.5 million campaign played up his role as an outsider with no ties to the political system. That image was reinforced by Walker & Associates Inc., a Memphis-based political consulting firm that specializes in winning elections for Southern unknowns. "You deserve better than a bunch of politicians swapping jobs," James told delighted audiences. He acknowledged that he had once served as a Republican state committeeman but assured the voters that he was a "born-again Democrat." James won handily with 55% of the vote.

In one of the Senate contests, Maryon Allen, 52, was trying to win election in her own right to the seat formerly held by her husband James. After he died in June, she was appointed his successor by Wallace. She had a sympathy vote, but she also had a salty tongue that she stilled for the campaign. "The hardest thing to do is to keep your mouth shut," she admitted. She refused to debate her opponent, State Senator Donald Stewart, 38, a scrappy anti-Wallaceite who called her a "nice lady without any political experience." He scored an upset victory with 57% of the vote.

In the other Senate race, former Alabama Chief Justice Howell Heflin, 57, who remodeled the state court system, took 65% of the vote, swamping Congressman Walter Flowers, 45, whose courtly eloquence was a highlight of the Nixon impeachment proceedings in the House. While Flowers campaigned as an insider who knew his way around the nation's capital, Heflin berated him for being "part of the Washington crowd that has brought more inflation and higher taxes." Heflin, on the other hand, owed a debt to another Washingtonian. His campaign slogan was the same as Nixon's in 1972: "Now More Than Ever." In Alabama politics, anything goes.

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