It all began with the 1964 Goldwater landslide

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the 1964 Goldwater landslide, which was the tidal wave that swept the Deep South into the Republican party.

Alabama and the South had voted solidly Democratic for president for over 80 years prior to 1964. Every constitutional officeholder in Alabama and every congressman and senator representing Alabama in Congress ran under the Democratic banner.  

Lyndon Johnson was the Democratic nominee for president. Johnson carried 44 states and won the presidency by a landslide. Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona carried only his home state and the five Deep South states, including Alabama. Goldwater carried Alabama overwhelmingly; thus, the label given to the Republican victory in the South was ironically the Goldwater Landslide.

The so called “Solid South” had been Democratic more out of tradition and protocol than philosophy. Both national parties took the South for granted in national elections. The Democrats ignored us because we were in the barn and the Republicans ignored us for the same reason.  

The 1964 election was the turning point, when the Deep South states voted for Barry Goldwater. The South has never looked back. It was the race issue that won them over. Goldwater and the Republican party captured the race issue.

George Wallace had ridden the race issue into the governor’s office in 1962. Early in 1964 Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson passed sweeping civil rights legislation, which white Southerners detested. Johnson had used every ounce of muscle he could muster and brutally ran over the filibustering block of powerful Southern senators, a group he was a leading member of less than three years earlier. The only non-Southern senator to oppose civil rights legislation was Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona. When the Republican party met at the old Cow Palace in San Francisco, they nominated Goldwater as their 1964 presidential candidate. Goldwater’s Southern landslide was monumental. Alabama had been totally Democratic from president to coroner for more than eight decades. There was no Republican party to speak of. There was no Republican Primary. Republicans chose their token candidates in backroom conventions.

A good many old timers in Alabama had called their children and family around them on their deathbed and admonished their descendants, “Don’t ever sell the family farm and don’t ever vote for a damn Republican.” However, Goldwater and the Republicans had become identified with segregation, and the white Southern voter fled the Democratic Party en masse.  As the Fall elections of 1964 approached, the talk in the old country stores around Alabama was that a good many good ole boys were going to vote straight Republican even if their daddies did turn over in their graves. There were a good many papas turning over in graves on that day.

Alabamians not only voted for Barry Goldwater, but also pulled the straight Republican lever out of anger toward Lyndon Johnson’s Civil Rights agenda.  

Alabama’s eight-member congressional delegation with more than 100 years of seniority was wiped out by straight ticket Republican voting. If either of our two venerable senators, Lister Hill or John Sparkman, had been on the ballot that day they would have also been thrashed. Hill had barely escaped a defeat in 1962 and would not run again in 1968.

Johnson annihilated Goldwater nationwide in 1964, but Goldwater gave the tough corrupt, amoral Texan a good old fashioned country whipping in the South. Johnson had bulldozed the Civil Rights Bill through the Senate over the Southern senate cardinals. The leader of the Southern block was the great Richard Russell of Georgia, who had been Johnson’s mentor. Johnson worshiped Russell. All of Johnson’s former colleagues in the Southern senate block knew that Johnson did not give a hoot about Negroes’ Civil Rights. They knew he passed the civil rights bill to enhance his race for president. Johnson, being a Southerner, understood Southern politics. Sen. Russell stared coldly at Johnson when he signed the Civil Rights Bill. Johnson looked back at Russell after he signed the bill, and with tears in his eyes, he prophetically said, “I have just signed the South over to the Republican Party for at least the next 60 years.”  

Johnson’s prophecy has proven true. There have been 15 presidential elections since that day in 1964, and Alabama has voted for the Republican nominee in 14 of the 15 elections. Trump will also carry Alabama this year, which will make it 15 out of 16.  

It all began with the Goldwater Landslide of 1964.

Steve Flowers, a retired legislator from Troy, is Alabama’s leading political columnist and commentator.