General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Morning Joe, Chris Matthews Was Right About Racist Reince Priebus [View all]OldDem2012
(3,526 posts)...a Democrat in an attempt to win the Democratic Party nomination. In subsequent Democratic Party primaries in which he won Alabama, Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina, Maryland, and Michigan, he gained almost 24% of the vote and ran third behind Humphrey and McGovern.
But the key was the fact that he was pulling the right-wing, anti-integration, racially-motivated voters of all political persuasions. Internal GOP polls showed Wallace pulling enough of this block of voters to be a threat to Nixon's reelection. In May of 1972, Wallace was shot four times by Arthur Bremer in an assassination attempt that left Wallace paralyzed from the waist down and forced him to withdraw from the campaign. The day after his shooting, Wallace won the Maryland and Michigan primaries.
With the help of most of the voters who would have voted for Wallace, Nixon went on to win a landslide victory against the Democratic Party's nominee, George McGovern, winning all but 17 electoral votes.