George Wallace just barely won the 1970 Democratic gubernatorial primary over incumbent Albert Brewer. What if he switched parties instead an ran as a Republican against Brewer? I know some Republicans including Nixon weren't happy about Wallace (Nixon even endorsed Brewer), but assuming he was their candidate, how would the election have turned out?
Nixon endorsed Brewer to attempt to diminish Wallace's stature as a national candidate. Nixon feared a third party candidacy in 1972 from Wallace and wished to preempt that.
As early as 1962, the year Wallace was first elected Governor, Republican Jim Martin got 49% of the vote against Democratic Senator Lister Hill, an economic liberal who voted against Civil Rights Bills, but who was not an economic conservative. Martin's near-upset sent shock waves through Alabama's Democratic establishment. Hill promptly decided not to run for re-election. Democratic Senator John Sparkman, who was Adlai Stevenson's first running-mate, had an 80% rating from Americans for Democratic Action in 1961, but a 19% rating in 1971. The same trend was true for many of Alabama's Democratic members of Congress that survived Goldwater. (It's likely that if the GOP had ran candidates in all of Alabama's Congressional districts, they all would have won in 1964.) These trends were clear; during the 1960s, Alabama's Congressional delegation discarded their populist economics drastically and shifted rightward, never to return.
So I'm not convinced that Alabama would not have elected George Wallace to the Governorship as a Republican in 1970. Alabama's 1964 Republican Reps that ran for reelection in 1966 all won reelction; the only GOP incumbent in Alabama to lose to a Democrat was Rep. Albert Lee Smith (D-Birmingham), who was redistricted out of his seat; he was not a Goldwater Republican, but a 1980 Reaganite who dumped Rep. John Hall Buchanan (whose record had moved surprisingly leftward) in the GOP primary. (Buchanan would later be Chairman of the Board for People For The American Way.) The reason Wallace did not become a Republican was because he did not believe that a Southern Republican could have been NOMINATED for President at that time, and that he saw a slew of GOP hopefuls as blocking his way in 1976. Wallace knew that no one would be dumping Nixon as the GOP nominee in 1972, and he knew that the Nixon White House had already begun investigations of some officials in Wallace's Administrations.
But HAD Wallace run as a Republican, he would have won. He had far more popularity than Brewer, and he would have been running with the trend in 1970. He may well have carried downballot Republicans into office, and he likely would have had a legislature in both Houses governed by a conservative coalition of Wallace Republicans and conservative Democrats. Indeed, Wallace, the Republican, may well have been the 1976 running mate of another GOP Governor - Ronald Reagan. As Wallace would not have been shot if he had been a GOP Governor on the sidelines in 1972, what would a Reagan-Wallace 1976 ticket would have accomplished? Would Reagan have dumped Ford in the primaries if he had named Wallace his running mate? And what would the GE map in 1976 look like?
Indeed, if George Wallace were a Republican candidate, Jimmy Carter would NOT have been the 1976 Democratic nominee for President. The reason Carter got traction was because he was viewed as THE candidate that could challenge George Wallace in SOUTHERN primaries and win. And Carter did that. If Wallace were outside the Democratic Party, THAT task would have been less urgent. There would have been a concern of who could carry Southern States in the GE, but THAT problem would not have mandated the need for a Jimmy Carter.
