Mr. Write's Page

Oct. 2, 2008.

Although I voted a week early and could tune out politics, I still find myself intently following the election coverage on TV and radio. I don’t even enjoy it. It’s agonizing, like watching a Georgia football game. But I continue to feed the addiction.

A few nights ago, as I thought about going to bed after a full evening of news-channel surfing, I had a sudden flashback to another election, way back when, that also held me in thrall.

The flashback took me to Clovis, New Mexico, late at night on November 8, 1966.

There I was, alone in my car, listening to live coverage on WSB Radio from Atlanta as the Georgia General Assembly anointed Lester Maddox as the new Governor of Georgia.

Talk about drama. The Legislature was choosing the governor because in the general election, no candidate had received 50 percent of the vote; a last-minute write-in campaign had prevented it.

In 1966, many big AM stations were allowed to boost their signals at night to 50,000 watts for greater range. Thus, I was able to pick up WSB Radio all the way out there in Clovis. The signal was weak and intermittent. I remember sitting there, hunched over, ear to the speaker, fiddling with the dials as the signal and volume rose and fell.

I did some online research to get the facts straight. This is what happened:

When Lester Maddox sought the Democratic Party nomination for Governor of Georgia in 1966, his principal opponent for the nomination was former governor Ellis Arnall. That election was still in the era of Democratic Party dominance in Georgia, when winning the Democratic primary was tantamount to election.

Since there was no Republican primary at the time, large numbers of Republicans crossed over and voted in the Democratic primary. They voted for Maddox, the candidate they thought would lose against the Republican, Howard “Bo” Callaway.

Bo Calloway was the first Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Georgia since Reconstruction. He was politically hot, and he wanted to be Governor real bad.

In the Democratic primary, Arnall won a plurality of the popular vote, but was denied the required majority. He then faced Maddox, the candidate in second place, in a run-off.

Again, Republicans crossover votes altered the outcome. Maddox won. Stunned, Arnall announced that he would run as a write-in candidate in the general election.

Calloway won the general election. Maddox finished second, Arnall third. Had Arnall stayed out of the race, Calloway would have been Governor. But Calloway fell short of the required 50 percent of the vote.

So, under the election rules then in effect, the state legislature met to select a governor from the two candidates with the most votes. With the legislature overwhelmingly dominated by Democrats, Maddox, in spite of being the runner-up, became Governor.

Lester served as Governor of Georgia from 1967 to 1971. He could not succeed himself in office, so he ran for Lt. Governor, got elected, and served until 1975.

In 1968, after I left the Air Force and returned to Georgia, I answered a mysterious classified ad seeking a “wordsmith” to work in an unspecified state government position.

Turned out, the ad was placed anonymously by the Governor’s office. They needed a speechwriter, and I got the job.

I worked as Maddox’s chief speechwriter and deputy press secretary, in both the Governor’s Office and the Lieutenant Governor’s Office, from 1968 to 1972.

Oh, the irony.