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7 Albert Gore Sr., Liberalism and the South in the 1960s tony badger In 1970, Tennessee Senator Albert Gore Sr. became a prominent victim of President Nixon’s Southern Strategy. Democrat Gore was running for reelection after three terms in the Senate and looked like a good target for the White House. He was a New Dealer in economics, had backed the Voting Rights Act and had spoken out against the Vietnam War. The White House sensed that he was out of touch with his Tennessee constituents. In September, Vice President Spiro Agnew visited Memphis and called Gore “the Southern regional chairman of the Eastern Liberal Establishment.”1 The Republican candidate, William E. Brock III, ran a populist conservative campaign that brilliantly exploited the racial and cultural fears of a state in transition. Gore was defeated by 51–47 percent. Gore’s loss represented the end of Southern New Deal liberalism, perhaps even of New Deal liberalism in general. As this essay shows, he was undone by the policy agenda of the 1960s. Gore pushed a New Deal economic liberalism , a combination of populism and social democracy. But he couldn’t navigate his way out the racial conflicts stirred up by the civil rights movement . Conservative Republicanism came of age in the 1970s, and the negative campaign against Gore foreshadowed the tactics of the New Right that would pave the way for the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s—a revolution built in part upon the reddening of the South. The story of Gore’s slow detachment from mainstream southern opinion took place in a remarkably short period of time. In 1956, he was popular enough to be considered a potential running mate for Adlai Stevenson. In 1960, journalist Robert Novak recalled the Senator asking him, “Why would the Democratic Party pick Jack Kennedy when they could have had me?”2 Just ten years later, Gore was fighting for his political life. The liberal establishment understood the importance of his reelection. Ted Kennedy organized a fundraiser for Gore at his house in McLean, Virginia. Clark Clifford and Averell Harriman attended. Labor was represented with officials from the Machinists, the Auto Workers, the Electrical Workers, and the Teamsters. Senator Daniel Inouye from Hawaii said Gore was the only senator to receive such a reception because “this election is of historical importance .” Inouye also said, “We are responding to the President [Nixon]. We are picking up his gauntlet.” Kennedy praised Gore as courageous for casting votes that were unpopular in Tennessee, adding, “his constituency is all of this great nation.” Kennedy also said, “This election is one of the greatest urgency and importance to all of our country and to all of us.”3 Kennedy later recalled that he organized the fundraiser because of a “kind of a sense that it [the Gore Campaign] was adrift and it was really kind of a question that he didn’t want to be turned out but it was a question how much he really wanted to remain in.” Kennedy put Gore in contact with the Kennedys ’ favorite filmmaker, Charles Guggenheim, who produced a series of beautifully crafted cinema verité ads for the incumbent, evocatively staged in the hills of middle Tennessee. Kennedy reflected that Gore “had been a giant in the Senate.” Kennedy was particularly impressed by “two very hard decisions” that Gore had made on southern judges nominated by Nixon to the Supreme Court, Clement Haynsworth and Harold Carswell. Kennedy, a key figure on the Judiciary Committee in the battle, knew that Gore was under tremendous pressure in the Carswell nomination. There is no doubt that Gore would have greatly preferred to be able to back the President’s second nomination of a southern judge. Even his staff was not certain how he would vote even at the last minute. But, as Kennedy recalled, “Gore was just terrific on both of these. You had a sense having been very much involved in that fight and seeing what was happening in terms of the war issue and how he is being targeted. I wanted to be able to help that cause indeed. And during that period we developed some relationship. Although it was very much generational separated. I was still relatively young, and he was a senior member.” But Kennedy also recalled his family’s friendship with Gore. He remembered that Gore had helped him in his efforts to eliminate the poll tax in the 1965 Voting Rights Act, rather than by constitutional amendment. Support...

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