Wallace LeMay

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Text on Button WALLACE LEMAY
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White text on blue background with red stripe across the middle of the button. 

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George Wallace, former governor of Alabama, was the American Independent Party's candidate in the 1968 presidential election. After consideration of former Georgia governor Marvin Griffin, Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, former baseball commissioner and Kentucky governor Happy Chandler, Wallace finally selected Curtis LeMay, a United States Air Force general as his running mate. Wallace and LeMay ran against the Democratic nominee, incumbent Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, and eventual winner, Republican Party nominee and former Vice-President Richard Nixon. 

Wallace was pro-segregation and LeMay was a nuclear weapon enthusiast. Wallace did not expect to win the election, but he hoped he would prevent either of the major party candidates from winning a majority of the Electoral College, thus sending the decision to the House of Representatives. His "outsider" status was popular in the South, and the AIP ticket was able to carry five states (Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi), earning 45 electoral votes, plus one electoral vote from a faithless elector. 

Catalog ID PO0630