What Wisconsin Mean

A month before the Wisconsin presidential primary, Democratic Governor John Reynolds knew he had trouble on his hands. That was when Reynolds, running as a favorite-son front man for President Johnson, heard that Alabama's Segregationist Governor George Wallace had filed against him. Reynolds promptly canceled a junket to Europe, flew to Washington for advice from Administration leaders, returned home to campaign for all he was worth. As the voting neared, he predicted that Wallace would get no more than 100,000 votes--but even that "would be a catastrophe."

By that standard, the outcome of last week's Wisconsin Democratic primary was worse than catastrophic. Reynolds won handily enough, collecting 511,000 votes. But Wallace made an astonishing show with 264,000. In the Republican primary an unopposed favorite son, U.S. Representative John Byrnes, got 301,000 votes.

The Crossover. National Democratic leaders were quick to blame Wallace's showing on Republicans who, they claimed, had crossed party lines in droves to vote for Wallace in an effort to embarrass the Johnson Administration. But Wisconsin's Reynolds knew better. Said he in a postprimary statement: "All that Mr. Wallace has demonstrated is what we've known all along. We have a lot of people who are prejudiced." Politically inept as that remark may have been, Reynolds had a point. The real issue in the primary was civil rights. Wallace had entered the Wisconsin primary to demonstrate that many Northern, as well as Southern, whites are unhappy about current civil rights trends. And he demonstrated just that --dramatically.

To be sure, Republicans did cross over--as they are permitted to do under Wisconsin primary laws and as Democrats do when their own primary offers no contest. But there were indications that nearly as many Republicans last week jumped party lines to vote for Reynolds as for Wallace. For example, John Byrnes' home district is heavily Republican, went for him by 63% in 1962 and is likely to do so again in his campaign for re-election to Congress this year. But in the presidential primary, Byrnes got only 40,000 votes as against 45,000 for Reynolds and 22,000 for Wallace. The clear implication was that thousands of Republicans, spotting a chance to express themselves on a key issue, cast Democratic ballots and split more or less evenly on civil rights.

The Fears. Alabama's Wallace actually ran strongest in Democratic districts heavily populated by lower-middle-class, second-generation Poles, Italians and Serbs. These voters obviously were apprehensive that the Negro drive for equality would harm their own economic interests. Thus, in southside Milwaukee, and in comparable districts in Racine and Kenosha, Wallace won majorities. In the newly created Ninth District, which includes Milwaukee's northshore suburbs, there was a different story with the same ending. The Ninth is generally Republican, boasts Wisconsin's highest per-capita income level. But the district is also rimmed by Negro neighborhoods. And last week Republican Byrnes took only 25% of the Ninth's vote, while Reynolds got 28% and Wallace made a killing with 47%. That result could only be read as a protest against the threat of Negro incursions into a white district.

The effects of the Wisconsin primary were as yet intangible, but would almost certainly be considerable. For one thing, Democratic segregationists who oppose the civil rights bill pending before the Senate were vastly encouraged. For another, Northern Democrats who have made civil rights a political selling point were given pause. The civil rights drive, worthy as it is, does have a political backlash. Alabama's Wallace hopes to dramatize that fact further in contesting the May 5 Indiana primary and the May 19 Maryland primary. Said he, in triumphantly commenting on his Wisconsin performance: "The people in both national parties are going to have to take a hard look at this. I think they know what it means."

As North Carolina's Democratic Senator Everett Jordan noted, Wallace made his point in Wisconsin despite his "bad image." Northern liberals might well shudder to think of what might have happened if a man with a "good image"--Virginia's Harry Byrd, for example, or Georgia's Dick Russell--had run in Wisconsin instead.

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