Alabama voters are conservative and educated, despite the influence of television
Heflin describes Alabama voters as generally conservative and more educated than they used to be. Television has had a vast effect on politics, he believes.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Howell Heflin, July 9, 1974. Interview A-0010. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- JACK BASS:
-
Did you get any surprises when you campaigned? I mean in terms
of perception of Alabama voters and what they wanted and what was on
their minds.
- HOWELL HEFLIN:
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[Mine was/wasn't an issue race.]
- JACK BASS:
-
No, but you had to talk to a lot of voters and get out and campaign.
- WALTER DE VRIES:
-
Were they different than you thought they were going to
be?
- HOWELL HEFLIN:
-
Oh, not much. They're basically pretty conservative in their
approaches. I think they are prone to want to have progress
to take place. We probably pushed them on our judicial article and
judicial reform, but so far we haven't had a reaction against it. But
it's been. . . they've gone a pretty good ways in supporting things like
this whereas in the past they have not supported many constitutional
amendments.
- WALTER DE VRIES:
-
You think there's been a basic change in the voter then in the last ten
or twenty years?
- HOWELL HEFLIN:
-
I would think that the base. . . . Of course there's no doubt that the
voter is better educated than he was twenty years ago or twenty-five
years ago and he's coming along. What you run now. . . your percentage
of people graduated from high school and go to college now. . . wasn't
it 35-40 percent as opposed to 15-20 twenty-five, thirty years
ago? A lot more blacks now in college and schools. I mean,
they're better educated. And I think as a result times are changing and
they are asking more questions. They are more intelligent in their
voting than they used to be. Course I suppose they were then, but I
wouldn't. . . . I would compare the basis. You can't say that education
hasn't changed things. And the other factors of media, television. You
got all of these media matters. Nobody really knows what's the effect of
television. But television. . . they're on the scenes of what's
happening and being there. What's happening in Washington, what's
happening in the Supreme Court. They have to be more intelligent than
they. . . . And I think as a result they are more knowledgeable about
their vote than what they used to be. Last thirty years, or forty years,
just changed life completely. Scientifically. You've had more advances
than all the rest of the history of the world put together. And it's
bound to get into the political processes to some degree.