Democratic coalitions are necessary after intraparty elections to garner public support
This passage highlights a theme that runs throughout this interview. Within a competitive two-party system, Democrats must unite their factions after internal elections in order to preserve the party. The failure to develop a coalition from the splintered factions results in voter disinterest.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Terry Sanford, [date unknown]. Interview A-0140. 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
- TERRY SANFORD:
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...I think the party, in any state, has to get
together in the fall, if you're going to have open primary elections.
Because there's so much bitterness, even healthy bitterness developed in
the primary, that you've got to heal those wounds. Galifianakis didn't
have many wounds to heal, but he had been right vicious against Jordan.
Jordan was an old line regular, that felt a sense of obligation to
dutifully support the nominee. But he felt terribly offended at some of
the things that he perceived that Galifianakis had gone and said. He was
not an enthusiastic supporter, but he did, in a dutiful way, speak for
the ticket. As did Sam Ervin. But we did not get the party together in
the governor's race, and this was Bowles' fundamental mistake, it seems
to me. I don't fully understand it, and I'll simply comment on it in
response to your question. You have to get the party together. He failed
to get the party together. Now, if he'd have won, who could have
questioned him, but it'd been done. He'd done it his way, and he'd come
out the governor with the absolute mandate. But he didn't have the sense
of coalition that I thought was essential. And I was worried from the
first of the summer about it. I later asked one of his very close
associates, about Christmas time, and they'd had a month and a half to
think about it, if he thought Skipper was going to run again. We might
talk about some of the mistakes. Otherwise, let's just forget about it
and get on down to this Christmas oyster roast. He said, "He
didn't make any mistakes." After Skipper decided to tell
Pat Taylor and Scott to go to hell - and I don't
think he quite decided to tell them to go to hell, but for all
appearances from their points of view, he did tell them to go to hell -
and he failed to bring the party together. Now could the party have been
brought together? Could Taylor have been brought in? Could Scott have
been mobilized? I suspect that some of Scott's closest associates
supported Holshouser. You would know more about that than I, perhaps,
but I think they did. I think they resented Skipper's treatment of
Scott, especially after he got the nomination. And I know Taylor's
people were terribly resentful that Skipper more or less told them that
they were on the second string. And that's simply not good politics in a
two party state. And it, I would say more than anything else lost it. You . . . I'm sure you have some other views on it, and I'm not basing
mine on any studies or trends. I take it that in the past . . . in the
last two or three weeks that it began to break against Bowles, and not
until then. That he had . . . he was riding pretty much of a majority
until then. Again, I don't . . . I wasn't following any polls. But that
I could see resentment building up and I tried to communicate this. And
I even sent Bill Wright a couple of notes about it. Even I couldn't get
through to them much. And I'm saying the pressures of the campaign . . .
I'm not complaining about it. But when I say "even I,"
if I couldn't get through to them, certainly some Taylor supporter in
Gaston County couldn't get through to them. They began to feel that
they'd be better off with Holshouser in there than Bowles. And I went
back to '60s, a whole lot of people were saying, "I think it'd
be better to have a Republican than to have Sanford. If we elect
Sanford, he'll be in the saddle for twenty years,
and if we can put up with four years of one Republican and then we'll
start over . . . " Well, there weren't enough of those people.
That was the old guard. Lake didn't support me, you see, and I had to
put up with that kind of opposition. He didn't support the opposition.
He campaigned, best I could observe, for Thomas Jefferson. But he didn't
support me. Morgan did, enthusiastically, and that got to what I . . .
If I could have traveled, as I did, with Morgan, with great appreciation
. . . He introduced me, spoke for me, went to rallies I couldn't go to.
He carried the Lake forces back around to me, or I would have lost.
Especially carrying Kennedy. And I think that was a fundamental mistake,
and I think that's the lesson, that the nominee has simply got to make
it the first order of business, to heal the primary wounds. And that
sore. To keep the two party system, We never knew it before.
- WALTER DE VRIES:
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Well, you really didn't have a two party system before.
- TERRY SANFORD:
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I say, we never knew it before.
- WALTER DE VRIES:
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You didn't know it until . . .
- JACK BASS:
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One of the interesting . . .
- TERRY SANFORD:
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I think Skipper was getting on dangerous ground and really didn't realize
it, because there was no precedent.
- JACK BASS:
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One of the interesting statistics we've uncovered was that in 1960, of
the eleven states of the old Confederacy, North Carolina had the highest
rate of participation in the presidential election. In 1972, North
Carolina ranked ninth among the eleven states in participation of
eligible voters, and actually, only two of the eleven states had
declined. Everybody else was going up in the South. And we're trying
to figure out why. One of my hunches on this is it
may be that this alienation within the party just resulted in a lot of
stay-at-homes in November.