ABSTRACT
When George Wallace launched his third-party campaign for the presidency in the late summer of 1967, television and print journalists reacted warily to the fiery Southerner but few gave him much credence as a legitimate candidate. In a 1968 flight aboard the governor's ramshackle turboprop, members of the national press corps finally rebelled over the Wallace campaign's resolute 'no alcohol' policy and managed to sneak several bottles of whiskey aboard the plane. A dust-up with federal Judge Frank Johnson had ignited Wallace Alabama political comeback after he lost his first race for the governorship in 1958. In his early career in Alabama politics, Wallace had exploited the sense of Southern whites that the 'Yankee press' was unfair in its coverage of racial developments in the South. The LeMay conference crystallized the misgivings of more cautious Wallace supporters who liked what he had to say but worried that he was too irresponsible to trust with their support for the presidency.
