Winton M. Blount - U.S. Senate Campaign, 1972

U.S. Senate Campaign, 1972

In 1972, Blount ran an unsuccessful campaign for the United States Senate. He easily won the Republican nomination in the first-ever GOP primary election held in Alabama. He defeated former U.S. Representative James D. Martin of Gadsden, 27,736 to 16,800. Another 6,674 votes were cast for two minor candidates. Martin had been the unsuccessful Republican gubernatorial nominee in 1966 against the late Lurleen Burns Wallace.

Blount then faced in the general election the long-term incumbent Democrat, John Sparkman, who had been the 1952 Democratic candidate for vice president against Richard M. Nixon. From May 1972 to November 1972, future U.S. President George W. Bush transferred from the Texas Air National Guard to serve as the political director in Blount's campaign.

Blount attempted with little success to link Sparkman with Nixon's reelection opponent, U.S. Senator George S. McGovern of South Dakota. Alabama editor Ray Jenkins described the alleged McGovern-Sparkman connection as "just a little too much bull ... for the most unsophisticated Alabama voters, It was an insult to them in a way." Despite his personal wealth, Blount could not match Sparkman's war chest, which was buoyed by nationwide contributions from business interests because Sparkman was chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. Nixon concentrated on his race against McGovern and hesitated to offend a leading Senate Democrat. Similarly, Nixon snubbed U.S. Representatie Fletcher Thompson in neighboring Georgia, who was challenging the Democrat Sam Nunn, and Republican Gil Carmichael in Mississippi, the Republican opponent of veteran Senator James O. Eastland. When presidential press secretary Ron Ziegler was asked if Nixon supported Blount for the Senate, Ziegler replied, "Well, he doesn't oppose him." Vice President Spiro T. Agnew did campaign for Blount. The Democrats depicted Blount's wealth as a source of shame, not the fruits of a successful business. Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, a Sparkman supporter who after an assassination attempt had dropped out of the presidential nomination race, reportedly asked how Blount, who had "air-conditioned stables for his horses could be aware of the needs of the common man."

The final results were Sparkman 654,491 (65.3 percent) to Blount's 347,52 (34.7 percent). Blount carried only traditionally Republican Winston and Houston counties and lost his home county of Montgomery. Nixon received 728,701 votes (73.8 percent) in Alabama and carried all but six counties. He received more than twice as many votes as his former Postmaster General and outpolled his former vice-presidential rival, Sparkman, by some seventy thousand votes statewide.