
          Kissing Honest Politics Goodbye, Again?
          By Suitts, SteveSteve Suitts
          Vol. 5, No. 6, 1983, pp. 1-3
          
          George Wallace's election with significant black support in Alabama
in 1982 reaffirmed that politics makes strange bedfellows in the
South. This November, Bill Allain's close election in the Mississippi
governor's race suggests in 1983 that bedfellows make strange Southern
politics.
          A state attorney general who has opposed Mississippi's big
utilities and the Delta leaders of the state legislature, Allain
almost lost his bid for governor when, three weeks prior to the
general election, supporters of his Republic opponent produced
affidavits from three black males alleging that Allain had sought
their services as male prostitutes. In the middle of October, before
the public allegations, Allain was leading in the polls by a margin of
more than thirty percentage points. After the disclosures, he won by a
margin of less than ten percent of the vote.
          While the truth of the allegations remains undecided, the episode
is the clearest instance of a new trend in the dirty politics of guilt
by association. In the South's politics, the most durable form of such
trickery is, of course, race baiting. For generations, any white
candidate associated with blacks or black causes earned instant
discredit with white voters.
          As late as the 1960s and '70s, key segregationists owed their
political careers to race baiting. One of the most effective recent
examples came in 1970 in Alabama when George Wallace's supporters used
a photograph to taint his opponent, Governor Albert Brewer. After the
primary election, Wallace found himself behind Brewer in a run
off. Faced with the need to get out as many white voters as possible,
the supporters of Wallace went to work. At almost every crossroads
store in south Alabama, leaflets appeared showing Brewer's daughter
holding hands and smiling at a young black teenage boy.

          While Brewer agonized publicly about the "vicious attacks" upon his
family, he was fixed. He could not attack Wallace directly for
doctoring the photographs. Because a good black turnout was absolutely
necessary to defeat Wallace, Brewer could not make the Southern white
politician's traditional response: that he would never allow his
daughter to hold hands with a black boy. His failure to rise to the
charges was sensationalized into the political imagery and gossip,
picturing Brewer as approving race-mixing, interracial dating and
interracial marriage. With a heavy turnout from rural, white counties,
Wallace won the election.
          These techniques are still found in local politics in the South,
but race-baiting in statewide Southern politics now appears to be the
exception. Although the 1984 North Carolina Senate compaign is already
heated with racial rhetoric, most candidates seeking statewide office
today seek black support. Those who do not, usually fear the reaction
of whites to a campaign of race-baiting. Yet, as Bill Allain's
problems show, "gay-baiting" has now arrived, and in several
instances, has succeeded race-baiting in statewide campaigns.
          The Mississippi race isn't an isolated instance of gay-baiting,
only the most recent and most public example in Deep South
politics. In the last two races for governor in Alabama, rumors have
been spread to taint one of the candidates as a homosexual. In 1978,
Attorney General Bill Baxley was seeking the governor's chair and
political gossip suggested that bachelor Bill was gay and hired
homosexuals on his staff. The stories spread and were accepted with
amazing credulity even among the most crafty political observers. A
lawyer who had helped mastermind George Wallace's election in 1962 on
a segregationist platform said to me in 1977, "Of course it's
true. Look at the boy's rosy cheeks. He's funny all right."
          Last year, gay-baiting reappeared in Alabama's governor's
race. Lieutenant Governor George MacMillan, who has a high-pitched
voice and a gentle, if energetic, demeanor, was running for governor
against George Wallace. Rumors spread that MacMillan was
homosexual. The gossip was supported by reference to MacMillan's
physical traits. "Just listen to that boy. Watch him. He's as sissy as
they get," I was told in 1982 by a Montgomery lobbyist. MacMillan lost
the runoff.
          Now in Mississippi, the political technique has been refined even
further: rumors are "substantiated" with news conferences. For several
weeks before the news release against Allain, rumors were spread
across the state that the state attorney general was a
homosexual. Allain is single by divorce. He is also so white-skinned
that his cheeks flush very visibly at times. Qualified by
stereotypical characteristics, Allain was rumored as a sex-starved
homosexual who cruised Jackson streets in search of male
prostitutes. In late October when the signed affidavits were made
public, the attorney general angrily denied the charges. His ex-wife
went on television denying them. Still, Allain's standing among
Mississippi voters dropped and he lost much of his enormous lead.
          While Allain and other candidates can deny these sorts of charges
without fear of offending a large segment of statewide voters, they
have trouble making an effective political response. In Mississippi,
Allain and his ex-wife's defense was met with references to their
divorce papers in which she alleged that the two had not slept
together for a few years. Allain also could not run the political risk
of viciously attacking, in the racist rhetoric of the old Southern
politics, the personal credibility of his three black accusers. He was
dependent on blacks as voters, not as scapegoats.
          While Allain's responses were politically limited, his opponents
were able to taint and taunt him, a white male Southern politician,
with the accusations of interracial homosexuality.
          In Alabama, when candidate Baxley faced the rumors, state political
reporters speculated that both his marriage and subsequent fatherhood
conveniently met political needs.
          Four years later, facing rumors about his sexual preference, George
MacMillan began every political speech by calling his wife and
children to the podium. MacMillan also began speaking and acting more
imperatively and abruptly--an obvious effort to show some "manly"
mannerisms. At the end of the campaign, he appeared at times a
caricature of a Southern orator with exaggerated gestures that seldom
matched what he was saying. His efforts simply made him look awkward
and inarticulate, contradictions of the two characteristics which had
won him past political success.
          Although no candidate's defeat can be attributed only to rumors of
homosexuality, the charges obviously have a deteriorating effect upon
politics in general. Physical attributes take on unreasonable
importance. Gay stereotypes go unquestioned or get carried to greater
extremes of exaggeration. Significant issues are abandoned for
precious days or weeks during a campaign while the media and public
explore what a candidate does between the bed sheets. And, the most
likely victims of gay-baiting in 

politics, as with race-baiting, turn
out to be those candidates with support from progressive or liberal
voting groups in the South.
          Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the prospect of gay-baiting is
that nothing in the present Southern political scene appears to be an
obstacle to its increased use as a ploy. While the increase of black
voters was able to slow down race-baiting, the South's gay population
is not a political force in any statewide election and is not likely
to become one in the foreseeable future. Thus, supporters of
candidates who spread rumors or bankroll the search for affidavits
about a candidate's homosexuality have nothing to lose and every
advantage to gain if their rumors and charges are circulated.
          In Mississippi today, Governor-elect Allain portrays his victory as
the repudiation of gay-baiting. Yet, political strategists are not
likely to ignore the fact that he lost twenty percent of his support
in only three weeks simply because of the allegations of
homosexuality. Rather than demonstrating a firm rejection of this
trick, Mississippians have made it an even more seductive come-on for
the Southern politician who lusts for victory at any cost. With the
passing of race-baiting as the universal ploy in this area of the
South's statewide politics, gay-baiting may become the surest
political kiss of death.
          
            Steve Suitts is the executive director of the Southern
Regional Council.
          
        