Alabama’s constitution wouldn’t let Governor George Wallace succeed himself. So he tried to ram through a constitutional amendment allowing him to run for reelection. But Alabama legislators proved unwilling to give up what slim reed of power they had over the state’s de facto dictator. Wallace wasn’t about to quit politics; “the only thing that counts,” he would tell his children at the dinner table, waxing philosophic, “is money and power.” He needed a political base to run for president in 1968. So he decided to run his cancer-ridden wife, Lurleen, for governor instead and run the state
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