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From David Dulles to Rose Mary Woods RE: Republican appeal to minority voters in 1972. 3 pgs. [Subject: Campaign] [Letter], 8/1/1970
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From David Dulles to Rose Mary Woods RE: Republican appeal to minority voters in 1972. 3 pgs. [Subject: Campaign] [Letter], 8/1/1970
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Richard M. Nixon's Returned Materials Collection
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Richard Nixon Presidential Library
Contested Materials Collection
Folder List
Box Number
Folder Number
Document Date
No Date
Subject
Document Type
Document Description
50
47
8/1/1970
Campaign
Letter
From David Dulles to Rose Mary Woods
RE: Republican appeal to minority voters in
1972. 3pgs.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Page 1 of 1
DOCUMENT WITHDRAWAL RECORD [NIXON PROJECT]
DOCUMENT
DOCUMENT
NUMBER
TYPE
SUBJECT/TITLE OR CORRESPONDENTS
DATE
RESTRICTION
N- /
letter
Dulles to RMW re Republican appeal
8/70
C(Nixon)
[DOC 31]
to minority others in 1972
FILE GROUP TITLE
BOX NUMBER
PPF
34
FOLDER TITLE
MEMOS- 1970 WOODS [20f2, September- December]
RESTRICTION CODES
A. Release would violate a Federal statute or Agency Policy.
E. Release would disclose trade secrets or confidential commercial or
B. National security classified information.
financial information.
C. Pending or approved claim that release would violate an individual's
F. Release would disclose investigatory information compiled for law
rights.
enforcement purposes.
D. Release would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy
G. Withdrawn and return private and personal material.
or a libel of a living person.
H. Withdrawn and returned non-historical material.
NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION
NA FORM 1421 (4-85)
Presidential Materials Review Board
Review on Contested Documents
Collection: President's Personal Files
Box Number:
34
Folder:
Memos - 1970 - R. M. Woods [2 of 2, September-December]
Document
Disposition
31
Return Private/Political
August 1970
To: Miss Rose Mary Woods
From: David Dulles
Re: REPUBLICAN APPEAL TO MINORITY VOTERS IN 1972.
George Wallace has dealt the putative "Southern Strategy"
a body blow.
By winning the Alabama gubernatorial primary, Wallace has made
it altogether likely that he will run for President. As a number of jour-
nalists and other observers have projected, he will probably carry about
five Southern states, thus denying their electoral votes to either major
Presidential ticket in 1972. He is also likely to draw enough "conser-
vative" votes from the Republicans to allow the Democratic ticket to
prevail in a number of large industrial states outside the deep South.
The unions can be expected, contrary to 1968, to act early and with maxi-
mum impact to protect the traditional Democratic power base in the ranks
of organized labor from vulnerability to the Wallace appeal. A fourth
party movement is unlikely, for want of organization, resolved leadership
and funds. Thus, overall, Wallace is a threat to the Republicans rather
than to the Democrats.
While I do not have the figures, I am reliably told that even in
1968 if those black voters who supported Nixon-Agnew had stayed home, let
alone voting for Humphrey-Muskie, President Nixon would not have been
elected. Of course, like the 1960 Presidential election, the returns in
1968 produced such a close race that any number of factors could have
been and undoubtedly were decisive in the sense that if all other factors
had remained constant, one element could have reversed the outcome or at
least thrown the election into the House of Representatives.
Despite the disintegration of the Democrats in 1968, when they
nearly won, their current financial troubles, the popularity of the Pre-
sident and Vice President in today's polls and the Democrats' lack of
an heir-apparent, they can be expected to mount a formidable campaign in
1972. The Vietnam War will probably be less of an issue than it was in
1968, because of troop withdrawals. A major armed confrontation in
the Middle East in the interim is possible but less than probable. Our
domestic social crisis will not be fundamentally improved except with
respect to white youth, so far as appears. Because of our current tax
structure, the persistance of racial discrimination and the prevailing
distribution of income, the combination of inflation and unemployment
will still be an acute problem for tens of millions of Americans. Our
2
failures to provide adequately for urban capital investment, sub-college
education and general medical care in past years will not have been
solved and the results of those failures will be more conspicuous, pos-
sibly, than at present.
For all of these reasons, pocketbook issues are likely to
be of exceptional importance in 1972. In addition, crime suppres-
sion will still be a painful and critical problem. Transportation and
housing frustrations will also be serious.
For the Administration to be reelected, as I believe it will
be, it would be prudent to have available a campaign approach which
will appeal to minority voters, black and spanish, to a much greater
degree than they were appealed to by either Democrats or Republicans
in 1968. Such voters will probably be more active, better informed
and more thoroughly organized than ever before. They are likely to be
more sensitive to issues, as compared with institutional loyalties and
symbolic associations, than previously because of advancing sophisti-
cation. Most important, the emerging pattern of public controversies
suggests that with regard to crime, inflation, taxes, income mainte-
nance and even discrimination, they have commonalities of interest
with other low and lower middle income Americans which have not been
exploited.
Primarily because of the yet-unappreciated but colossal
failure of bureaucracy to deliver on political promises (especially
with regard to service programs as opposed to income maintenance
and law enforcement) in the period subsequent to World War II, the
Republican Party is ideologically far better able to exploit these
commonalities of interest than the Democrats. Moreover, the Admini-
stration has a very good record regarding:
welfare reform
social security
unemployment compensation
employment discrimination
school desegregation
food distribution
housing technology
taxation of the poor, and
inflation control
compared to the Democrats.
Neither political party is likely to let the other get away
with a landslide, given television, polling, citizen participation,
decline of the machines and increasing voter inclination to cross
party lines and split tickets. Thus the 1972 election, like those
of 1960 and 1968, is likely to be close. The possibility cannot be
ignored.
3
Work should begin now to prepare, on a stand-by basis, for a
massive Republican effort to attract the minority vote in 1972. This
should involve:
1. Polling, to determine present black and spanish attitudes on the
issues and, particularly, what these people do and do not know
of Administration actions in their interests, and what they
think the Administration should do;
2. Organization of cadres of minority leaders who will be able to
generate mass personal campaigning for the Administration in
ghetto and other heavily minority communities, based on analysis
of the polling showing those elements of minority communities
least likely to remain captive of the Democrats;
3. Development of a wide array of draft substantive presentations,
such as the Nixon radio address on manpower delivered in October (?)
1968, for use in the 1972 campaign;
4. An analysis of which minority media, particularly radio and news-
papers, will be most cost-effective.
Such an exploration ought to show that, dollar for dollar,
investment of campaign resources in the minority community may well
yield as many votes favoring reelection of the President as expenditures
directed toward the nation at large or toward other groups. Moreover,
it will very likely prove true that, in terms of issues, such an ap-
proach need not be prejudicial to the Republican appeal directed to-
ward other elements of the American constituency.