The Former Confederacy & Modern American Politics, Part Nine

In the 1970 election, on the state level, segregationist George Wallace, although he was still a national political figure, returned to the Alabama governor's mansion, while in Florida and Arkansas, the governorship of each state returned to Democratic control. In Georgia, a man won the governorship, who would soon become both nationally and internationally known, Democrat Jimmy Carter. In Tennessee, a Republican was elected governor, and the year before (1969), in Virginia, where elections for governor are held in off years from national elections, Republican Linwood Holton became the first GOP governor of the state since Reconstruction.

The early 1970s saw the political situation take three major turns. First, Nixon, the highly intelligent, but far from warm and cuddly, politician, won a huge reelection victory in 1972. Second, investigations of corruption in Maryland uncovered contractor kick backs to Spiro Agnew when he served in two different capacities there, including as governor of the state. Further, is was discovered that the payments to Agnew had continued even after he was vice president. Agnew resigned and he was replaced by Gerald Ford, a long time Republican congressman from Michigan, and the Republican minority leader in the House of Representatives. Third, during the 1972 campaign, a group of five men were arrested inside the Democratic National Committee's headquarters, located in one of the buildings of the Watergate Complex,* a group of office and apartment buildings in Washington, DC. The men were part of a Republican plan to get information from the Democrats and to plant listening devices on telephones in the Democratic headquarters. The subsequent cover up of any connection to the Nixon White House by some of Nixon's closest advisers and by the President himself, led Nixon to resign from the presidency in August 1974.  

The 1972 election: Richard Nixon carried all former states of the Confederacy by two, three and four times the number of votes his Democratic opponent, George McGovern of South Dakota, received. In the Senate, North Carolina elected a man whose name became nationally known over time, highly conservative Jesse Helms, who had just recently switched to the Republican Party from the Democratic Party. In Virginia, Republican William Scott defeated Democratic incumbent William Spong. In the House, where the districts were reapportioned according to the results of the 1970 Census, Republicans gained a seat in Alabama, where there was one less district due to redistricting, making that state's delegation 4 Democrats, 3 Republicans; in Florida, which gained three seats by the Census, the delegation was 11 Democrats and 4 Republicans; in Georgia, which had the same number of districts as before the Census, the Democrats regained a seat, making the delegation 9 Democrats and 1 Republican; in Louisiana, which had the same number of seats as before the Census, the Republicans won a seat, making the delegation 7 Democrats and 1 Republican; in Mississippi, which had the same number of seats, the Republicans gained two seats, making the delegation 3 Democrats and 2 Republicans; in South Carolina, where the number of seats stayed the same, the Republicans gained one seat, making the delegation 4 Democrats and 2 Republicans; in Tennessee, which lost one seat due to the Census, the delegation was 5 Republicans and 3 Democrats (previously 5 to 4 Republican); in Texas, which gained one seat, the delegation was 20 Democrats and 4 Republicans (previously 20 to 3 Democratic); in Virginia, which had the same number of seats, the Republicans won one seat, making the delegation 7 Republicans and 3 Democrats. In North Carolina, a Republican won the governorship for the first time since the late 1800s.

* The investigations into the Nixon administration's illegal activities, some of which were not directly related to the break in at the Watergate offices, all came to be included under the term "Watergate" in the public mind and the media. 

WORD HISTORY:
Mansion-This word, distantly related to English borrowings, "remain" and "permanent" (both are Latin derived words borrowed by English from French), goes back to Indo European "men," which had the meaning, "to stay," also in the sense, "dwell." This gave Latin "manere," meaning, "to stay, to dwell," which produced the noun, "mansio," meaning, "a dwelling, a place for lodging," with the accusative case being, "mansionem." This was passed to Old French as "mansion," meaning, "house/home," then, "a large house for the clergy," then, "for a lord." English borrowed the word from French in the 1300s.