MLK Day and 1984
January 20, 2014 - by
My blog below on the 1984 Senate race prompted a TAPster to note that the Martin Luther King holiday was a big issue that year.
Jim Hunt led Jesse Helms in early polls, but Helms turned the race around in late 1983 when he filibustered on the Senate floor against a national holiday honoring King. He followed the filibuster with a notable TV ad: “I oppose the Martin Luther King holiday. Where do you stand, Jim?”
There were a lot of factors in that race, including Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale at the tops of the tickets. But, after the November election, Harrison Hickman did a poll to help us understand what happened. He found that the single issue that best predicted how a person voted in the Senate race – with almost a 100 percent correlation – was how they felt about the King holiday.
Few if any of us in Hunt’s campaign would have believed that, 30 years later, America would have an African-American President. And none of us would have been surprised to know that race is still a powerful force in politics.
MLK Day and 1984
January 20, 2014/
My blog below on the 1984 Senate race prompted a TAPster to note that the Martin Luther King holiday was a big issue that year.
Jim Hunt led Jesse Helms in early polls, but Helms turned the race around in late 1983 when he filibustered on the Senate floor against a national holiday honoring King. He followed the filibuster with a notable TV ad: “I oppose the Martin Luther King holiday. Where do you stand, Jim?”
There were a lot of factors in that race, including Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale at the tops of the tickets. But, after the November election, Harrison Hickman did a poll to help us understand what happened. He found that the single issue that best predicted how a person voted in the Senate race – with almost a 100 percent correlation – was how they felt about the King holiday.
Few if any of us in Hunt’s campaign would have believed that, 30 years later, America would have an African-American President. And none of us would have been surprised to know that race is still a powerful force in politics.