As the executive jet's engines whined into life on the Orlando tarmac, the pilot's voice crackled over the intercom: "They just cleared us for taxiing calling us Air Force One." George Corley Wallace, 52, was headed back home to Alabama on the morrow of the greatest victory of his turbulent political life —winning a stunning 42% plurality in the eleven-candidate Florida Democratic primary. Lighting up a cigar, clearing his throat of the ever-present phlegm and spitting it into a handkerchief, Wallace was exuberant as he talked with his wife Cornelia and TIME Correspondent Joseph Kane. "They having trouble with all that baggage back there? I wish I could travel with just one suit like I used to."
He riffled the newspapers like Lyndon Johnson with his polls of old. "I carried every county in the state. See here. I even carried Dade County. Dade 10th: 13,500. Dade 11th: 22,000." As the plane soared into the azure sky, the candidate kept looking at the figures and talking. Now and again Cornelia would butt in for some comment on the press's treatment of George and how he is misunderstood. He would tell her to "hush now, I'm talking."
Cornelia sat across the cramped aisle from her shirtsleeved husband. Still unrecovered from the aftereffects of kidney medicines that triggered phlebitis, she propped up her shapely legs on the armrest of the seat in front, pulled a furry quilt round her, and sucked on a glass of ice water. As the craft neared Montgomery, she began to feel nauseated and asked a security guard to pass her a green plastic trash basket in case she needed it. "You feel all right, honey?" George asked. "Maybe this cigar is bothering you." He stubbed it out and lit one of her Virginia Slims, then held her hand.
Wallace looks good. His hair is mod-shaggy down to his collar, and he rubs in a little brown dye to cover up the graying streaks. He is fashionably dressed and sometimes downright dapper. With his new wife advising him, he has switched his wardrobe to double knits. "They are so easy to use when you are traveling," Cornelia says. "I am dressing better than I used to," admits Wallace. "Remember the last time I campaigned, my wife had just died. Governor Lurleen? And the trouble with campaigning by yourself is that clothes is a job. Now I use a better-matching tie combination because my wife sees to it. That's a woman's job."