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But it all paid off. The Humphrey camp happily agreed with their leader that "it's a whole new ball game." Hubert was campaigning briskly in the Midwest within hours after the Florida results were known. Fearing the Wallace appeal to labor, Humphrey pleaded for support with union leaders in Detroit, where busing is a big issue. Recalling his years of help to labor, he argued: "You'd better get yourself a President that will speak up for you before it's too late. You don't need a new face; you need somebody that's been tested." As for the likes of Wallace: "Be careful about these cuties. I don't mind if you flirt around a little bit, but you better just come home."
Although Humphrey was back in business, the scars of his loss to Nixon still show in doubts about his vote-getting power. Yet his aides assert that they are getting calls from former Muskie supporters. Humphrey hopes to stop Wallace either by beating him outright in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania or West Virginia (where only Humphrey and Wallace are on the ballot) or by running so close to him everywhere that some other candidates will throw their support to Humphrey as the only way of knocking Wallace out. The money is sure to come a little more easily now. Humphrey called Beverly Hills Attorney Gene Wyman after the Florida vote and asked him to raise $50,000. Wyman did it in a day, and said it was the easiest $50,000 he had ever raised.
JACKSON. To achieve his third-place ranking in Florida, Washington's Scoop Jackson also muddied his strong civil rights record, which dates back some three decades, staking out an antibusing position just a shade short of Wallace's. The main difference was that he did not plead for a halt to busing by presidential decree or legislation; instead, he sought the slower route of a constitutional amendment. Jackson's amendment is under consideration in the Congress and it includes "freedom of choice" and the "neighborhood school," proposals long espoused by anti-integrationists. He also called for federal aid to inferior schools.
Trying to draw a clear distinction between himself and Wallace, Jackson's ads declared: "Jackson is the one candidate—who can be nominated and elected—who is doing something now about compulsory busing." Explained a Jackson aide, Elmer Rounds: "It was our hope to reach the middleaged, middle-class suburbanite who didn't like the bus ride his kid was taking but who couldn't vote for Wallace on other principles." Jackson picked up other support by endorsing the $5.5 billion space-shuttle project, dear to the state's aerospace workers, standing as tall as anyone for U.S. support of Israel and urging a strong national defense program. If the combined Jackson and Wallace votes are a barometer of the state's conservatives, they are a majority.