General Information
- Source:
- NBC Nightly News
- Creator:
- John Chancellor/Steve Delaney
- Event Date:
- 11/02/1972
- Air/Publish Date:
- 11/02/1972
- Resource Type:
- Video News Report
- Copyright:
- NBCUniversal Media, LLC.
- Copyright Date:
- 1972
- Clip Length:
- 00:02:32
Description
Michigan voters are obsessed about one political issue--busing. Traditionally a Democratic-voting state, voters are turning to President Richard Nixon, who they hope will stop suburban children from being bused into the inner city.
Keywords
Richard Nixon, Michigan, Busing, Anti-Busing, Public Schools, Desegregation, School Integration, 1972 Presidential Election, George Wallace, Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Elliot Richardson, Interest Groups, PACs, Public Interest Groups, Candidate Endorsement, Political Parties, Civil Rights, Racial Tension, Detroit, Vietnam War, Democrats, Republicans
Citation
MLA
"Anti-Busing Group Helps Get President Richard Nixon Re-Elected." Steve Delaney, correspondent. NBC Nightly News. NBCUniversal Media. 2 Nov. 1972. NBC Learn. Web. 5 September 2012.
APA
Delaney, S. (Reporter), & Chancellor, J. (Anchor). (1972, November 2). Anti-Busing Group Helps Get President Richard Nixon Re-Elected. [Television series episode]. NBC Nightly News. Retrieved from https://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12/browse/?cuecard=4851
CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE
"Anti-Busing Group Helps Get President Richard Nixon Re-Elected" NBC Nightly News, New York, NY: NBC Universal, 11/02/1972. Accessed Wed Sep 5 2012 from NBC Learn: https://archives.nbclearn.com/portal/site/k-12/browse/?cuecard=4851
Transcript
Anti-Busing Group Helps Get President Richard Nixon Re-Elected
JOHN CHANCELLOR, anchor:
Herbert Klein, President Nixon’s communications director, predicted today that the President will carry at least 45 of the 50 states in the coming election. Klein listed the states Nixon may not carry as Massachusetts, West Virginia, California, Wisconsin and Michigan. Michigan is one of the ten big states McGovern must win if he’s going to be elected on Tuesday. NBC Nightly news has reported on the political situation in a number of these key states. Tonight, Steve Delaney reports on Michigan.
STEVE DELANEY reporting:
Large numbers of Michigan voters don’t care whether the war ends or not. Whether there’s corruption in Washington, or even whether there’s high unemployment, always a rock solid issue in industrial Michigan. What they do care about has produced a peculiarly one-dimensional campaign for the Presidency in Michigan. The issue is busing. Or more accurately, the threat of busing. Hubert Humphrey took Michigan by more than 200,000 votes four years ago. But this spring, riding a huge wave of anti-busing sentiment, George Wallace outdrew Humphrey, McGovern and everybody else combined in the Democratic primary.
The Detroit area is under a Federal order that would bus inner city children to suburban schools and suburban children into Detroit. The uproar over that is intense. Most white suburbanites believe Richard Nixon will keep that court order bottled up in the Federal appeals process, or will do something else to stop busing, and that George McGovern will not. So they’ve become Democratic dropouts, and Richard Nixon has such a lead in the polls in Michigan that his campaign office is an antiseptic, unhurried office- looking place without the usual pre-election excitement.
The President has not been to Michigan since before Labor Day, sending instead Cabinet officers like Elliot Richardson to stand in for him. McGovern has been here six times this year, and has tapped every big name in the party to help reconvert Michigan to its normally Democratic vote in the Presidential election. There is also the now familiar legion of emotionally committed volunteers trying to win for McGovern, the electoral votes he needs so badly from Michigan. But somehow none of that seems to work very well.
It’s now very late in this campaign, and as long as Michigan voters remain as obsessed as they are over the busing issue, the chances are that nothing George McGovern can say or do or any of the help that he can bring into Michigan will do him any good. Right now the prospects for his carrying this state are rather slim. Steve Delaney, NBC News, Detroit.