Although Strom Thurmond switched to the Republican Party in 1964, he became a kingmaker in the GOP just four years later. In this, the fourth of five excerpts from "Ol' Strom: An Unauthorized Biography" (Longstreet, 1998, 2003), authors Jack Bass and Marilyn W. Thompson recount Thurmond's role in securing both the GOP presidential nomination and the November election for Richard Nixon.

When Congress took its break in August 1968 for the national political conventions, Strom Thurmond headed for Miami Beach to hold the South for Richard Nixon... .

Thurmond understood that the civil rights revolution was surpassing party loyalty as a political test in the South. He saw Nixon as the vehicle for shifting the center of the GOP to the right.

Thurmond's kingmaker role in Miami Beach symbolized that shift. In the fall he slugged it out with Gov. George Wallace, whose third-party effort threatened to derail Nixon. Only Thurmond possessed the credibility among Southerners to tell them a third-party protest was fruitless, and that "a vote for Wallace is a vote for Humphrey." ...

The road to Miami Beach began four years earlier with Thurmond switching parties and campaigning for Barry Goldwater... .

The mid-'60s were a period of political transition. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 increased and energized black voting strength in South Carolina. Simultaneously, it antagonized a majority of whites, and Thurmond reflected their views. He attacked the measure as vindictive in primarily targeting the states that had voted for Goldwater... .

The Voting Rights Act eliminated literacy tests in states where less than 50 percent of the voting age population voted in the 1964 presidential election; it required the states to get advance clearance from the Justice Department before implementing any changes in laws affecting voting... .

Democratic politicians in South Carolina suddenly needed black votes to win and were "scared to death" of seeking them... .

Harry Dent returned to South Carolina in the fall of 1965, after (Drake) Edens stepped down as GOP party chairman, and took over planning the 1966 campaign. Dent was equally intent on building the Republican Party, and the GOP fielded a full slate of candidates for state and congressional offices, with Thurmond at the top of the ticket... .

In the general election, Thurmond received 62 percent of the vote. His strength at the top of the ticket almost spilled over enough to topple Hollings in his bid for the remaining two years of Johnston's term. Watson won re-election but all other Republicans seeking major office lost... .

The most meaningful episode in the 1966 campaign occurred by accident. Dent got Richard Nixon, then practicing law in New York, to come to Columbia for a fund-raiser. Dent drove him back to the Columbia Airport at 11 p.m. to meet a corporate jet and return to New York... . When Dent probed, Nixon expressed reluctance about running for president in 1968 because of George Wallace. The Alabama governor planned to run, and Nixon saw him siphoning white voters on the race issue who might otherwise opt for Nixon.

Dent's memory of the dialogue in his car with Nixon captures its essence:

"George Wallace is going to run, and he's going to mess me up."

"There's an answer to that."

"What?"

"Strom Thurmond."

"Strom Thurmond? How? What are you talking about?"

"Well, he was the State Rights candidate for president back in 1948, and he's known across the South. He's got a bigger image across the South than George Wallace has." ...

Six months after sitting with Dent in his car at Columbia Airport, Nixon sent an emissary to see him. Dent had spoken to Thurmond and reaffirmed the senator would support Nixon... .

As Nixon feared, George Wallace had become the national lightning rod for what became known as the "social issue." He planned a third-party campaign that would tap into a working-class white electorate, angry and frightened by civil rights and anti-war protesters. He developed code words about race, including "welfare chiselers" and "law and order."

More than any experience in Thurmond's past, the 1968 Republican convention provided a political analogy to his glider ride into Normandy. He went to Miami Beach fully committed, and survival depended on quick and instinctive tactical decisions. Thurmond believed that only Nixon could win the election for the Republicans, and a GOP victory would move the country to the right.

When Nixon arrived by plane late Monday afternoon, Thurmond was there to greet him and ready to warn him of serious problems. The New York Times that morning ran a story speculating that, if nominated, Nixon would choose one of three men as his running mate -- New York's Rockefeller, New York City Mayor John Lindsay, or Illinois Sen. Charles Percy. All represented the party's liberal wing... .

Meanwhile, California Gov. Reagan dropped his coyness and formally announced his candidacy for the nomination... .

On the convention floor, Dent could feel slippage. Columnist Rowland Evans told him that Ohio Gov. James Rhodes said after Reagan's announcement, "It's a new ball game." An insider told Dent that Rhodes planned to throw Ohio's support to Reagan, with Rhodes to become his running mate.

The Nixon convention staff had a designated person serving as a listening post in each state delegation. About 9:30 p.m. on the convention floor, Dent got a call from John Mitchell, who became Nixon's campaign manager. Mitchell said Nixon could meet with Thurmond that night or on Tuesday.

A little after 10 p.m., Mitchell greeted Dent, Buzhardt and Thurmond, then took them by elevator to the 15th floor. They walked up three flights of stairs to Nixon's remote suite... .

The important thing, to Dent and Buzhardt, was that the top man understand Thurmond's commitment and reassure him that the South was important to the campaign. Buzhardt "was personally afraid that Dick Nixon would not understand how far out on a limb Strom Thurmond had gotten without any assurance from him."

They had heard reports Nixon's basic strategy was to court the urban vote and write off the South. Dent wanted the senator to "look in Nixon's eyes ... Strom Thurmond needed to be sure in his own mind that Richard Nixon had not written off the South." ...

The Thurmond strategy was to hold the South as solidly as possible for Nixon, allowing him to lock up the nomination early on the first ballot and not be pressured to make deals near the end of the balloting on selecting a running mate. .‘.‘. (The 356 Southern delegates amounted to more than half the number required for nomination. Nixon would get 264 of them, almost three of every four.) ...

When the subject of a vice presidential candidate came up, Nixon made it clear he would pick his own running mate and told them, "I'm not going to ram a man down the throat of any section of the country." And that, Dent said, was "all Sen. Thurmond wanted or needed to hear. It settled his own mind."

As the discussion with Nixon continued, Dent explained, "We said, 'Look, we can't carry your message for you. Senator Thurmond, just one man, can't deliver it. Why don't you tell these people directly?' He said, 'I'll be glad to. I'll answer any question that anybody asks.' ...

Nixon met twice the next morning with Southern state delegations, six states at a time.

There, Dent emphasized Thurmond's total commitment to Nixon and added that three surveys taken in South Carolina showed him the strongest among all voters of any Republican candidate. Bo Calloway of Georgia introduced Thurmond, who told them, "We have no choice, if we want to win, except to vote for Nixon. We must quit using our hearts and start using our heads." He continued, "I love Reagan, but Nixon's the one."

When Nixon spoke, he began by saying he supported civil rights. As Dent put it, "He said, 'Let me make it straight at the outset, that I am for civil rights and I have supported it and believe in it.'" But Nixon also alluded to the riots that had occurred in Northern cities. He said that most of the problems were caused by "extremists of both races" and that a Nixon administration wouldn't act "to satisfy some professional civil-rights group, or something like that." ...

Later that Tuesday, before meeting with the South Carolina delegation, Reagan met privately with Thurmond in the senator's hotel room. Reagan asked Dent to leave, believing that one-on-one he could persuade Thurmond to support him. Asked a few minutes after the meeting what he told the California governor, Thurmond said, "I told him I would support him next time." (Dent said that Thurmond was unimpressed with Reagan, finding him shallow.) ...

The final crisis came Wednesday night when delegates streaming into the Miami Beach Convention Center saw newsboys hawking a "bulldog" edition of the next morning's Miami Herald with a banner headline that Oregon Sen. Mark Hatfield would be the vice presidential nominee: HATFIELD VEEP PICK.

The story sparked pandemonium again among the Southern delegations. If true, it meant to them that Nixon had lied about waiting to make a decision on whom to choose for vice president. Dent raced from delegation to delegation, insisting the story was false... . Nixon's floor leader at the convention, Maryland Congressman Rogers Morton, stayed busy that evening scurrying with Thurmond from one Southern delegation to another... .

Although Hatfield would appeal to the moderate wing of the party, he was a Southern Baptist, and his main sponsor was the Rev. Billy Graham, who joined Thurmond and 16 other influential politicians to discuss the vice presidential pick with Nixon immediately after the nomination... .

When Thurmond left the room, however, he handed Nixon a small piece of paper with columns of names. He named five acceptables that included Reagan and Congressman George Bush of Texas, two "no objections" that included Maryland Gov. Spiro Agnew, and "unacceptables" that included Hatfield. Thurmond had deposited his veto... .

When Dent went through a receiving line at the end of the convention, Nixon said he wanted him to come to Mission Bay, Calif., and work for him on the campaign... . Nixon agreed to Dent's running a separate operation in the South, "Thurmond Speaks for Nixon-Agnew." ...

Thurmond took his message from Miami Beach, that a vote for Reagan was a vote for Rockefeller (because many of Nixon's supporters outside the South would find Reagan too conservative) and switched it in the general election to a vote for Wallace was a vote for Humphrey because Wallace couldn't win. In late September, "Thurmond Speaks" saturated the South with radio and television commercials of Thurmond delivering that message... . Tom Turnipseed (a Wallace campaign staffer) remembered Thurmond's spots as "very effective" and that Wallace's poll numbers began falling almost immediately. Wallace had led in the border states of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Florida, as well as South Carolina -- states that Nixon won, with a collective 45 electoral votes that exceeded his margin of victory. Nixon squeaked by Wallace in North Carolina and Tennessee, where Thurmond's role clearly made the difference, and won more decisively in Florida. .‘.‘.

Thurmond carried South Carolina for Nixon, making it the only state in the South to vote Republican in both the 1964 and 1968 presidential elections. Although the other Goldwater states from 1964 and Arkansas went to Wallace, Humphrey carried only Lyndon Johnson's home state of Texas, and the other Southern states all moved into Nixon's column... .