The Legend Of Denmark Groover: Why Everything You Know About Runoffs Is Wrong
Whether or not Andy Warhol ever actually uttered the well-known statement -- "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes."-- he would likely be surprised at how accurate the prediction attributed to him has turned out to be in this era of Twitter, Tik Tok, and Instagram. Wear an orange suit to a Netherlands World Cup match, or a red and white checked latex bikini-halter top to a Croatia game, and one can instantly become the subject of newspaper and magazine articles throughout the world. However, one suspects that even Warhol would be amazed at the latest individual currently to achieve his 15 minutes of fame – Denmark Groover, a colorfully-named segregationist legislator of the fifties and sixties in the state of Georgia who later repented his political views.
While Groover may not be recognized throughout the United States, he is, or was, well-known in Georgia. He played a significant role in the enactment of legislation that incorporated the Confederate flag into Georgia’s state flag, and, approximately forty years later, was recruited by Georgia’s governor to assist in the effort to remove it. Groover is perhaps best remembered for an incident in which, as debate over a particular bill was reaching its midnight deadline, he climbed over the railing of the legislative chamber’s balcony in an attempt to adjust the clock, only to send it crashing to the floor.
What has occasioned Groover’s resurrection from national obscurity is last December’s runoff election in Georgia between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker. That election, between two black candidates, nevertheless precipitated a spate of articles, from outlets such as the Washington Post, NPR, and CBS News, decrying the Georgia runoff system, and runoffs in general, as racist. Mr. Groover’s relevance? Well, in a 1984 deposition, he purportedly testified that, when he proposed the first runoff legislation over twenty years earlier in the Georgia legislature, he had done so to minimize the influence of the Black vote.
The History of Runoffs
At first glance, runoff elections would appear to be a positive mechanism. As one analyst has observed, they reflect a deep-seated attachment to the principle of majority rule, one of the cardinal pillars of democracy. Requiring a majority to be elected encourages candidates to broaden their appeal to a wider range of voters, to reduce the likelihood of electing candidates who are at the ideological extremes of a party, and, in the case of a primary, to produce a nominee who may be more electable in the general election. In Arkansas, it is generally accepted that the runoff primary system was implemented to combat the Ku Klux Klan, suggesting that runoffs can be anti-racist as well as racist.
Critics of runoffs, as evidence of racism, point to the fact that most runoff requirements are in states located in the South. However, as Professor Charles Bullock of the University of Georgia, arguably the leading authority on the history of runoffs and the author of the book Runoff Elections in the United States, has pointed out, most runoff rules were enacted at a time when blacks were unable to vote. As a consequence, the black vote was an irrelevancy to the rules’ enactment.
Moreover, it is not necessarily true that runoffs are limited to the South. California, not known as a hotbed of racism, employs a form of runoff system in its elections. After a primary election open to all candidates, the two highest vote-getters face off in a second election. In the most recent election, Gavin Newson was required to undergo a second round of voting, even though he achieved more than 50% of the vote the first time around.
More tellingly, New York City adopted a runoff system for primaries in 1972, at a time when racial polarization was at its peak. Although the New York law does not require a candidate to achieve a majority, it requires a candidate to achieve a plurality of 40% in his party’s primary. The impetus for this bill was the 1969 election in which the winner of the Democratic primary, Mario Proccacino, garnered only 33% of the primary vote, while two other candidates garnered 29% and 28% respectively. Lacking any mandate from his party, Proccacino went on to lose the election to the incumbent, John Lindsay, a mayor so unpopular that he became the subject of a song in Radio City’s anodyne annual show, entitled “Blame It On John,” and who did not even receive his own party’s nomination. Eight years later, in 1977, the Democratic primary was even more fragmented, with the winner of the first round, Ed Koch, garnering only 20% of the primary vote, Mario Cuomo 19%, Abe Beame 18%, and three other candidates between 16.5% and 11%. Koch thereafter defeated Cuomo in the runoff and became Mayor of the City. As in the Dixie states of old, victory in the New York City Democratic primary all but assures a candidate victory in the general election.
Challenges To the System
Turning back to Georgia, Professor Bullock, in an article published in the University of Chicago Journal, conducted a multivariate analysis of 215 runoff elections in Georgia between the years 1965 and 1982. Bullock’s conclusions disproved three “myths” concerning runoffs. The third “myth” was that minorities and women were disadvantaged by the run-off system. Bullock, based upon his analysis, concluded:
Georgia data demonstrate that common myths surrounding runoff primaries bear little relation to reality. Although the myths may be based on well-known instances that support them, they fail to stand up well in the face of systematic quantitative analysis. None of the myths applies universally or is even accurate for a majority of the cases.
Addressing specifically the issue of whether runoffs are racially discriminatory, Bullock wrote: “While the small number of cases makes our conclusion tentative, there is no support for the minority disadvantage myth.”
To critics of runoffs, the saga of Denmark Groover is far more compelling than the evidence above. Indeed, the recent articles concerning the Georgia runoff are by no means the first time that there has been a challenge to Georgia’s election system or that Denmark Groover has been enlisted as the primary witness against it. Accusations against the Georgia system appear to be evergreen, and Groover’s deposition testimony has been a part of those accusations for decades. At least once before, in 1990, Groover achieved a previous 15 minutes of fame in the New York Times.
Groover’s resurrection was the result of legal challenges which put these accusations of racism to the test over thirty years ago. A lawsuit was instituted against the Georgia runoff system in 1990. Similarly, lawsuits were filed against the runoff structure in both Arkansas and New York City. In the latter instances, both the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, in Whitfield v. Democratic Party of Arkansas, and the Second Circuit, in Butts v. City of New York, ruled that the election systems violated neither the Voting Rights Act nor the Constitution.
In the Georgia case, Brooks v. Miller, the 11th Circuit came to the same conclusion. In doing so, it addressed head-on the account of Denmark Groover. The court accepted Groover’s testimony that, when he introduced the first runoff legislation, he did so with a racist motive. However, the court noted that Groover’s legislation, while it passed in the Georgia General Assembly, died in the Senate and, as a consequence, was never enacted. Thereafter, the Georgia governor, Carl Sanders, appointed an Election Laws Study Committee (“ELSC”) to examine election practices and propose legislation. Groover was not involved in the ELSC, nor among Sanders’ advisors, having endorsed his primary opponent. It was the ELSC that proposed the legislation implementing a runoff system. The court determined that backers of the legislation were motivated by concerns of good government -- they wanted to reduce the power of the courthouse crowds and to eliminate the use of stalking horses and dummy candidates as a method of election manipulation. The court noted that even “the Plaintiffs' own expert admitted on the stand that nothing in these records provides a clear link between race and the majority vote provision.” (Emphasis added). Finally, the court suggested that Sanders’ own experience with a stalking horse candidate may have been the catalyst for his support of the legislation. Sanders had originally announced his candidacy for lieutenant governor but had withdrawn after his opponent had threatened the introduction of such a stalking horse candidate in the primary, who was, perhaps not coincidentally, also named Sanders, in order to draw votes away or create confusion.
The life of Denmark Groover provides an interesting story and colorful story in its own right, and perhaps he deserves his fifteen minutes of fame. However, it may be time for him to relinquish his role as the villain of runoff elections.
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