Alabama: George's Asphalt Jungle

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George Wallace's third-party quest for the presidency has captured so many hearts and spleens that by last week he was already on the November ballot in 16 states. Yet a briar patch was growing in his own home state. His reputation is built not only on the sands of segregation but on a claim of bedrock honesty as well. "The books are always open," he liked to brag about his days as Alabama Governor. Now an angry Alabamian has opened the books in federal court.

The brush of scandal is tarring Wallace cronies with a charge that asphalt to patch Alabama roads costs the state $2,000,000 a year more than it ought to, with the implication that some of this money goes into Wallace campaign coffers. Claiming that it was unable to sell any of its asphalt to the state, the Waugh Asphalt Co. sued Alabama Finance Director Seymore Trammell, who manages Wallace's presidential campaign as well as state purchasing, along with 24 firms and state-appointed "sales agents." It charged them with rigging prices, promoting monopoly and breaking state and federal laws.

The Waugh Co. said that its bids were consistently the lowest—averaging 20% below successful bids in counties where Waugh did not compete—yet it never got a state contract. The defendant companies are studded with Wallace cronies. American Materials & Supply Co., the state's largest supplier last year, has a secretary-treasurer who was a Wallace campaign aide. His driver and errand boy in the 1962 campaign is now an officer of the Wire-grass Construction Co., also named in the suit. The case will probably come to trial in the fall, when it could prove embarrassing to Wallace's presidential aspirations.