Attempted Assassination of George Wallace

Background

At the time, George Wallace was listed as candidate. The record is categorized as attempted assassination with a high confidence level.

Event details

The reported method was shooting. Failed; Wallace survived but was paralyzed.

Aftermath

Wallace survived but was left permanently paralyzed from the waist down by a bullet that lodged in his spinal column; he spent months in rehabilitation and returned to the campaign trail in a wheelchair before eventually withdrawing from the race. Three other people were also wounded, including a Secret Service agent and a campaign aide. Arthur Bremer was disarmed and arrested at the scene; he was tried in August 1972, convicted on four counts of assault with intent to murder, and sentenced to 53 years in federal prison. He was released on parole in 2007 after serving 35 years. Wallace was elected governor of Alabama again in 1974 and is remembered both for his segregationist politics and for the physical toll the attack took on him; the shooting contributed to broader debates about political violence and campaign security reform.

Historical significance

The Bremer shooting transformed the 1972 presidential race, removing the one candidate who had demonstrated the ability to draw substantial cross-racial, working-class support away from both major parties. Wallace's removal from active campaigning accelerated George McGovern's path to the Democratic nomination and arguably made Nixon's 49-state landslide possible, though this counterfactual remains debated by historians. Arthur Bremer's diary, published after his arrest, directly inspired Paul Schrader's screenplay for Taxi Driver (1976), embedding the incident in American popular culture long after its immediate political significance faded—and, ironically, Taxi Driver then inspired John Hinckley Jr.'s attempt on Ronald Reagan nine years later, creating one of the stranger chains of cause and effect in American political violence. Wallace's paralysis and his later public renunciation of segregationism are a complex final chapter to his biography.

Sources

• Attempted assassination of George Wallace — Wikipedia contributors
• Arthur Bremer — Wikipedia contributors
• List of United States presidential assassination attempts and plots — Wikipedia contributors