was James Marvin Henderson, Sr. 1970 election results Official results gave West 251,151 votes (52.1 percent) to Watson's 221,236 (45.9 percent). Red Bethea of the American Independent Party polled 9,758 votes (2 percent). African-American voters in 1970 numbered 206,394, or 46 percent of the African-American voting-age population and 35 percent of the total registration. Historians consider Watson's gubernatorial campaign to be the last openly segregationist campaign in South Carolina and one of the last in the South as a whole. Watson was succeeded in the House by Spence, who had nearly won the seat in 1962. Spence went on to hold the seat for thirty years. Later years In 1971, Thurmond asked Nixon to appoint Albert Watson to the United States Court of Military Appeals, but Democratic U.S. Senator George McGovern of South Dakota opposed him. The next year McGovern became Nixon's general election opponent. Watson died in Columbia at the age of seventy-two in 1994. He is interred there at Crescent Hill Memorial Gardens and Mausoleum. See also List of members of the House Un-American Activities Committee List of United States representatives who switched parties References External links 1922 births 1994 deaths University of South Carolina School of Law alumni South Carolina lawyers Republican Party members of the South Carolina House of Representatives People from Sumter, South Carolina Politicians from Columbia, South Carolina Baptists from South Carolina United States Army Air Forces soldiers United States Army Air Forces personnel of World War II Republican Party members of the United States House of Representatives from South Carolina Democratic Party members of the United States House of Representatives from South Carolina 20th-century American lawyers 20th-century American politicians Lawyers from Columbia, South Carolina 20th-century Baptists