Objective Using the “theory of relative advantage” (Hood, Kidd, and Morris, 2012), this study tests a number of hypotheses focusing on the short‐ and long‐term influences of Governor George Wallace on the partisan voting alignment of Alabama counties at the presidential and gubernatorial levels. Methods The analysis uses county‐level vote shares data for president and governor from 1952 to 2012 in a confirmatory factor analysis to model party alignments among counties within a state and to identify the sequence and timing of party realignments (Aistrup, 2012). Results We find that Wallace's presidential county voting patterns in 1968 deviated significantly from Alabama's New Deal structure of partisan competition, and that the structured partisan competition associated with Reagan's election in 1980 follows the same patterns initiated by Wallace in 1968. However, Wallace's New Right alignment at the gubernatorial level does not emerge until the controversial 1986 gubernatorial election. There is a marginal utility function modeled as a curvilinear relationship between black voter mobilization and the change in the Republican bias between the New Deal and the New Right alignment. Conclusions The theory of relative advantage provides a strong theoretical platform for understanding how the political cues provided by Wallace affected the timing and sequence of changes in the structure of partisan competition among Alabama counties at the presidential and gubernatorial levels.