George Edward McNally (December 24, 1923 — December 16, 1987) was an American lawyer, soldier, politician and bureaucrat. Born and educated in Illinois, he became a community leader in Mobile, Alabama and its first Republican mayor elected since Reconstruction, after winning election as the city's Public Safety Commissioner in the 1960s. McNally later became a federal bureaucrat and ran the south eastern regional office of the (newly established) Urban Mass Transit Administration in Atlanta, Georgia in the 1970s.[1][2]
George E. McNally entered the Republican Party, and won election to the governing City Commission in 1961 by defeating incumbent Public Safety commissioner Henry R. Luscher, as racial tensions escalated in the area due to the city's huge growth during and after World War II, as well as Massive Resistance to the U.S. Supreme Court decisions in Brown v. Board of Education. McNally became the first Republican elected to office in Mobile since Reconstruction.[4]
McNally pushed to create an Industrial Development Board with the power to issue bonds, as well as attract new business to the area, greatly dependent upon Brookley Air Force Base. However, the local Chamber of Commerce considered such its job, and the IDB board would be disbanded.[5]
His term as Mayor of Mobile was when the title was co-extensive with the presidency of the City Commission. During protests following integration of Murphy High School in September 1963, commissioner McNally worked with fellow commissioner (and Democrat) Joseph N. Langan to de-escalate. However, Alabama's new governor George Wallace vehemently opposed desegregation in the state, and while Mobile did not experience the violence of Birmingham and Selma, cross-burnings and fire-bombings did occur. The Birdie Mae Davis school desegregation case would drag on until 1997, even after a decision unfavorable to the Mobile County School Board in 1971. Meanwhile, following Alabama's vote for Republican Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in the 1964 elections, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared Brookley Air Force base faced closure, and challenger Arthur R. Outlaw defeated McNally's re-election bid in 1965. Outlaw had campaigned some with Wallace, although nearly two decades later he would also join the Republican party.