Callaway promised that if he was elected, to alleviate overcrowded classrooms and to augment teacher salaries by $1,200 per year, but he had criticized a similar plan by Maddox as too costly. Both major party nominees opposed federal enforcement of desegregation guidelines. Callaway had sponsored a resolution in the US House to the bar US Education Commissioner, Harold Howe, II, from equating "racial imbalance" with "segregation" in the determination of the disposition of federal funds. Maddox frequently claimed that the wealthy Callaway was insensitive to the needy.