TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/election/60elect/60elect.002

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                                                                                March 21, 1960

THE CAMPAIGN

End of the Beginning


     On election eve in New Hampshire, the big white clock in
the cupola of Dover's city hall glowed down on the wintry town,
and the resinous vapors of a torchlight parade gave a tang to
the crisp might air. The kilted Granite State Highlanders
tootled The Blue Bells of Scotland on their bagpipes and John
Fitzgerald Kennedy, the Democratic U.S. Senator from neighboring
Massachusetts, marched behind them through the streets of Dover.
In the city hall, 1,000 people waited to see Candidate Kennedy
and to hear his last word in the first primary campaign of 1960.
"Beginning tomorrow," said he, "New Hampshire can fire a shot
that will be heard around the country."

     Yankee New Hampshire (pop. 592,000) seemed hardly that
important. Its voice in the national electoral college (four
votes out of 537) is small; its registered voters (325,710)
barely exceed those of the city of Milwaukee, are only half the
number of employees of General Motors and their families. Yet
individualistic New Hampshire is traditionally 1) the first of
the 50 states to indicate a presidential choice, and 2) a
political Ouija board that fascinates politicians and sometimes
foretells political events to come. New Hampshire's early
primary elections mark the end of the beginning of any
presidential election, the tingling time when the candidates
actually begin to pile up their convention votes.

     A Family Affair. No one had doubts last week about the
outcome of New Hampshire's primaries: only two major candidates
were in the race -- Vice President Nixon, Republican; Jack
Kennedy, Democrat.

     After the dramatic withdrawal of Nelson Rockefeller as a
G.O.P. presidential candidate, Nixon had scrapped his plans for
an active invasion of New Hampshire, relied on an intensive
telephone campaign and the well-knit efforts of the state's
dominant Republican organization to put him across. Kennedy, on
the other hand, had waged an all-out campaign, powered by his
family, his own indefatigable youthfulness, and the strength and
cunning of the Kennedy organization, which, months before, had
virtually taken over the fledgling New Hampshire Democratic
machine.

     Both candidates won smashing victories and both made
political history. Nixon, with 65,204 votes, polled an alltime
high in New Hampshire -- significantly ahead of Dwight
Eisenhower's previous highwater mark of 56,464 in the 1956
primary. Kennedy racked up 43,372 Democratic ballots, more than
twice the previous record set by Democratic Winner Estes
Kefauver in 1956. Neither candidate had hoped for anything
approaching the final tabulations.

     Other straws in the New Hampshire wind:

     --Kennedy's vote reduced the traditional Republican lead in
New Hampshire from 2-to-1 to 3-to-2.

     --The heavy write-in vote which had been predicted for
Rockefeller failed to materialize, and the New York Governor got
only 2,745 handwritten ballots, leading Nixon's supporters to
conclude that Rocky is no longer a threat in 1960.

     --An election-eve denunciation of Kennedy as "soft on
communism" by rabidly right-wing Governor Wesley Powell was
denounced by Kennedy and sharply repudiated by Nixon. Its
possible effects on the election were hard to discern. Some
analysts claimed that the unprecedented turnout at the polls was
a result; others saw the 2,196 Republican write-in votes for
Kennedy as a protest against Powell. Nixon aides interpreted the
Vice President's quick repudiation of Powell's reckless charge
as a big help in dissociating their candidate from the right
wing of the Republican Party. But when the results were in,
Nixon still congratulated Powell, his New Hampshire campaign
manager, for a "great achievement."

     --Kennedy's greatest pile-up of votes occurred,
predictably, in the industrialized, Democratic and Catholic
cities. Jacqueline Kennedy's French blood may have been a
factor in the heavy vote for her husband by New Hampshire's
98,000 French Canadian citizens.

     --Nixon won handily in the small towns, but Democratic
strength was increased in many towns and counties. Politicians'
conclusion: Kennedy's Catholicism did not hurt him in Protestant
towns, helped him in Catholic cities.

     --In the two barometer counties of Coos and Strafford
(which have rarely failed to forecast the November outcomes in
their March primaries,) the Democrats won -- 5,059 to 4,893 in
Strafford, 5,060 to 4,338 in Coos.

     In Washington, the supporters of Democratic Candidates
Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson and Stuart Symington assumed a
public so-what attitude, but showed private signs of alarm at
the strength of Jack Kennedy's increasing thrust. The crucial
primary for Kennedy will still be three weeks hence in
Wisconsin, where he is running hard against Minnesota's Hubert
Humphrey for the Democratic honors, and where Republicans can
freely cross over to vote either ticket. But at the end of the
beginning it looked more and more a campaign between Dick Nixon
and Jack Kennedy.


Yellow Alert

     "What has New Hampshire got to do with the price of eggs?"
snapped a Humphrey henchman after Jack Kennedy's impressive
primary victory last week. Said a Stuart Symington lieutenant:
"Have any of the oldtimers given up? The professionals have been
through this before."

     Such talk was more and more frequent last week around the
Washington campfires of Jack Kennedy's rivals for the Democratic
presidential nomination. The names of notable unbeatables who
had been beaten -- Taft, Kefauver, Stassen -- were lovingly
recalled. There was a lot of big talk about stopping Kennedy in
Wisconsin April 5, or if not there in West Virginia May 10. But
the plain fact was that Kennedy's rivals were scared. Nobody was
panicking yet, but every Democrat was operating on a yellow
alert.

     Late Recognition. After weeks of muted weekend campaigning,
Hubert Humphrey started moving fast in Wisconsin, even crossed
paths briefly with Rival Kennedy at the Intonville Airport.
Shaking hands at a Kenosha factory gate, Humphrey was delighted
to discover that more and more people were recognizing him. In
the midst of his rising enthusiasm, the buoyant Humphrey still
had pensive moments. After an overtime session of handshaking
with deaf children at a school in Delavan, he was asked why he
spent so much time with nonvoters. Replied Humphrey: "I guess
it's because Jack's got a feeling he can win. Me. I'm not so
sure, so I'm going to have some fun."

     Missouri's handsome Stu Symington wound up two weeks of
galoshing around snowbound southern Illinois at a rally in the
gymnasium of St. Mary's Catholic Church in Herrin (pop. 9,331).
More than 400 party zealots, including virtually every
Democratic candidate for local office or for the national
convention from 19 southern Illinois counties, gave Symington a
heartening welcome. It was, Symington said, "the best political
meeting for me since 1948." But for a man campaigning in the
friendly sector of a neighboring state, it was not good enough.
Indeed, few Illinoisans seemed aware that an incipient president
was in their midst.

     Early Declaration. In Washington, Symington held several
meetings last week with his top strategists -- Lawyer (and
onetime White House aide) Clark Clifford, Representative
Charlie Brown and Administrative Assistant Stan Fike -- to mull
over the situation. There were predictions that Symington would
make his formal declaration of candidacy earlier than planned
-- around April 1. But some of Symington's own high command
felt that it was a lot later than he thought. Said a St. Louis
advocate: "Symington has waited a year and a half too long to
put together the kind of organization Kennedy has. What Kennedy
has to do after Wisconsin is to catch one of several states. If
he can get a big one, this boy has got it. If he can move one of
the big boys, we can forget all about the convention in Los
Angeles."

________________________________________________________________
April 18, 1960
PRIMARIES
Something for Everybody


     On election night the candidates were dead tired, hollow-
eyed and worried. As the first returns began to trickle into
Milwaukee from Wisconsin's countryside. Candidate Hubert
Humphrey began to brighten up. The magic numbers were going all
his way. By 9 p.m. Humphrey held a 6,500-vote lead over his
rival Jack Kennedy. In his Pfister Hotel suite, Kennedy slumped
in a chair watching television; Brother Bob hovered anxiously
over a telephone, jotting down the reports of local legman.
Then, slowly, the numbers began to change, and by 11 p.m.
Kennedy was out in front. At that point, only one thing was
certain: placid Wisconsin had been so churned by the campaign
that an unprecedented 1,192,398 citizens had gone to the polls
in a primary where voters can freely cross party lines. And
that, too, added to the uncertainty.

     Two Themes. In the final dervish week it was Humphrey who
covered the most territory and made the most political mileage.
Traveling in a rented bus, he drove furiously across rolling
dairyland and rustic wheat country, punching endlessly at two
themes: Agriculture Secretary Ezra Benson's hated farm program,
and Jack Kennedy's early support of that program. Local
lieutenants of Missouri's Stuart Symington -- whose strategy
calls for staying out of primaries -- publicly threw their
support to Humphrey. Mildly anti-Catholic ads were distributed
to 350 Wisconsin weeklies (planted by the unofficial Square Deal
for Humphrey Committee and promptly disowned by Humphrey).
Nearing the end, Humphrey even lost his voice but rigorous
throat sprays served the day. Kennedy continued his cool
campaigning, but the mid-campaign clean-sweep predictions were
revised, bets were hedged, and apprehension crept into the
Kennedy camp in proportion to the rising confidence that seized
Humphrey.

     When the final returns were in, Kennedy won, with a
decisive 478,901 votes -- 56% of the Democratic vote that took
six of the state's ten election districts, 20 1/2 of the 31
delegate votes at the national convention. Humphrey was second
with 372,034 votes, four election districts, 10 1/2 delegate
votes. Nixon, unopposed Republican, came in third in the popular
count, with 341,463. The pundits and politicians added up the
returns and made them come out just about any way they wished.
But there were some unmistakable conclusions to be drawn.

     One Exception. With his 106,000 plurality, Kennedy showed
some remarkable strengths and some revealing weaknesses. His
support from Wisconsin's large Roman Catholic population (32%)
almost amounted to a bloc vote -- from the German and Polish
Catholics in Milwaukee's Fourth District to the thousands of
rural Republicans who crossed over to vote for him. (One
interesting exception to the rule: in economically hard-pressed
Ashland and Iron counties, both over 40% Catholic, Hubert
Humphrey won.) Though Humphrey was endorsed by U.A.W.-C.I.O
leaders, Kennedy swept the labor vote, which is heavily
Catholic. One pro-Humphrey U.A.W. official groused that it was
impossible to get Humphrey literature distributed in plants
with Catholic shop stewards. But Kennedy worked hard for the
labor vote, shaking hands at factory gates, attending shop
meetings, cultivating labor's rank and file; he was doubtless
helped too by Teamster Boss Jimmy Hoffa's foray into Wisconsin
to carry on his vicious vendetta against the Kennedys. Kennedy
ran well enough in the farm districts to prove that he has some
farmer appeal but lost by enough to prove that he is vulnerable
to Humphrey's pounding at his agriculture voting record.

     Humphrey was beaten in the state adjoining his own
Minnesota, by an urbane Easterner with a Harvard accent. But he
was still a very lively candidate. His hard work among the
farmers had paid off handsomely: only one farm district, the
seventh, fell into the Kennedy column, but it was 64% Catholic
Portage County, in the center of the district, that gave Kennedy
his 6,000 plurality in the seventh. There are a few signs that
Humphrey benefitted from crossover support of Protestant
Republicans (in Richland County, a Republican farm area,
Humphrey polled 2,418 votes, Nixon 2,158, Kennedy 1,558), but
mostly he exploited the farmers' strong anti-Benson feeling by
trumpeting Kennedy's early farm votes for Benson programs.
Supporters of Adlai Stevenson in Madison shifted to Humphrey
and helped carry Dane County for him. Humphrey's labor strength
was a bust, but he was cheered by results from Milwaukee's
three Negro wards, where he won by a 2-to-1 margin. "If you're
talking about blocs," crowed Humphrey, "the Negro's a much
bigger bloc nationally than labor."

     Nixon, whose supporters had hoped for 40% of the total vote
and predicted 30%, got 29%. His big riddle: Were the thousands
of embattled farmers and enthusiastic Catholics who crossed over
to vote for Humphrey or Kennedy just "one-day Democrats" who
wanted to put their bets on a real contest, and would they
return to the G.O.P. in November? Nixon, recalling 1948, felt
confident. (In 1948 thousands of Wisconsin Democrats crossed
over to cast their votes in a three-way contest by Harold E.
Stassen, General Douglas MacArthur and Thomas E. Dewey in the
Republican primary, leaving Harry Truman trailing far behind in
fourth place. But in November the Democrats crossed back again
and Truman beat Dewey by 50,000 votes to carry Wisconsin.)

     Actually, unpredictable Wisconsin had done it again.
Nothing was big enough -- Kennedy's margin of victory, Humphrey's
margin of loss. Nixon's share of the total vote, and as far as
the two Democrats were concerned, the whole performance had to
be repeated in West Virginia. Groaned a Kennedy supporter:
"When I think of all those mornings we got up to be at those
plant gates -- and now they say West Virginia will be the test."
Said Hubert Humphrey, to a war council of aides, when the last
returns were in: "We'll be out from under this Catholic thing,
and we'll be dealing with real Democrats, not these one-day
Democrats. (West Virginia forbids crossover voting.) We've got
four weeks to saturate that state. We've got to get a lot of
literature in, get public relations help, all the things we
didn't do here. Symington and Johnson will still be on the
sidelines; they're not going anywhere until that primary is
resolved. I know we can win there."

May 23, 1960
DEMOCRATS
Forward Look


     The first salmon streaks of dawn were coming up over
Washington's National Airport when the darkened Convair winged
in from West Virginia. Jackie Kennedy lay curled in sleep on a
back seat, but her husband, the hero of the night before, was
wide awake. As soon as the plane door opened, he hurried over to
a vending machine, plunked in a dime and plucked out an early
edition of the Washington Post. KENNEDY SWEEPS WEST VA. VOTE,
proclaimed the headline. Chuckled Jack Kennedy: "I wouldn't be
surprised if Lyndon and Stu might be having a conference today."

     It was a logical guess. Kennedy's big victory had produced a
sinking feeling in the camps of his rivals for the Democratic
presidential nomination. Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey withdrew
from the race and hurried home to campaign for the Senate.
Texas' Lyndon Johnson and Missouri's Stuart Symington, the
candidates who had sidestepped the primaries, now had every
reason to form a grand alliance. Each made the usual brave
comments. Said Symington: "The primary will not be any more
decisive than Wisconsin." Said Johnson: "The nation can start
judging on the basis of merit." But nobody was fooled; the
political hour was growing late for Johnson and Symington -- and
later still for Adlai Stevenson, whose friends indicated that if
someone would just promise to make him Secretary of State, he'd
be happy.

    Liberal List. Washington waited in vain for the stop-Kennedy
summit meeting. It never came. Neither Symington nor Johnson was
willing at this time to bow out in favor of the other; Stevenson
was urged to endorse Kennedy, but decided to wait out the
results of this week's Oregon primary where all
hopefuls -- including Oregon's own Wayne Morse -- are entered. In
the lull, United Auto Workers' Walter Reuther, political shop
steward of Michigan's Governor G. Mennen Williams, came out for
Kennedy. So did Humphreyman Joseph Rauh, vice chairman of
Americans for Democratic Action. (But not all liberals share
the enthusiasm for Kennedy. Said the liberal Nation last week:
"The Republican passion for Senator Kennedy is obviously based
on the theory that however formidable he may be as a
pre-convention candidate, he would be a weak nominee for the
Democrats." In somewhat the same vein, Republicans have grinned
over the fact that Kennedy has nominated New York's Nelson
Rockefeller as his "strongest" possible opponent.) And even
Eleanor Roosevelt, who has had her reservations about Jack
Kennedy's Catholicism, issued the matriarchal opinion that he,
more than either Symington or Johnson, "will be considered the
candidate of the liberals."

     The Ichabod specter of Estes Kefauver clomped through the
stop-Kennedy speculation and talk. In 1952, with a successful
string of 13 primaries behind him, the Keef was stopped cold in
mid-convention by President Harry Truman and the Democratic
bosses simply because he did not fit their image of a nominee.
No such feelings exist about Kennedy, and his one big
bugaboo -- his Catholic religion -- was gone with West Virginia.

     Southern Secession.  With nobody willing to step aside and
nobody really determined to stop Kennedy, the situation of the
rivals began to disintegrate. Truman endorsed Symington, as
everyone expected him to, but even that had a slight boomerang
quality about it. Questioned in Chicago by reporters, Truman
said limply that the only thing he had against Kennedy was the
fact that "he lives in Massachusetts." In the South there were
signs of an incipient secession from Lyndon Johnson. A wobbly
move to nominate Herman Talmadge as a strategic favorite son
began in Georgia. Commented the Atlanta Constitution: "This
will further increase the probability that Senator Kennedy will
be nominated on the first ballot." In Arkansas, Governor Orval
Faubus noted that Kennedy seems to have "started a trend."

     A grim group of Washington strategists tossed out the
possibility that a crisis growing out of the Paris summit
conference might change the whole picture. Such a time of
national peril, they suggested, could make the Democratic
Convention reject Kennedy as too young and too inexperienced to
cope with Nikita Khrushchev. A better crisis candidate, the
whisper went, might be Johnson, the cool, bipartisan helmsman,
or Symington, the military expert, or Stevenson, the
internationalist. It all had the sound, though, of whistling in
the growing dark.

Vote Getter's Victory. Jack Kennedy had figured the West
Virginia odds at 60-40 -- against himself. His odds were right;
he had just predicted the wrong winner. When the final returns
were in, he had swept West Virginia by 220,000 votes to Hubert
Humphrey's 142,000.

     It was a triumph that confounded the experts. Kennedy had
carried all but seven of West Virginia's 55 counties. Despite
the pressure of venerable United Mine Worker John L. Lewis for
Humphrey, the miners in the depressed coal fields turned out for
Kennedy. Despite the warnings of their militantly Protestant
pastors, the hillbillies south of the Kanawha River voted for
a Catholic; Kennedy, in fact, brought his campaign to a climax
with a statewide Sunday evening television assurance that if any
President of the U.S. took "dictation" from anyone, the Pope
included, it would be contrary to his oath of office and "he
would be subject to impeachment and should be." Negroes gave him
their emphatic endorsement. Women found him irresistible. And
for all the rancor and bitterness it generated, the West
Virginia primary cleared the political air. It swept the
religious issue aside, at least until after the Democratic
Convention, and it removed any doubt about Kennedy's ability as
a vote getter.

     Razzle-Dazzle. Reporters, pollsters and politicos who had
predicted a narrow Humphrey victory (although most had hedged
their bets in the last days by noting a Kennedy campaign surge)
cast about for explanations. There were several in sight. The
smooth, battle- proven Kennedy organization had never worked
more efficiently. Most West Virginians thought that the Kennedy
moneybags had been used not to buy the election ("We're running
for President, not for sheriff," snorted a Kennedy aide) but to
finance a razzle-dazzle, all-out fight. In the last 72 hours
Kennedy poured out $40,000 for radio and television time. Then
there were such shrewdly employed pitchmen as Franklin
Roosevelt Jr., who exploited New Deal nostalgia to good effect.

     Negative factors worked for Jack Kennedy, too. Humphrey
drew good crowds and held them like an evangelist, but he just
could not get across the idea that he was a serious presidential
candidate. His silent partnership with Candidates Stuart
Symington and Lyndon Johnson did him no good, and the pro-
Humphrey campaign of West Virginia's Senator Robert Byrd, an
avowed Johnson man, boomeranged savagely. Kennedy even carried
Byrd's home town, Sophia, 237-135. As a former Ku Klux Klansman,
Byrd probably accounted for a large part of Kennedy's big Negro
vote.

     On the Line. The biggest factor was Jack Kennedy himself.
His easy manner, serious speeches and kinetic charm, his
decision to fight out the religion issue, and even his Harvard
accent -- all won respect and votes.

     Two days afterward, in New York for a big, $100-a-plate
Democratic dinner, Kennedy was greeted with a sea of FKBW ("For
Kennedy Before Wisconsin") buttons, and the glum assurances of
Tammany---?--- Carmine De Sapio that he already had the support of
"more than a majority" of New York's 114-vote delegation. New
Jersey (41 votes) was 80% committed. In Maryland, Kennedy
interrupted a whirlwind primary campaign to make a mysterious
long-distance phone call from a roadside booth to Michigan's
Governor G. Mennen ("Soapy") Williams. With Walter Reuther
prodding him to commit Michigan's 51-vote delegation to Kennedy,
Soapy issued a statement that he had "no present intention to
make a personal endorsement."

     Across the nation, in every state except his rivals' home
grounds, Kennedy's bandwagon was making tracks, and the tune it
played had changed from the campaign theme, High Hopes, to
everything's Coming Up Roses.