John F. Kennedy 1960 presidential campaign
The 1960 presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy, then junior United States senator from Massachusetts, was formally launched on January 2, 1960, as Senator Kennedy announced his intention to seek the Democratic Party nomination for the presidency of the United States in the 1960 presidential election.
Kennedy was nominated by the Democratic Party at the national convention on July 15, 1960, and he named Senator Lyndon B. Johnson as his vice-presidential running mate. On November 8, 1960, they defeated incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon and United Nations Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. in the general election. Kennedy was sworn in as president on January 20, 1961, and would serve until his assassination on November 22, 1963. His brothers Robert and Ted would both later run for president in 1968 and 1980 respectively, but neither received the presidential nomination.
Background
During the 1956 presidential election, Kennedy was speculated as a possible vice presidential nominee. Before the vice presidential nomination ballot multiple Massachusetts politicians, including former Governor Paul A. Dever, gave their support to Kennedy and pushed for other state delegations to support him. On the first ballot, Kennedy came in second place to Senator Estes Kefauver, but came ahead of him on the second ballot due to support from Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr., another Catholic, and Southerners who opposed Kefauver's anti-segregation beliefs. However, on the third ballot, Kefauver won with the support of Senator Albert Gore Sr., but would lose in the general election alongside Adlai Stevenson II. Kennedy, however, remained untarnished by Stevenson's defeat, and the exposure he received at the convention made him a serious contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960. Kennedy later stated that had he won the vice presidential nomination his political career would have ended due to the Republican landslide in the general election.In 1957, Kennedy won the Pulitzer Prize for his best-selling book, Profiles in Courage, and his appointments to the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee and Select Committee on Labor Rackets added to his public stature. Benefiting also from the handiwork of speechwriter Ted Sorensen, articles published under Kennedy's name began appearing often in serious magazines, among them the Atlantic Monthly and the New Republic.
In 1958, Kennedy set out to win re-election to the U.S. Senate by a wide margin, believing this would improve his visibility in the Democratic Party and nationally. He defeated his Republican opponent with 73.6 percent of the vote, boosting his presidential profile for 1960. Kennedy's margin of victory was 874,608 votes—the largest ever in Massachusetts politics and the greatest of any senatorial candidate that year. In the aftermath of his re-election, Kennedy began preparing to run for president by traveling throughout the U.S., establishing contacts with potential Democratic delegates, with the aim of building his candidacy for 1960.
On October 24, 1958, Frank Sinatra came out in support of a possible Kennedy presidential campaign and on June 16, 1959, Governor John Malcolm Patterson stated that he would work towards Kennedy receiving the Democratic presidential nomination.
On December 17, 1959, a letter from Kennedy's staff that was to be sent to "active and influential Democrats" was leaked stating that he would announce his presidential campaign on January 2, 1960.
Announcement
On January 2, 1960, Kennedy formally announced that he would seek the Democratic presidential nomination at the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., and stated that he would participate in multiple primaries, including New Hampshire. He also stated that he would not accept the vice presidential nomination and would rather stay in the Senate if he lost the presidential nomination. Kennedy filed to run in the New Hampshire primary on January 8, being the only major candidate to do so along with minor candidate Paul C. Fisher.Kennedy established his campaign headquarters at 260 Tremont Street, a 12-story commercial building in Boston. He named his younger brother, Robert F. Kennedy, as campaign manager.
Issues
Civil rights
On the issue of civil rights, Kennedy had scant firsthand experience of the severity of southern life. He circumvented the national debate over equal rights by approaching the subject as a local issue. Robert F. Kennedy later reflected, "We weren't thinking of the Negroes of Mississippi or Alabama—what should be done for them. We were thinking of what needed to be done in Massachusetts." According to author Carl M. Brauer, Kennedy's goal was to neutralize the civil rights issue and avoid splitting the party before the 1960 election.A crucial issue in the 1960 campaign, Kennedy faced the challenge of promoting policies that white southern Democrats supported while, at the same time, courting black voters away from the Republican Party. Just a few weeks before the election, Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested in Atlanta for a sit-in and sentenced to four months hard labor. Though politically risky, Kennedy phoned Coretta Scott King, to express his concern, while a call from Robert Kennedy to the judge helped secure King's safe release. The Kennedy brothers' personal intervention led to a public endorsement by Martin Luther King Sr., who had supported Nixon earlier in the campaign. The publicizing of this endorsement, combined with other campaign efforts, contributed to increased support among black voters for Kennedy, which was pivotal in the swing states of Illinois, Michigan and South Carolina that JFK carried. In 1956, Adlai Stevenson won 61 percent of the African American vote; in 1960, Kennedy received 68 percent.
Cold War
The issue that dominated the election was the rising Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. In 1957, the Soviets had launched Sputnik, the first man-made satellite to orbit Earth. Soon afterwards, some American leaders warned that the nation was falling behind communist countries in science and technology. In Cuba, the revolutionary regime of Fidel Castro became a close ally of the Soviet Union in 1960, heightening fears of communist subversion in the Western Hemisphere. Public opinion polls revealed that more than half the American people thought that war with the Soviet Union was inevitable.Kennedy took advantage of increased Cold War tension by emphasizing a perceived "missile gap" between the United States and Soviet Union. He argued that under the Republicans, the nation had fallen behind the Soviet Union, both militarily and economically, and that, as president, he would "get America moving again." He proposed a bi-partisan congressional investigation about the possibility that the Soviet Union was ahead of the United States in developing missiles. He also noted in an October 18 speech that several senior U.S. military officers had long criticized the Eisenhower administration's defense spending policies.
Religion
A key concern in Kennedy's campaign was the widespread skepticism among Protestants about his Roman Catholic religion. He was only the second Catholic ever to be nominated for president by a major party. This raised serious questions about the electability of a Catholic candidate, particularly in the Bible Belt South. Some Protestants, especially Southern Baptists and Lutherans, feared that having a Catholic in the White House would give undue influence to the Pope in the nation's affairs. In January, Governor Happy Chandler predicted that Kennedy would lose multiple Southern states, including Kentucky, due to his religion. In September, Kennedy confronted the religious issue in an appearance before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. He said, "I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for president who also happens to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my Church on public matters – and the Church does not speak for me." He promised to respect the separation of church and state, and not to allow Catholic officials to dictate public policy to him. Nixon decided to leave religious issues out of the campaign and hammer the perception that Kennedy was too inexperienced to sit in the Oval Office.Campaign
March–June: Primaries
Kennedy had won elections in Massachusetts by relying on his family's wealth and connections, bypassing the local Democratic organization. Winning the nomination, however, required the support of substantial blocs of convention delegates from the large states, often controlled by a single person. Historian James Hilty writes that the Kennedy campaign strategy was to win primaries to demonstrate John Kennedy's electability to the party bosses. There were only sixteen primaries in 1960, and most of them were in smaller states with relatively few delegates at stake. So they handpicked states where they thought they could win impressively, while working behind the scenes building support elsewhere.Kennedy won the New Hampshire primary without any opposition on March 8, and received the highest vote total for any Democratic candidate at that point. After the results came in, Kennedy expressed enthusiasm while in Madison: "I'm very happy about it; we did better than I thought we would." Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley promised to deliver Kennedy the support of Cook County's delegates, so long as Kennedy won competitive primaries in other states.
Wisconsin was the first contested primary in the race and Kennedy faced U.S. Senator Hubert Humphrey from neighboring Minnesota. Humphrey attempted to use Governor Gaylord Nelson as a favorite son stand-in for himself, but U.S. Senator William Proxmire threatened to run as a stand-in for Kennedy if that happened. Kennedy campaigned in Wisconsin for 29 days starting on February 16. The Kennedy campaign had the two objectives of decisively defeating Humphrey in most parts of the state to end his candidacy altogether and portray Kennedy's national appeal at capturing votes. Kennedy's siblings combed the state looking for votes, leading Humphrey to complain that he "felt like an independent merchant running against a chain store." Kennedy won the primary with 56% of the vote and placed first in six congressional districts compared to Humphrey winning four districts. Kennedy won all fourteen counties with a Catholic population higher than 35% while Humphrey won in areas with more Protestants. Kennedy's margin of victory had come almost entirely from Catholic areas, and, thus, Humphrey decided to continue the contest in the heavily Protestant state of West Virginia. Days before the primary, Kennedy said it had been the "toughest, closest, most meaningful."
Kennedy won the Illinois and Massachusetts primaries as a write-in candidate with no other Democrats on the ballot and in Indiana with minor opposition.
Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. told his son to not participate in the West Virginia primary as "It's a nothing state and they'll kill him over the Catholic thing." On May 4, Humphrey and Kennedy took part in a televised one-on-one debate at WCHS-TV in Charleston, ahead of the state's primary. Kennedy outperformed Humphrey and, in the days following, Kennedy made substantial gains over Humphrey in the polls. Humphrey's campaign was low on funds, and could not compete for advertising and other "get-out-the-vote" drives with Kennedy's well-financed and well-organized campaign. On May 10, Kennedy defeated Humphrey in the West Virginia primary with over 60 percent of the vote, and Humphrey announced his withdrawal from the race that night.
Jimmy Hoffa, President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, criticized Kennedy for his amendment on the Landrum–Griffin Act and stated he was a fraud that ignored the labor unions. However, David J. McDonald, the president of the United Steelworkers of America, stated that Kennedy Sr. aided the labor unions during the steel strike of 1959 and George Meany, the president of the AFL–CIO, praised Kennedy for his amendment. Senator Wayne Morse also criticized Kennedy for his support of the bill and stated that it was one of the main reasons he was opposing Kennedy in the Oregon primary on May 20, the only state in which Kennedy directly challenged a favorite son candidate. He defeated Morse 51 to 32%.