NATIONAL POLITICS: 1964 ELECTIONS

The Republican Nomination Race

Republicans Fear Party Split.

By fall 1963 the Eastern Establishment Republicans who dominated their party at the national level began to fear that it would split in two if Gov. Nelson Rockefeller of New York and Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona went head-to-head for the Republican presidential nomination. For years the Eastern Establishment—the wealthy group of (mostly) Ivy League-educated international bankers and businessmen living mainly in and around New York—were willing to let the conservative Republicans of the Midwest and West speak for the party in Congress as long as the Establishment could control the presidential nomination, placing someone with moderate views consistent with their own in the position that created the party's national image. Rockefeller, one of the wealthiest men in America, was a member of the Establishment by virtue of heredity, education, and social class, but politically he was too liberal to inspire their trust. They found Goldwater, one of the west-of-the-Alleghenies Republicans they had tended to ignore, far too conservative. Yet in the search for a candidate to represent their mainstream Republican views the Establishment found itself leaderless. Former president Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had spent most of his life as a soldier, was not experienced at party politics.

The Problem with Nixon.

Richard M. Nixon, who had vowed to leave politics after losing the election for governor of California in 1962, was blamed by many in both wings of the party for creating the mess in which they found themselves. They traced the first crack in the fragile bond that held the party together to the so-called Compact of Fifth Avenue, the policy statement by Nixon and Rockefeller that had enraged conservatives at the 1960 Republican National Convention. To these conservatives Nixon had sold out the party to appease Rockefeller, and many—including Goldwater—later charged that the strong civil rights plank resulting from that Nixon-Rockefeller agreement had lost the 1960 election for the Republicans.

Rockefeller Has an Early Lead.

Early in 1963 Rockefeller looked like the front-runner for the Republican nomination. President John F. Kennedy, who believed he would have lost the 1960 election if he had run against Rockefeller instead of Nixon, expected to face Rockefeller in 1964. But the equation changed in May 1963, after Rockefeller, who had been divorced from his first wife in 1961, married a divorced woman who had given up custody of her four children to her first husband. Before Rockefeller's remarriage Republicans had preferred him to Goldwater by 43 to 26 percent. In late May a Gallup poll showed that 35 percent of Republicans were for Goldwater, and only 30 percent wanted Rockefeller. With many in his party still undecided, Rockefeller reasoned that if he could make a strong showing in the primaries he could still win the nomination. He planned to battle Goldwater in three key primaries: New Hampshire (10 March 1964), Oregon (15 May), and California (2 June).

PRESIDENTIAL SUCCESSION

After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the succession of Vice-president Lyndon B. Johnson to the presidency on 22 November 1963, Americans became concerned about the issue of presidential succession. For the next fourteen months—until the inauguration of Johnson and his running mate, Hubert Humphrey, in January 1965—the vice-presidency remained vacant. Most Americans were shocked to learn that if Johnson, who had suffered a serious heart attack in 1955, died during 1964, John McCormack of Massachusetts, the seventy-three-year-old Speaker of the House of Representatives, would become president. Next in the line of succession was Carl Hayden of Arizona, the eighty-seven-year-old president pro tempore of the Senate. They were followed by members of the cabinet, listed in rank order beginning with the secretary of state.

Americans were also concerned about who was authorized to take over the president's duties if he were temporarily incapacitated, a situation that occurred twice in the 1950s when President Dwight D. Eisenhower was hospitalized. The U.S. Constitution had no provisions that defined the conditions under which a vice-president would become acting president.

To rectify both situations Congress approved an amendment to the U.S. Constitution on 6 July 1965. After ratification by the requisite three-fourths of the states, it became the Twenty-fifth Amendment on 10 February 1967. This amendment allowed the president to nominate a new vice-president, who would take office after approval by a majority vote in each house of Congress. It also added provisions governing temporary presidential disability, specifying the circumstances and provisions by which a vice-president would become acting president.

The disability provisions have never been applied. The provisions for naming a new vice-president have been invoked twice. In 1973 President Richard M. Nixon selected Rep. Gerald Ford to replace Spiro T. Agnew, who had resigned because of his connections to a bribery scandal while he had been governor of Maryland. After Nixon resigned the presidency in 1974 in the midst of the Watergate crisis, Ford became president and tapped Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York to be the new vice-president.

Source:

Vaughan Davis Bornet, The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1983).

Goldwater Nearly Drops Out.

The assassination of President Kennedy on 22 November 1963 almost convinced Goldwater not to seek the Republican nomination. He and the president had liked each other, and Goldwater had viewed the 1964 presidential election as a perfect opportunity for them to debate the issues, giving voters a clear picture of the differences between Goldwater's conservative philosophy and Kennedy's liberal views. Though Kennedy was sure to win, Goldwater thought he could take the West and the South and claim a moral victory for the conservative cause. Against President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Texan, Goldwater could not count on the South, or even all the West. Yet he finally agreed to run because he feared the conservative cause would lose momentum if left leaderless.

Goldwater's Remarks Hurt Him.

Though he had been in the Senate since 1953, Goldwater was unprepared for the sort of attention the press pays to presidential candidates. Already known for his tendency to make often outrageous off-the-cuff statements, he made several well-thought-out policy speeches in New Hampshire, but reporters found better press in remarks that social-security payments should be made voluntary, that governments could start depressions but not end them, and that the United States should have dropped an atom bomb on North Vietnam ten years earlier. All these statements unnerved even conservative New Hampshire Republicans. Rockefeller's staff carefully recorded all such pronouncements and used them against the Arizona senator. Goldwater learned to consider his words carefully, but the damage was done.

A Dark Horse Wins in New Hampshire.

Rockefeller ruined Goldwater's chances in New Hampshire but failed to win the state for himself. New Hampshire Republicans found Rockefeller far too liberal and voted instead for a write-in candidate who had never set foot in the state: Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., Nixon's running mate in 1960, whom President Kennedy had appointed U.S. ambassador to Vietnam. Lodge won New Hampshire with 33,000 votes, followed by Goldwater (20,000), Rockefeller (19,500), and Nixon, also a write-in (15,600).

Goldwater Regroups.

Having hoped to win 40 percent of the New Hampshire vote and ending up with only 23 percent, Goldwater decided not to campaign in Oregon so that he could concentrate on California. Lodge's campaign was run by four political amateurs (one of whom was an expert in direct-mail advertising), and its success depended on signs of improvement in the Vietnam situation. The war got worse instead, and Rockefeller, who presented himself to Oregon Republicans as a responsible, mainstream candidate running to stop extremists from taking over the party, won the Oregon primary with 94,000 votes to 79,000 for Lodge and 50,000 for Goldwater.

Rockefeller Gains Momentum.

After Oregon the Lodge campaign threw its support to Rockefeller, whose Oregon victory gave him the momentum to surge ahead of Goldwater in polls of California Republicans, but Goldwater's campaign organized an army of thousands of volunteers (9,500 in Los Angeles County alone) to go door to door and get out the vote for their candidate. Goldwater beat Rockefeller in California with 51.6 percent of the vote.

Clif White Steals the Party for Goldwater.

Well before the primaries, F. Clifton White, a conservative Republican from upstate New York, had set in motion a plan that would change the face of the Republican Party for the rest of the twentieth century and beyond. Having earlier engineered a conservative takeover of the Young Republicans, he had his own national network that could work at the grassroots level in nonprimary states to seize control of the Republican Party for Goldwater. White's basic strategy was to get large numbers of conservatives to attend their local precinct meetings, thus flooding with Goldwater supporters the pool from which national convention delegates would eventually be elected. By late May Goldwater had 300 of the 655 votes he needed for the nomination. Less than two weeks after the California primary he had 588, and White was confident of delivering 200 more votes to Goldwater.

The Establishment Waits Too Long.

The main-stream wing of the party controlled by the Eastern Establishment woke up to what was going on just before the California primary. Unwilling to support Rockefeller actively, they sat back and waited for him to win on his own, confident that Rockefeller would win in California, leaving Goldwater without the necessary votes to win the nomination but with enough convention votes to veto Rockefeller's candidacy. Then, they thought, the moderate, mainstream Republicans could choose their own "unity candidate."

Eisenhower Picks Scranton.

Goldwater destroyed their strategy by winning the California primary, and the moderates began seeking alternatives. Eisenhower—wanting to remain publicly neutral—urged Gov. William W. Scranton of Pennsylvania to run but stopped short of publicly endorsing him. Scranton, who felt he needed Eisenhower's endorsement to have a chance, wavered for several days. Finally, Eisenhower—who was proud of having been the first modern president to get a civil rights bill through Congress—became enraged when he saw that Goldwater was about to vote against the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 and convinced the equally angry Scranton to run (still without Eisenhower's public endorsement). On 11 June Scranton began an expensive five-week campaign that was doomed from the start.

The Republican Convention.

The Republican National Convention held in San Francisco on 13-16 July 1964 marked a pivotal point in Republican party history. Rallying behind Goldwater, conservatives had wrested the party away from the mainstream Republicans who had controlled the party at the national level since 1940. The repercussions of this takeover would be felt in American politics for at least the next thirty years.

Last-Ditch Efforts to Defeat Goldwater.

Goldwater arrived at the convention with more than enough delegates to be nominated on the first ballot. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts and Governors Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York and William W. Scranton of Pennsylvania, all of whom had unsuccessfully battled Goldwater in the race for delegates, now joined with other mainstream Republicans, such as Gov. George W. Romney of Michigan, Senators Jacob K. Javits and Kenneth Keating of New York, Sen. Clifford P, Case of New Jersey, and Sen. Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, in a last-minute attempt to find some way to derail Goldwater. They decided to challenge the platform as it was presented on the convention floor by the conservative-dominated platform committee. If they could convince delegates to go along with their platform amendments, they reasoned, they could demonstrate that Goldwater's support was not as strong as it seemed, and then they might be able to shake loose enough votes to deny Goldwater his first-ballot victory. But Goldwater's people stood firm. On prime-time television, as Rockefeller stood before the convention to defend a proposed resolution condemning extremist groups—mentioning by name the Communist Party, the Ku Klux Klan, and the John Birch Society—Goldwater supporters in the galleries jeered and booed and chanted "We want Barry!"—virtually drowning out Rockefeller. Following Goldwater's instruction, his delegates on the floor were relatively quiet, and his people finally managed to squelch the uproar in the galleries. Yet millions of television viewers came away with the impression that Goldwater supporters were rabid right-wing extremists, and that image would linger in the minds of many voters.

Goldwater Has the Convention Locked Up.

All minority platform proposals were handily defeated, and Goldwater won the nomination easily on the first ballot. His choice of running mate, Congressman William E. Miller, an archconservative from upstate New York, offered no possibility of conciliation with party moderates, nor did Goldwater's acceptance speech, which ended with the ringing pronouncement "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! … Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!" (Goldwater's italics). On hearing these words Senator Keating and forty other members of the New York delegation walked out of the convention.

The Democratic Nomination Race

Johnson Dominates the Polls.

President Johnson was content to let the Republicans' battles dominate the political news during primary season, as poll after poll showed that voters, even many Republicans, preferred him to either Governor Rockefeller or Senator Goldwater—the two most likely Republican candidates. In June, when it became clear that Goldwater had the Republican nomination sewn up, a Gallup poll showed that 81 percent of registered voters would vote for Johnson over Goldwater. Even staunch Republican businessmen, such as Henry Ford II, were expressing support for Johnson.

Johnson Demonstrates Leadership.

Since the assassination of President Kennedy and Vice-president Johnson's assumption of the presidency on 22 November 1963, Johnson had stressed continuity with the Kennedy administration. Calling on Congress to fulfill the Kennedy legacy (and calling in the political lOUs he had amassed during his years in the Senate), Johnson used his extraordinary political skills to guide through both houses of Congress the major items on Kennedy's agenda, including a tax cut, War on Poverty legislation, and the Civil Rights Bill of 1964. This performance did much to enhance Johnson's stature as a national leader and—as he had planned—allowed him to remain above the fray of partisan politics.

A Challenge from Wallace.

The president was challenged briefly from the right wing of his own party when Gov, George C. Wallace of Alabama entered a few primaries, hoping to demonstrate nationwide opposition to the Civil Rights Bill then in the Senate. Wallace won 34 percent of the votes cast in the Wisconsin Democratic primary (7 April), 29.8 percent in Indiana (5 May), and 42.7 percent in Maryland (19 May). Many of the votes in Wisconsin and Indiana came from Republican crossovers, suggesting that Wallace could hurt both candidates. Wallace announced that he would run for president as a third-party candidate. His fellow southern conservatives, however, were afraid Wallace and Goldwater would cancel out one another in the South, and they thought Goldwater had a better shot at beating Johnson. On 19 July, after a personal appeal from Goldwater, Wallace withdrew from the presidential race.

Johnson Vetoes Kennedy.

There was strong public sentiment favoring the choice of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy as Johnson's running mate, but Johnson, who was attempting to emerge from the shadow cast by one Kennedy, was not anxious to risk eclipse from another, who was perceived by many as the standard-bearer for his brother's vision of the New Frontier. Furthermore, while President Kennedy had established a good working relationship with his vice-president, Robert Kennedy and other members of the Kennedy administration had treated Johnson with barely disguised disdain and failed to seek his advice even when his superior in-sight on legislative matters could have been extremely useful to them. A proud man, who made a practice of always repaying friends and enemies in kind, Johnson told Kennedy privately that he would not be the vice-presidential candidate. Then, to make the decision seem like a matter of policy rather than personality, Johnson announced that no one in his cabinet would be considered for the vice-presidency.

Johnson Taps Humphrey.

Johnson's choice for his running mate was Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota. As Senate majority whip, Humphrey, who had been a champion of civil rights since 1948, had played a crucial role in shepherding the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 through the Senate. If the election had shown signs of being close, Johnson might have thought twice about sharing the ticket with a politician as liberal as Humphrey, but Goldwater was so far behind in the polls that Johnson could afford the risk of offending conservative Democrats, especially in the South.

The Democratic Convention.

The major events at the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, began to unfold just before the convention officially convened on 24 August. To dramatize the plight of southern blacks who tried to register to vote, Robert Moses, head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) voter-registration program in Mississippi, had organized the Freedom Democratic Party, which elected its own integrated convention delegation to challenge the credentials of the delegation sent by the regular Mississippi Democratic Party, which excluded blacks. One after another black Freedom Democrats testified to the credentials committee about the violence inflicted on them by Mississippi law officers as punishment for their legal attempts to register to vote. Johnson believed that compromise was possible, but the regular Mississippi Democrats, who stressed that their election was strictly legal, and the Freedom Democrats, who emphasized with equal fervor that morality was on their side, were totally unwilling to make concessions. The committee's decision angered both sides. It stated that no regular Mississippi delegate could be seated without first pledging to support the Democratic ticket, that two Freedom Democrats would be seated as delegates at large with full voting privileges, and that beginning in 1968 the national convention would not seat delegations from states where the party excluded citizens and deprived them of their voting rights solely on the basis of race or color. When this compromise was read aloud to the convention, Freedom Democrats swarmed onto the convention floor and took over the seats assigned to the Mississippi delegation. By the time they were ousted three hours later, the regular Mississippi and Alabama delegations had walked out. The rest of the convention was uneventful. With Johnson's nomination a foregone conclusion, not even his attempts to keep the nation guessing about his choice of a running mate could generate much drama.

The Presidential Campaign

Johnson and Goldwater's Secret Agreement.

Two events of the summer of 1964 were major factors in shaping American history for the rest of the decade and beyond: on 2 July President Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and on 5 August Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which later led to escalation of American involvement in the Vietnam War. Yet neither race nor the war was an issue in the 1964 election campaign. On 24 July the Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Barry Goldwater, and President Johnson met secretly and agreed not to use the war or civil rights as major campaign issues. With a relatively small number of American troops in Southeast Asia, the American public was far more focused on the Cold War with the Soviet Union than on events in Vietnam. Yet, as Goldwater pointed out, opposition to American involvement there was growing and had the potential to divide the nation.

The Race Issue.

Alabama governor George Wallace's strong showing in several primaries had demonstrated the existence of a white backlash against black Americans' strides toward racial equality, and the race riots in New York and several other northern cities during July 1964 tended to reinforce the fears of some conservative whites. Goldwater might have used the white backlash to his advantage, especially in the South, but whether he did so or not Johnson might have labeled him a racist because of his vote against the Civil Rights Bill.

Johnson's Great Society.

Johnson based much of his campaign on his concept of the Great Society, which he first outlined in his 22 May 1964 commencement speech at the University of Michigan. Speaking in an unprecedented period of American prosperity, he called for "an end to poverty and injustice," the enhancement of educational opportunities for all Americans, the renewal of the nation's natural beauty, and the recognition of "creation for its own sake," Yet Goldwater had provided the Johnson campaign with so much ammunition that Johnson spent little time describing specific programs.

Johnson Turns Goldwater's Words Against Him.

Using Goldwater's own statements, the Democrats portrayed him as trigger happy with nuclear weapons. ("Let's lob one into the Kremlin men's room," was a frequently quoted Goldwater statement.) Johnson presented himself as the peace candidate, while his supporters amended a memorable and clever Goldwater slogan—"In your heart you know he's right"—to "In your heart you know he might." On domestic issues Goldwater needed little help from the Democrats to alienate voters. The same principled objection to the expansion of federal government that had led him to vote against the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 resulted in speeches against farm subsidies to a group of farmers, against Medicare to retirees in Florida, against poverty programs to West Virginians, against the Tennessee Valley Authority in Knoxville. At each campaign stop Goldwater seemed to alienate another group of American voters.

Johnson Wins Big.

In the end Johnson won the election with 61.2 percent of the popular vote. Goldwater won his home state of Arizona and five southern states—Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Georgia. Helped by the black vote in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas, Johnson took the remainder of the South and the rest of the nation, winning 486 electoral votes to Goldwater's 52. Johnson's coattails created large Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate—as well as at the state level—causing many political commentators to ask if the Republican party could survive.

Republican Losses in Congress.

The Johnson land-slide helped the Democrats, who had a net gain of 38 seats in the House of Representatives. The Democrats' 153-seat majority was their largest since their party's sweep in the 1936 election. The conservative coalition of Republicans and southern Democrats was seriously damaged by the defeats of forty-two northern Republicans. GOP victories over seven southern Democrats replaced conservatives with conservatives and strengthened the influence of liberal Democrats in the Democratic Caucus. In both houses the Republicans who survived were moderates who managed to disassociate themselves from Goldwater. No congressman who voted for the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 was defeated; eleven of the twenty-one northern Republicans who voted against it lost.

Democrats Supplement Their Senate Majority.

Democrats held twenty-six of the thirty-five Senate seats up for reelection in 1964 and won twenty-eight of them, giving their party its largest Senate majority since 1940. Republicans had been especially hoping to win back some of the thirteen seats taken from them by liberal Democrats in 1958, causing a major realignment of power in the Senate, but all eleven remaining members of the "Class of 1958" were reelected, including Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia, Thomas J. Dodd of Connecticut, Philip A. Hart of Michigan, R. Vance Hartke of Indiana, Eugene J. McCarthy of Minnesota, and Edmund S. Muskie of Maine. Newcomers to the Senate included Democrats Robert F. Kennedy of New York and Joseph D. Tydings of Maryland.

Governorships.

Republicans won in only eight of the twenty-five states where gubernatorial elections were held in 1964, taking three governorships away from Democrats but losing two others. Republicans John H. Chafee of Rhode Island, John A. Volpe of Massachusetts, and George W. Romney of Michigan avoided backing Goldwater, whose endorsement would have most likely spelled defeat for them. All eight states that elected Republican governors gave their electoral votes to Johnson in the presidential race.

Sources:

Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 20(1964);

Time, 84 (13 November 1964): 3-43;

Theodore H. White, The Making of the President 1964 (New York: Atheneum, 1965).