By the middle of 1956 Kennedy had many reasons to be encouraged. He had proved to be the master of politics back home. His cultivation of the press resulted in favorable national coverage; his face was being splashed on the covers of popular magazines. In the “Bailey Report” his Catholicism was portrayed as a plus rather than a minus. And the appearance of his own book, Profiles in Courage, added gravitas to his résumé. The thin, 164-page volume paid tribute to a bipartisan handful of men who served in the Senate, from John Quincy Adams shortly after the birth of the nation to Robert A. Taft, a modern conservative from Ohio. Following its publication in the spring of 1956, Profiles in Courage quickly made its way to the best-seller list.
With the approach of the Democratic National Convention, to be held in August in Chicago, things seemed to be breaking his way. Now that Stevenson had the presidential nomination in his grasp again, Kennedy felt that he should be included in any group of candidates being considered as Stevenson’s running mate. Before leaving for the convention he confided to his secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, “I think I have the best chance with Stevenson.”
Kennedy had been an early supporter and had ensured that a majority of the Massachusetts delegation would wind up in Stevenson’s column. His family had already laid the foundation for a strong relationship with the former Illinois governor. His father owned Chicago’s enormous Merchandise Mart commercial building, and his sister Eunice and her husband, Sargent Shriver, who ran the business for Joe Kennedy, were personal friends of Stevenson. In conversations with members of the Kennedy family, Stevenson talked of his fondness for Jack. Kennedy had his own allies among Stevenson’s close advisors, especially Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a leading liberal, and Newton Minow, a partner in Stevenson’s law firm.
Even before he took out Onions Burke at the gathering of state Democrats, Kennedy had been making moves to strengthen his influence at the convention. He called Congressman Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr., a friend who held his old U.S. House seat, to ask if his brother Robert could be appointed as a delegate from the state. No matter that Robert lived in Virginia; he was registered to vote at 108 Bowdoin in Boston, an address, O’Neill once said, that “all the family at one time or other” used as everything but an actual residence. Since most of the elected officials in Massachusetts named themselves delegates, O’Neill doubted there would be room for Kennedy’s younger brother. “We kind of looked at Bobby as a kid in those days,” he said. But Kennedy was insistent. “Tip, listen,” he begged. “The reason I want Bob in there, in my opinion he’s the smartest politician I’ve ever met in my life, and if lightning strikes, I’d like to have him on the floor with the credentials so he can be a real worker for me.” O’Neill agreed to give up his own convention seat and allow Robert to serve as his substitute, loyally putting aside a personal dislike for the brash younger Kennedy that he never got over.
Meanwhile Sarge Shriver stayed close to the Stevenson operation and regularly passed on intelligence from Chicago. In July he telegrammed that the Chicago Sun-Times had just reported that Stevenson liked either Kennedy or Humphrey as a running mate. The newspaper preferred Kennedy. The Kennedy interests kept up the drumbeat. “We were lobbied to death,” one Stevenson aide complained. After hearing from Schlesinger, who was inside the Stevenson circle, that “things looked good,” Kennedy finally told Sorensen that he was prepared to make a serious bid for the spot.
He was anything but passive in his backstage activity. At one point in the spring he called a family friend and supporter, Robert Troutman, a politically active lawyer in Georgia, to request help in promoting him for the vice presidential nomination. Troutman, a Kennedy supporter but not a civil rights proponent, mentioned opposition in the region to the liberal Humphrey and the apostate Kefauver; on Kennedy’s behalf he contacted Democrats in Georgia and South Carolina and reported a friendly reaction.
Kennedy was already certain of a place center stage at the convention. After the first choice for an early speaking role, Maine’s new governor, Edmund Muskie, declined for local political reasons, Paul Butler, the national Democratic chairman, arranged for the ambitious senator to attract some of the spotlight. He asked the filmmaker Dore Schary to include Kennedy in his plans for The Pursuit of Happiness, a documentary extolling the party’s history that would be shown to the delegates—and a nationwide television audience—on the first night of the convention. While visiting the California home of his brother-in-law, the actor Peter Lawford, Kennedy watched footage of the documentary with Schary. He liked what he saw and even offered some of his own language for the script he would read. Schary found Kennedy “so quick and so charming” when he dubbed his voice onto the film that he suggested to Stevenson that Kennedy would make an excellent partner in the general election.
Kennedy learned a week before he left for the convention that he might also be asked to deliver the speech nominating Stevenson. The two high-profile assignments would make him one of the most visible figures at the convention. But Kennedy began to fear that they might be consolation prizes. It seemed unlikely, he thought, that the man who nominated Stevenson would also be picked as his running mate.
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Kennedy remained publicly coy. Landing in Chicago he told reporters, “I am not a candidate, and I am not campaigning for the office.” But the activity of his followers said otherwise. The Kennedy organization had been preparing for the convention for weeks. They had been privy to inside information that there was a good chance Stevenson would throw the choice of his running mate to the delegates rather than make the decision himself.
The idea of an open convention had first been floated to Stevenson’s high command in February in a memo from John Sharon, a former congressional aide who now worked for Stevenson. Sharon admitted that it was audacious of him to suggest such a departure from tradition, but he felt it could symbolize the democracy of the party, in contrast to a fixed Republican convention, and he argued that it would introduce an element of excitement to the proceedings.
Sharon had gotten to know Kennedy when he worked for a congressman with an office adjacent to Kennedy’s, at the time a freshman in the House. He and Kennedy occasionally had lunch together and actually double-dated a few times. He admired Kennedy, but when he wrote the memo he was promoting a concept, not a man. Sharon met resistance from several of Stevenson’s key advisors, but he continued to advocate an open selection of the vice presidential nominee in staff discussions and in conversations with political leaders friendly to other potential candidates.
Eventually speculation that Stevenson might turn the selection of his running mate over to the convention appeared in press reports. Through his backchannel contact with allies in the Stevenson campaign—corroborated by inside information conveyed by Sarge Shriver—Kennedy knew an open convention was a distinct possibility. He had come to Chicago hoping that Stevenson would pick him. But if the vice presidential nominee was to be chosen by the delegates, he was prepared to fight for it.
Over the summer political commentators had compiled a growing list of candidates. The nationally syndicated political columnist Doris Fleeson wrote that the Democrats enjoyed “an embarrassment of riches in vice presidential timber” and mentioned Senators Kennedy, Humphrey, and Kefauver.
Because Kefauver had served as chairman of a Senate committee whose investigation of organized crime in America had attracted national television coverage of its hearings, he was better known than his colleague Albert Gore. He added to his name recognition with arduous campaigns in 1952 and 1956 for the Democratic presidential nomination. Sometimes donning a coonskin cap for effect, Kefauver barnstormed across the country and proved to be Stevenson’s principal opponent. When he withdrew from his failing campaign before the convention and endorsed Stevenson, Kefauver felt he had earned a favor from the nominee, and as soon as he got to Chicago he announced that he would accept the vice presidential spot if it became available. His supporters opened a “Kefauver for Vice President” headquarters in a ballroom of the Conrad Hilton. Kefauver met with Stevenson and asked him directly if he was in line to become his running mate. Stevenson was noncommittal.
Stevenson disliked Kefauver, who had a reputation for excessive drinking and reckless extramarital affairs. Some of his colleagues in the Senate, where he was not very popular, found him crude and conniving. But Kefauver had built considerable strength at the convention by winning delegates during the primary season.
If not as well known as Kefauver, Gore was considered more respectable. He had a following among some fellow senators and members of the party establishment. If Stevenson intended to balance his ticket with a southerner, then Gore might be a safer choice.
The third Tennessean said to be under consideration was Frank Clement, who had visions that his keynote address on the first night of the convention might propel him to heights once reached by William Jennings Bryan, whose “Cross of Gold” speech at the 1896 convention created a delegate stampede that gave Bryan the presidential nomination. (In his address Clement criticized President Eisenhower, a golfer, for gazing down “the green fairways of indifference.” He cried, repeatedly, “How long, America, oh how long” would the nation suffer a Republican administration? But the speech was so lengthy and florid that he never materialized as a candidate for the vice presidential nomination. One irreverent journalist composed a mock biblical beginning for his account of the speech: “The Democrats last night smote President Eisenhower with the jawbone of an ass.”)
There were others eager to serve with Stevenson. Among them the most prominent was Humphrey, who arrived at the convention believing he would be chosen. The Minnesota senator had made a name for himself at the 1948 convention. As a youthful mayor of Minneapolis his famous speech on behalf of a strong civil rights plank led to a walkout by some Deep South delegations and the formation of a segregationist Dixiecrat ticket in the general election that year. Humphrey became a bête noire among conservative elements of the party as a result of his outspoken views on race and his progressive record in the Senate. Yet for those very reasons he was embraced as a darling by liberals generally allied with Stevenson.
After a private conversation in late July with Stevenson, Humphrey was convinced he would be chosen. In their talk the prospective presidential nominee had been blunt about his reluctance to choose Kefauver. He had mused openly about Gore, Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri, and Mayor Robert Wagner of New York. After leading Humphrey through a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of these men, Stevenson asked, “Well, Hubert, why don’t you think about it yourself?”
Humphrey had already been thinking about it for weeks. He believed he would be supported by southern leaders in Congress such as the two powerful Texans, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson and House Speaker Sam Rayburn, as well as Senator Richard Russell of Georgia. Humphrey was so confident he would be Stevenson’s choice that he announced in early August that he would be a formal candidate for the vice presidential nomination, a rare break with tradition.
But Stevenson had been put off by a meeting with party elders in late July, when former president Truman dismissed Humphrey as “too radical.” The leaders warned Stevenson that Kefauver would be unacceptable and that Catholicism probably ruled out Kennedy. Rayburn was particularly contemptuous of Kennedy. “If we have to have a Catholic,” he told Stevenson, “I hope we don’t have to take that little pissant Kennedy.”
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The convention began on August 13 with both Kefauver and Humphrey satisfied they would be on the Democratic ticket before the week was out, while Kennedy had great hope for himself. During opening night ceremonies Kennedy received a resounding ovation from the delegates for narrating The Pursuit of Happiness. The Massachusetts delegation staged the first favorite-son demonstration of the week with a noisy parade around the floor, and the cheers for Kennedy when he appeared on stage to take a bow were louder than those for Clement after his keynote address.
The next morning, however, Kennedy had his spirits dampened. A mutual friend, Washington lawyer Abba Schwarz, arranged a meeting between Kennedy and Eleanor Roosevelt, the doyenne of the Democratic Party, in the hope that he might win her favor. The widow of Franklin Roosevelt was known to be cool toward Kennedy. She had disliked his father for years, from the time he served as ambassador to London, when his tolerance of the Nazis had been an embarrassment to her husband. And she felt that Jack Kennedy had been cowardly when the Senate grappled with the zealous anticommunist Joe McCarthy earlier in the decade.
The meeting took place at the Blackstone Hotel, scene of the infamous “smoke-filled room” where Republican satraps chose Warren G. Harding as their party’s nominee for president in 1920. When Kennedy arrived, he found Mrs. Roosevelt’s suite filled with two of her sons, a daughter-in-law, and a secretary typing in the corner. The noise of telephones constantly ringing was disconcerting, and the disorder grew when several of the Roosevelt grandchildren arrived to pick up their convention tickets. Rather than arranging a private space to talk with her visitor, Mrs. Roosevelt told her grandchildren, “Just sit on the beds. I’m busy.”
She was brutally brusque with Kennedy, asking one question: “Why did you not stand up against McCarthyism?”
“That was so long ago,” he fumbled, and he gave a rambling account of Senate procedure. But he had been the only senator who did not vote, and though he had a legitimate reason for his absence, he had failed to take a public stand against McCarthy. Mrs. Roosevelt was not satisfied with his explanation and dismissed him.
It was a humiliating experience, and Kennedy was further discomforted later in the day during a private meeting with Stevenson. As he had anticipated, he was asked to deliver the nominating speech. Kennedy asked flatly whether that meant he had been disqualified as a candidate for the vice presidential nomination. “No,” Stevenson answered. “Not necessarily.” But Kennedy had begun to develop strong doubts. He even recommended Humphrey for the position.
Later in the day Kennedy told his friend Schlesinger, “I think I should know whether or not I’ve been eliminated before I make the nominating speech.” Schlesinger assured him that no decision had been made yet.
In this atmosphere of uncertainty Kennedy tackled his latest high-priority assignment. When first approached about the speech, he and Sorensen had been assured by Stevenson’s staff that they would have plenty of time to work on it. Now he was told by a Stevenson aide that the speech was being written by the Stevenson campaign. Less than twenty-four hours before Kennedy would go on national television again, a draft was delivered to Sorensen. He thought it terrible. He found Kennedy on the convention floor and showed him the draft. Kennedy was appalled by the collection of clichés and boring tropes produced by the Stevenson staff.
They went to work on their own version. Kennedy dictated the opening lines and suggested some general ideas, and Sorensen labored through the night. At 7 a.m. he rushed a copy to Kennedy at his hotel. The senator excised some passages and added others. A secretary retyped the new draft, and a copy was sent to the TelePrompTer booth at the convention.
Kennedy would be speaking at 11 a.m., so he and Sorensen boarded a taxi and set off on the long drive to the Chicago Amphitheater, the convention site adjacent to the vast stockyards on the far south side of the city. En route Kennedy looked at his copy of the speech and realized that parts of it were illegible. Oaths reminiscent of his navy days spilled from his mouth. It was a fuck-up of major proportions. As the cab sped down Michigan Avenue, Kennedy saw a familiar face trying to hail a taxi: Tom Winship, a reporter for the Boston Globe. The senator commanded the driver to stop and pick up Winship, then he enlisted the journalist’s help. As soon as they reached the Amphitheater, Winship went to the press room and typed two clear pages. Kennedy got the refreshed copy to the TelePrompTer fifteen minutes before he would go before the cameras.
Kennedy delivered the address flawlessly, and for the second time that week applause washed over him. At this point he had done all he could do to make himself irresistible as a vice presidential nominee. He didn’t know that Stevenson had conducted two private meetings that would turn the convention’s orderly process into a night and day of frenetic activity.
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In a session with his closest advisors it became clear Stevenson was leaning toward an open convention. Some big-city bosses, such as Jake Arvey of Chicago and David Lawrence of Pittsburgh, had come around on the subject, and the only major holdout was Stevenson’s campaign manager, James Finnegan. The candidate instructed the group to “thrash it out.” Realizing that he alone still opposed the idea, Finnegan gave in.
Fortified by the unanimity among his advisors, Stevenson summoned the party’s top leadership to a room at the Stock Yard Inn, adjacent to the Amphitheater, where he told them of his decision. Rayburn, who presided over the convention, and Butler, the Democratic national chairman, strongly opposed holding an open convention. They felt it reflected Stevenson’s indecisive nature, a terminal weakness among politicians. But for once Stevenson’s mind was set.
Encountering John Sharon, who had first suggested an open convention, Stevenson said, “John, I have either done the smartest thing in my life or I’ve done the dumbest thing.” Lyndon Johnson, who had attended the meeting, afterward pronounced it “the goddamndest, stupidest move a politician could make.”
Near midnight, after formally accepting the nomination, Stevenson shocked the delegates by announcing, “I have decided that the selection of the vice presidential nominee should be made through the free processes of the convention, so that the Democratic Party’s candidate for this office may join me before the nation, not as one man’s selection, but as one chosen by our great party, even as I have been chosen.”
This triggered a frantic rush involving most of the leading figures of the party as well as men who would dominate American politics for the coming decades, and it set the stage for an afternoon of drama the next day. No modern convention since then has matched the suspense, intrigue, deal making, and high-stakes pressure it produced over an eighteen-hour period.
Kefauver felt betrayed. He called New York’s Liberal Party leader, Alex Rose, one of his most prominent supporters, and told him, “I’m packing up and I’m leaving Chicago with a blast. They double-crossed me.” Rose pleaded with him not to do anything intemperate, then hurried to Kefauver’s suite, where others were counseling him to stay and make a run for the second place on the ticket. “At least talk to Adlai before you leave town,” suggested the pollster Elmo Roper.
Kefauver agreed to accompany Roper to a private visit with Stevenson. Mollified by their conversation, he then agreed to have his name put in nomination, and his forces began an all-night effort to track down delegates who had supported his presidential campaign.
However, the Tennessee delegation refused to endorse Kefauver. He was so unpopular among most of his fellow Tennesseans that they had intended to vote for Clement as an alternative. Then, when Clement’s speech failed to generate momentum, the delegation turned to Gore, using the unit rule to ensure that he would get all 32 of the state’s votes. (For the states that used it, a simple majority could command an entire delegation.)
A similar situation prevailed in the Texas delegation, which had been prepared to support Clement in an effort to block Kefauver, who was detested by both Rayburn and Johnson. A short-lived Gore campaign, which attracted scattered southern votes, materialized among other foes of Kefauver.
Sure that he would be chosen, Humphrey was actually writing his acceptance speech when he heard of Stevenson’s decision. He and his team also scurried to round up delegates.
A cross-current of machinations occurred within the New York delegation, where the rivalry between Governor Harriman and Mayor Wagner resulted in Wagner’s decision to make a largely symbolic run for the vice presidential nomination. (This was after a feeble effort by Harriman to mount a challenge for the presidential nomination ended in a first-ballot landslide for Stevenson.)
Following his unplanned meeting with Kefauver, Stevenson felt it was necessary to invite all of the prospective running mates to come see him to demonstrate that he had not intended to show favoritism to Kefauver. When he arrived, Kennedy grumbled to members of Stevenson’s operation that it seemed to be “a fixed convention.”
While he waited in Stevenson’s suite, Kennedy had a short, private talk with Wagner in a bathroom. Wagner assured him that the New York delegation—the convention’s largest, with 98 votes—would support Wagner on the first ballot, then rally behind Kennedy on the second. The warring New Yorkers agreed on one thing: it would be helpful to have a Catholic on the ticket.
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While Kennedy dealt with party power brokers, his team gathered in a suite at the Conrad Hilton to plot their course. Most of his family was there as well, but it was Robert Kennedy who tackled the unpleasant duty of calling his father on a transatlantic telephone line to announce that Jack was making a run for the ticket. Robert winced as his father unleashed from overseas what Kenny O’Donnell described as “blue language.” Joe Kennedy called his oldest surviving son an “idiot” and predicted that he was destroying his political career. At the end of the conversation, overheard by others in the room, Robert looked around with a wan smile and said simply, “Whew.”
Despite their father’s outburst, the Kennedys worked through the night. Armed with a pen and a legal pad, Robert began a haphazard tally of friendly delegates in various states. John Bailey, the party boss from Connecticut, spoke up: “This isn’t the way to do this thing.” He suggested assigning specific supporters to contact each delegation to plead Kennedy’s case in individual caucuses before balloting began at noon.
The Kennedy advisors were relative novices in the exercise of power. When Carmine DeSapio, the head of New York City’s Tammany Hall political organization, came to the Kennedy suite, he was kept waiting for a half hour. No one knew who he was or that he was prepared to help deliver his delegation to Kennedy.
After daybreak Kennedy spoke at several caucuses and met with many key people. He was pleased to learn that the Georgia delegation planned to give all its votes to him on the first ballot. His efforts to build a political alliance in Dixie—something that would prove impossible in a few years—began that day. He knew that some of the durable old bulls in the Senate, committee chairmen such as Jim Eastland and John Stennis of Mississippi, might be open to courtship. These men personally liked the young senator from Massachusetts, and they loathed Kefauver. Terry Sanford, a future governor and senator from North Carolina, said Kennedy’s support among his state’s delegates was “a way of knocking down Kefauver, whom they considered a traitor to the South.”
When the afternoon session began, Kennedy asked Abe Ribicoff to give his nominating speech. Ribicoff noted the irony of a Jew advocating a Catholic for the ticket. To display southern support, Kennedy arranged for his good friend Senator George Smathers of Florida to second the nomination. Midway through his speech Smathers felt a sharp pain in his back and feared he was being seized by a heart attack, but the discomfort was caused by a gavel wielded by Sam Rayburn. He hissed for Smathers to yield for a surprising endorsement from John McCormack. In the hubbub on the floor, Robert Kennedy had approached his brother’s rival in the Bay State delegation to ask if he would speak on Jack’s behalf. “I guess so,” McCormack said unenthusiastically. Standing at the rostrum he called for the convention to “go East for a vice presidential candidate,” but he did not mention Kennedy’s name until the final sentence.
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This was the first convention to have a wide television audience. Coverage was gavel-to-gavel, so cameras were on hand to capture all of the excitement. The unfolding scene was described the next day in the New York Times by Russell Baker as “a spectacle that might have confounded all Christendom in the old days,” a political struggle in an atmosphere shaken by “a shrieking pandemonium with 11,000 people on their feet and howling.”
Given space to watch the proceedings on television in the Stock Yard Inn, a few steps from the convention hall, Kennedy huddled inside Room 104 with only Sorensen and a Chicago plainclothes officer, assigned as a guard, as companions. There was a knock on the door. Tom Winship, the Globe reporter, had tracked down the senator. He asked, “Any chance of coming in to watch the balloting on TV?”
“Sure,” said Kennedy. “Come on in.” After several nights with little sleep and days filled with activity, he was visibly exhausted, lying on a bed in his undershorts. He liked to bathe to relax and soothe his aching back, and was waiting for the tub to fill.
Kennedy enjoyed the company of Winship, a colorful, uninhibited personality whose years at Harvard had overlapped his own. While the candidate soaked in the tub, Winship sat on the closed toilet seat and they chatted.
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After the preliminaries and nominating speeches, the first roll-call vote began shortly after 2:30 p.m. and proceeded along fairly predictable lines. Kefauver did well in the states where he had won delegates in the primaries. Gore’s strength was confined to the South. Humphrey collected scattered votes from delegations with pockets of liberals, but he trailed almost everywhere but in his home state. Wagner got all of New York’s 98 votes, but other than two nearby states on the eastern seaboard, New Jersey and Delaware, he was shut out. The biggest surprise came from Kennedy’s strong showing; he took all the votes in the southern states of Georgia, Louisiana, and Virginia to build on his support in the Northeast.
At the end of the balloting an organist played “Linger Awhile” as officials double-checked the numbers: Kefauver 483½; Kennedy 304; Gore 178; Wagner 162½; Humphrey 134½. No one was close to the 687 votes needed to win the nomination. Officials prepared for round two. (Prolonged balloting once seemed pro forma at Democratic conventions. While it had taken Bryan only five ballots to win the 1896 nomination, John Davis struggled through 103 ballots before he was nominated in 1924.) It would have seemed inconceivable in Chicago that afternoon, but since that time no national political convention has been forced to a second ballot.
Calculations were difficult because no competitive roll calls had been expected after Stevenson secured the presidential nomination. The Amphitheater’s engineers had taken down the Totalizer—a device similar to a basketball scoreboard—leaving delegates to keep track of the voting on the backs of envelopes and loose sheets of paper. Although the television networks were able to maintain an unofficial running count for the nationwide audience, it became almost impossible to get an accurate figure on the floor.
The little group in Room 104 watched developments on TV with the rest of the country. Kennedy seemed serene. He expressed delight over the unanimous vote from Georgia and attributed Virginia’s support to the fact that he had served on navy PT boats during World War II with the son of Virginia’s former governor, John S. Battle. But he knew that he needed more votes, and he was not sure where to turn.
After his second-place finish on the first ballot, Kennedy was moved to a larger room to accommodate a growing group of followers. On the convention floor the scene became chaotic. While conventioneers paraded up and down the aisles, bearing placards for their favorites and tooting horns, others stood on chairs, clamoring for attention. Kennedy partisans roamed the Amphitheater, looking for anyone who might help. “Bobby and I ran around the floor like a couple of nuts,” said Kenny O’Donnell. “We didn’t know two people in the place.”
In a desperate attempt to arrest Kefauver’s advantage, Robert Kennedy grabbed at the arm of Michigan’s governor, G. Mennen “Soapy” Williams, as he moved off the floor. Forty of Michigan’s 44 votes had gone for Kefauver on the first ballot. “Why are you against my brother?” Robert demanded. Williams, a leader of liberal forces in the party, was “flabbergasted” by the confrontation and shook himself free from the young man. Williams had a more important mission. He headed toward a room behind the rostrum where Humphrey was cloistered with a few advisors.
Humphrey had watched the first roll-call vote with dismay. He already felt deceived by Stevenson; now he was rejected by 90 percent of the delegates. He knew political jackals would be coming to ask him to give his votes to another. Never a man to hide his emotions, he began to cry softly.
Learning that Kefauver himself was on his way to meet with Humphrey, Kennedy dispatched Sorensen to see if he could arrange his own meeting with Humphrey. It was a daunting assignment for the twenty-eight-year-old aide, and his naïveté quickly showed. He couldn’t locate Humphrey, but he encountered, by chance, Humphrey’s campaign manager, a sardonic congressman from Minnesota named Eugene McCarthy. When Sorensen suggested a parlay between Kennedy and Humphrey, McCarthy brushed him aside. “Forget it,” he told Sorensen. “All we have are farmers and Protestants,” making a reference to Kennedy’s Catholicism and his recent votes—unpopular in the farm states—on agriculture bills.I
While Sorensen was turned back, Kefauver succeeded in finding Humphrey’s hideout, where Soapy Williams and Michigan’s Democratic party chairman Neil Staebler were already imploring the Minnesota senator to yield his support. Kefauver embraced the weeping Humphrey and appeared close to tears himself. “Hubert, I’ve just got to have those delegates,” he pleaded. “Hubert, you’ve just got to help me.”
Humphrey croaked instructions to an aide: Go tell Senators Stuart Symington of Missouri and J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, “I’m for Kefauver.”
As the second ballot moved alphabetically through the states, Missouri switched. After giving Humphrey 34½ votes on the first ballot, the state now threw 36 of its 38 votes to Kefauver.
But the move barely slowed Kennedy’s building momentum. At this point he led Kefauver 256½ to 196.
Across the convention floor delegates were baying to be heard. California had passed on its turn, unable to get a firm tally on a delegation divided between 37 for Kefauver and 25 for Kennedy. James Roosevelt, Eleanor’s son, wrestled with another Californian for control of the state’s standard, a post marking the location of the state’s delegation on the floor.
From the podium the acting convention chairman, Senator Warren Magnuson, peered into the confusion and called on other states. Nevada gave Kennedy 13½ of its 14 votes. New Jersey, which earlier had supported Wagner, awarded Kennedy 30 of its 36 votes.
New York, the giant, was next. The Tammany chieftain Carmine DeSapio, inscrutable behind tinted glasses, announced, “New York gives one and a half votes for Kefauver; ninety-six and a half votes for the next vice president of the United States, John Kennedy.”
The Amphitheater shook with roars.
A more stunning report came from Texas. Though Johnson had lobbied for Humphrey, and Rayburn’s dislike of Kennedy was known, the two leaders’ antipathy toward Kefauver moved them to swing the state from its support of Gore. Bound by a unit rule, Texas switched to Kennedy. Never one to shy from a dramatic moment, Johnson gripped the microphone and shouted, “Texas proudly casts its fifty-six votes for the fighting sailor who wears the scars of battle, that fearless senator, the next vice president of the United States, John Kennedy of Massachusetts.”
The Texas vote pushed Kennedy’s lead over Kefauver to 504 to 395. He appeared to be approaching a majority. Robert Kennedy could be seen on the convention floor, flashing two fingers in a “V for victory” salute. Sarge Shriver burst into Kennedy’s hotel room, yelling, “Jack, you’ve got it!”
Kennedy, however, counseled his team to restrain themselves. Kefauver was not yet beaten.
After all of the states were recorded at the conclusion of the roll call, Kennedy held 613½ votes to 551½ for Kefauver. Instead of moving automatically to a third ballot, officials on the rostrum recognized Kentucky for a switch. The state moved its 30 votes from Gore’s column to Kennedy. The senator from Massachusetts reached his high-water mark of 643½ votes—only 43½ from winning.
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New drama was taking place off-stage involving the Tennessee delegation. Many in the state party had never forgiven Kefauver for breaking the political machine that once ruled the state, the organization of Ed “Boss” Crump of Memphis. Rather than rally behind him, the delegation was prepared to stick with Gore, even though he had fallen to only 110½ votes during the second ballot.
Gore had retreated from the floor to follow the events on television in the Railroad Room, a free watering spot for delegates and reporters that the railroad industry regularly sponsored at the conventions. It was there that Silliman Evans Jr., publisher of the Tennessean, an influential Nashville newspaper, found him. Like most publishers, Evans acted as a booster for his home state. He loved the idea of having a Tennessee man on the ticket, but it seemed obvious that Gore could not be that man. He lacked the delegates.
Now Evans reminded Gore that his career had been nourished by the editorial support of his father, Silliman Evans Sr., and the Tennessean. Gore’s career would be ended, promised Evans, if he didn’t get out of the race and yield his votes to Kefauver. Clutching Gore’s lapels, Evans warned him, “You’ll never get the Tennessean’s support for anything again, not even dogcatcher.”
Chastened by the newspaper publisher and pressured by events, Gore returned to the floor. Only minutes after his state had cast all 32 of its votes for him on the second ballot, he got recognition to speak. He was brief: “Mr. Chairman, with thanks to this great, free Democratic convention, I request that my name be withdrawn in favor of my colleague, Senator Estes Kefauver.”
The hall erupted into new roars. Wildly waving their standards, delegations from several states sought recognition. One of those states was South Carolina, which was ready to throw all 20 of its votes to Kennedy, which might have checked Kefauver’s sudden momentum. But Rayburn chose to recognize Oklahoma, which moved its 28 votes from Gore to Kefauver. Then Minnesota gave all 30 of its votes to Kefauver. Missouri followed with 37 votes for Kefauver, putting him slightly ahead of Kennedy. The trend became irreversible.
Afterward some of Kennedy’s advisors privately complained that Rayburn had recognized the pro-Kefauver delegations as payback to Kennedy for the embarrassment he had caused Rayburn’s ally John McCormack at the state convention in the spring.
But Kennedy was magnanimous in defeat. Seeing from the televised proceedings that a succession of states was falling for Kefauver, he looked at Sorensen and simply said, “Let’s go.” The pair hurried from the hotel room to an unguarded back door to the Amphitheater and made their way to the rear of the platform. Kennedy took a seat behind Rayburn, who was trying to restore order in the raucous arena. Someone whispered to the convention chairman that Kennedy was there.
The Virgin Islands had just changed its 3 votes to Kefauver. Rayburn pounded the gavel, shouting, “Will the convention be in order?” He paused as the noise subsided. “If there is no objection, the chair will recognize Senator John Kennedy of Massachusetts.”
For the third time that week the spotlight fell on Kennedy. He smiled and waved at friends. His eyes appeared to be glistening. Then, speaking without notes, he expressed appreciation “to Democrats from all parts of the country, north and south, east and west, who have been so generous and kind to me this afternoon.” He said the outcome “bears out the good judgment of our Governor Stevenson in deciding that this issue should be taken to the floor of the convention,” and he closed his brief remarks by saying the convention “has selected a man who has campaigned in all parts of the country, who has worked untiringly for the party, who will serve as an admirable running mate to Governor Stevenson.” He asked that the convention “make Estes Kefauver’s nomination unanimous.”
There were final, thunderous shouts from the floor and the spectators gallery, and it was over.
Stevenson had been watching the event on television with several advisors in his suite at the Blackstone. When it was clear that Kefauver would be his running mate, he perceptibly slumped, as if he himself had been defeated.
I There were untold ironies to the exchange. Twelve years later McCarthy, once a Catholic seminarian himself, would run for the Democratic presidential nomination as an opponent of the Vietnam War. The antiwar movement would drive President Johnson from office and help defeat his vice president, Humphrey, in the general election. But the turbulent 1968 campaign would also claim the life of Robert Kennedy, who entered the contest for the Democratic nomination. After Johnson dropped out, Kennedy was assassinated on the night he defeated McCarthy in the California primary.