John F. Kennedy 1960 presidential campaign

• 1. Introduction

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  John F. Kennedy's name was in a New York Times headline before the election was decided. Before midnight on the 8th of November 1960, the paper had already gone to press with the words "Kennedy Elected President." And yet the race was not over. NBC News would not call the result until seven in the morning. Kennedy had defeated Vice President Richard Nixon by just two-tenths of one percent in the national popular vote. A margin so thin raised urgent questions. How had a junior senator from Massachusetts outrun the sitting administration's chosen candidate? The answers begin at a 1956 national convention, where Kennedy fell just short of the Democratic vice-presidential nomination. He walked away with something more valuable: a national audience and a practical lesson in the dangers of winning the wrong race.

• 2. Building the Candidacy

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  Senator Estes Kefauver edged Kennedy on the first ballot at the 1956 Democratic National Convention, then held on through the third ballot with help from Senator Albert Gore Sr. Kennedy had briefly led on the second ballot, drawing support from Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. and from Southern delegates who opposed Kefauver's anti-segregation positions. When Kefauver went on to lose alongside Adlai Stevenson II in the general election, Kennedy emerged untouched by the defeat. He later stated that winning the vice-presidential nomination might have ended his career, given the Republican landslide that year.

  In 1957, Kennedy won the Pulitzer Prize for his best-selling book Profiles in Courage. Appointments to the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee and to the Select Committee on Labor Rackets added further to his public standing. Working with speechwriter Ted Sorensen, Kennedy began placing articles under his name in publications including the Atlantic Monthly and the New Republic.

  Kennedy set out in 1958 to win re-election to the Senate by the widest possible margin, believing a large victory would boost his national profile. He defeated his Republican opponent with 73.6 percent of the vote, a margin of 874,608 votes. That was the largest victory in Massachusetts political history and the greatest recorded by any senatorial candidate nationwide that year. In October 1958, Frank Sinatra publicly expressed support for a possible Kennedy presidential run. Governor John Malcolm Patterson added his endorsement in June 1959. In December 1959, a letter from Kennedy's staff intended for "active and influential Democrats" was leaked, confirming that the formal campaign would begin on the 2nd of January 1960.

  On January 2, Kennedy formally announced his candidacy at the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C. He stated he would participate in multiple primaries, including New Hampshire, and that he would not accept the vice-presidential nomination even if he lost the presidential race. Kennedy set up his campaign headquarters at 260 Tremont Street, a twelve-story commercial building in Boston, and named his younger brother Robert F. Kennedy as campaign manager. The first real test of that new organization was now just weeks away.

• 3. The Catholic Question

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  In September 1960, Kennedy walked into a meeting of the Greater Houston Ministerial Association and confronted the most personally charged issue of his campaign directly. He told the assembled Protestant clergy: "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 resist any Catholic official who sought to dictate public policy and pledged firm respect for the separation of church and state.

  Only one Catholic had ever been nominated for president by a major party before Kennedy: Democratic Governor Al Smith of New York, who lost to Herbert Hoover in 1928. Southern Baptists and Lutherans in particular feared that a Catholic in the White House would give the Pope undue influence over American governance. As early as January 1960, Governor Happy Chandler had predicted that Kennedy's religion alone would cost him multiple Southern states, including Kentucky.

  Richard Nixon chose to leave the religious issue entirely outside his own campaign. He focused instead on the argument that Kennedy lacked the experience for the Oval Office. Kennedy's denominational support pattern, strongest wherever Catholics were concentrated, had kept the question alive. It would follow the campaign all the way to election night.

• 4. The Primary Battles

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  Kennedy filed to run in the New Hampshire primary on the 8th of January 1960, making himself the only major candidate to enter. On March 8, he won without opposition and recorded the highest vote total cast for any Democratic candidate in that state up to that point. Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley promised to deliver Cook County's delegates to Kennedy, provided Kennedy proved his national appeal by winning competitive primaries elsewhere.

  Kennedy campaigned in Wisconsin for twenty-nine days starting February 16, running against U.S. Senator Hubert Humphrey of neighboring Minnesota. Humphrey's forces attempted to use Governor Gaylord Nelson as a stand-in candidate; U.S. Senator William Proxmire threatened to run as a Kennedy stand-in if that happened. Kennedy's siblings fanned across the state in search of votes, leading Humphrey to complain that he "felt like an independent merchant running against a chain store." Kennedy won with 56 percent of the vote, carrying six congressional districts to Humphrey's four. Kennedy held all fourteen counties where Catholics made up more than 35 percent of the population; Humphrey held the more Protestant areas. Kennedy himself called Wisconsin the "toughest, closest, most meaningful" primary, and Humphrey decided the denominational pattern meant the contest had to continue.

  Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. advised his son to skip West Virginia, calling it a "nothing state" where the religion issue would destroy him. Kennedy went anyway. On May 4, the two candidates met in a televised one-on-one debate at WCHS-TV in Charleston. Kennedy outperformed Humphrey, and the polls shifted quickly in the days that followed. Humphrey's campaign had run low on funds and could not match Kennedy's well-financed organization in advertising or voter outreach. On May 10, Kennedy defeated Humphrey with over 60 percent of the vote; Humphrey announced his withdrawal that same night.

  Kennedy won the Oregon primary on May 20 against Senator Wayne Morse, the only state where he directly challenged a sitting favorite son candidate. He defeated Morse 51 to 32 percent. Jimmy Hoffa, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, attacked Kennedy over his amendment to the Landrum-Griffin Act and called him a fraud who ignored labor unions. George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO, praised the same amendment. David J. McDonald, president of the United Steelworkers of America, argued that Kennedy had aided labor during the steel strike of 1959. Kennedy arrived in Los Angeles for the Democratic National Convention holding 600 pledged delegates, still 161 short of the number he needed for the nomination.

• 5. The Convention in Los Angeles

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  The Democratic National Convention ran in Los Angeles from July 11 to the 15th of July 1960. Former President Harry Truman publicly questioned Kennedy's experience and backed the search for a more seasoned alternative. Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson had deliberately sat out the primaries, positioning himself as a powerful compromise candidate for the convention floor. Two of Johnson's allies, including John B. Connally, claimed Kennedy suffered from Addison's disease. Kennedy's press secretary Pierre Salinger denied the report. A Kennedy physician, Janet Travell, asserted that his adrenal glands functioned normally, a claim that later proved false. The campaign also denied he was on cortisone.

  A Gallup poll taken on July 10 showed Kennedy leading among Democrats with 41 percent, followed by Adlai Stevenson at 25 percent, Johnson at 16 percent, and Stuart Symington at 7 percent. Johnson challenged Kennedy to a televised debate before a joint session of the Texas and Massachusetts delegations. Kennedy accepted, and most observers believed he won the exchange. Johnson was unable to expand his delegate support beyond the South.

  Kennedy secured the 761-vote threshold for a first-ballot nomination, but not until the final state in the roll call: Wyoming. The final tally gave him 806 delegates to 409 for Johnson and 79.5 for Stevenson. Kennedy thus became the first U.S. senator since Warren G. Harding in 1920 to receive a presidential nomination from either major party.

  Kennedy's choice of Lyndon Johnson for vice president immediately divided the labor movement. AFL-CIO president George Meany denounced Johnson as "the arch foe of labor." Illinois AFL-CIO president Reuben Soderstrom said Kennedy had made "chumps out of leaders of the American labor movement." Robert Kennedy had preferred labor leader Walter Reuther for the role. He later said his brother offered Johnson the position as a courtesy and did not expect him to accept. Biographer Robert Caro offered a different account. On July 14, Kennedy had asked Robert to prepare an electoral vote estimate that explicitly included Texas. Kennedy visited Johnson's suite at the Biltmore Hotel at 10:15 in the morning to discuss a mutual ticket. One factor in his thinking, Caro writes, was Kennedy's desire to remove Johnson as Senate Majority Leader. Kennedy wanted to install the more liberal Mike Mansfield in his place.

  Kennedy accepted the nomination with his "New Frontier" speech: "For the problems are not all solved and the battles are not all won, and we stand today on the edge of a New Frontier. But the New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises. It is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them." Kennedy hoped to reassemble the Roosevelt coalition of the 1930s, winning urban communities, ethnic voting blocs, and organized labor. He also planned to recapture conservative Catholics who had voted for Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956. Johnson's presence on the ticket was meant to hold the South.

• 6. Civil Rights and the Cold War

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  Just weeks before the November election, Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested in Atlanta for participating in a sit-in and sentenced to four months of hard labor. Kennedy phoned Coretta Scott King to express his concern. It was a politically risky decision; White Southern Democrats remained a crucial part of his coalition. Robert Kennedy separately contacted the presiding judge, and King was released safely. Martin Luther King Sr., who had been publicly backing Nixon, switched his support to Kennedy. The distribution of that endorsement, combined with broader campaign efforts, helped shift Black voter support dramatically. In 1956, Adlai Stevenson had won 61 percent of the African American vote; in 1960, Kennedy won 68 percent. That movement proved pivotal in the swing states of Illinois, Michigan, and South Carolina, all of which Kennedy carried.

  Robert Kennedy later admitted that the campaign had not approached civil rights from a national perspective. He said the focus had been on Massachusetts, not on conditions facing Black Americans in Mississippi or Alabama. Author Carl M. Brauer concluded that Kennedy's strategy was to neutralize the civil rights issue rather than champion it, to avoid splitting the party before the election.

  In 1957, the Soviet Union had launched Sputnik, the first man-made satellite to orbit Earth. By 1960, Cuba's revolutionary government under Fidel Castro had drawn close to the Soviet Union, raising fears of communist expansion in the Western Hemisphere. Public polls showed that more than half of all Americans believed war with the Soviet Union was inevitable. Kennedy seized on a perceived "missile gap," arguing that under Republican leadership the United States had fallen behind the Soviets militarily and economically. In an October 18 speech, he noted that senior U.S. military officers had long criticized the Eisenhower administration's defense spending policies. He proposed a bipartisan congressional investigation into whether the Soviet Union had surpassed the United States in missile development. Four televised debates with Nixon, scheduled for September and October, would carry that argument to its largest possible audience.

• 7. The Television Debates

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  An estimated 70 million Americans, roughly two-thirds of the electorate, watched the first presidential debate on September 26. Kennedy had met with the debate's producer the day before to discuss set design and camera placement. Nixon, just released from a hospital stay after a painful knee injury, did not take that opportunity. Kennedy wore a blue suit and blue shirt to minimize glare, appearing in sharp contrast against the gray studio background. Nixon wore a light-colored suit that blended into the same background, and the harsh studio lighting left him visibly perspiring. Kennedy appeared relaxed, tanned, and at ease in front of the cameras.

  Researchers David Vancil and Sue Pendell later challenged one of the most frequently repeated claims about the September 26 debate: that television viewers sided with Kennedy while radio listeners sided with Nixon. The underlying poll surveyed only 178 radio listeners who had expressed a view on the outcome. It used poor methodology, failed to account for pre-debate political or religious biases, and did not document the location of those polled. Nixon would already have been more popular in rural, Protestant areas with limited television access. No reliable polling confirmed that the debate shifted opinion cleanly along media lines.

  Congress had suspended a provision of the Federal Communications Act earlier in 1960. This allowed the networks to broadcast the debates without giving equal time to third-party candidates. Many in Nixon's camp, including President Eisenhower, had urged Nixon to reject the debate proposal and deny Kennedy national exposure. Nixon, an experienced debater, accepted. Up to 20 million fewer viewers watched each of the three remaining debates than had watched the first. Political observers at the time judged that Kennedy won the first debate, Nixon won the second and third, and both men performed strongly enough in the fourth that it was considered a draw.

  Gallup polls in October showed Kennedy moving into a consistent lead of 49 percent to Nixon's 46 percent. The two had been in a statistical tie through most of August and September. Pollster Elmo Roper concluded that the debates had raised public interest, boosted turnout, and delivered Kennedy approximately two million additional votes. Most of that gain, Roper said, came from the first broadcast. Those two million votes would be scrutinized intensely when the final margins were tallied in Illinois and Texas.

• 8. A Paper-Thin Victory

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  On November 1, Kennedy launched a seventeen-state campaign drive, visiting California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Maine, and Massachusetts. Nixon, meanwhile, was honoring a pledge made at the Republican National Convention to campaign in all fifty states. Larry Sabato and other political analysts would later argue that Nixon's decision to fulfill that pledge prevented him from concentrating resources on the swing states that ultimately decided the election.

  Theodore H. White calculated that Kennedy's campaign was built around nine states: New York, Pennsylvania, California, Michigan, Texas, Illinois, Ohio, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. Those nine states together held 237 of the 269 electoral votes needed to win the election. Although 70 percent of the nation's newspapers backed Nixon, Kennedy won the endorsement of The New York Times. Phil Graham of The Washington Post later said that he and journalist Joseph Alsop were "idolatrous" toward Kennedy. Kennedy also entered the race with a structural advantage: 17 million more registered Democrats than Republicans were on the national rolls.

  Kennedy defeated Nixon by 303 electoral votes to 219. His margin in the national popular vote was 49.7 percent to 49.5 percent. Fourteen electors from Mississippi and Alabama refused to support Kennedy because of his backing for civil rights; they cast their ballots for Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia. An elector from Oklahoma also voted for Byrd. Kennedy thus became the third of five candidates in the twentieth century to win the presidency without a majority of the popular vote. The others who preceded him in that category were Woodrow Wilson in 1912 and 1916, and Harry S. Truman in 1948.

  Accusations of fraud surfaced quickly in Illinois and Texas, where Kennedy's winning margins were 8,858 and 46,266 votes respectively. A Cook County recount found errors of ten or more votes in Kennedy's favor in 11 percent of Chicago's precincts. Nixon's comparable figure was 8.6 percent. Kennedy's vote was overcounted in 38 percent of the city's precincts; Nixon's was overcounted in 40 percent. The full recount added 926 votes to Nixon's total but left the state result unchanged. Times managing editor Turner Catledge later recalled what he had been hoping as the race stayed too close to call. As he wrote in his memoirs, he wanted "a certain Midwestern mayor" to "steal enough votes to pull Kennedy through," sparing the paper the embarrassment of announcing the wrong winner, as the Chicago Tribune had memorably done twelve years earlier.

  Hawaii's three electoral votes spent weeks in legal limbo. On election night, Kennedy led by 102 votes. More absentee ballots shifted the apparent lead to Nixon by November 17, with his margin then standing at 141 votes. Circuit Court Judge Ronald B. Jamieson ordered a recount of thirty-seven precincts on December 2 and later extended the review. On December 27, Jamieson ruled that Kennedy had won Hawaii by 115 votes. Governor William F. Quinn had already signed a certificate giving Hawaii's three electoral votes to the Republicans. He then signed a second certificate after the recount. When Congress convened on the 3rd of January 1961, Nixon presided over the joint session as Senate president and certified Kennedy as the winner of Hawaii's electoral votes.

  At the Hyannis Armory on election night, Kennedy addressed a nation that had stayed up through the uncertainty. He told the country: "The next four years are going to be difficult and challenging years for us all." He added that "a supreme national effort will be needed to move this country safely through the 1960s." At 43, he became the first person born in the twentieth century to be elected president and the first Roman Catholic to hold the office. His brothers Robert and Ted would both later seek the Democratic presidential nomination. Robert ran in 1968 and was assassinated before the convention; Ted ran in 1980 but did not win the nomination.