Before I continue with the direct
discussion of this article I believe now would be a good time for a digression
that I was planning to include in this series: the role of California in
primary politics.
Starting in 1952 presidential
primaries began to take an increased role in determining the nominations of
Presidential candidates of both parties. At the same time with the expansion of
California's population the number of delegates it was sending to conventions
was becoming a sizable factor in how both political parties began to reckon
with their involvement. California had held presidential primaries before but
the majority of them had been non-binding as were the majority of presidential
primaries until after World War II. For that reason California would become
increasingly important to candidates of both parties when it came to contending
for the nomination.
The peak of this period came during
the presidential elections between 1952 and 1976. And since during this period political
figures from California were increasingly becoming prominent in discussions of
Presidential candidates – regardless of which party they belonged to this was
pretty much the height of their power.
So in this article I will briefly
discuss the California Presidential primaries during this period as well as
their role, if any, at each major convention between this period.
1952 Republican Primary
In the leadup to the 1952
Presidential election it seemed likely the Republicans would take the White
House. One prominent contender was the governor of California Earl Warren. In
1950 Warren had made history by winning his third consecutive gubernatorial
election. He had served as the vice presidential candidate for Thomas Dewey in
1948, a role he had not wanted but had been told if he didn't take it he had no
future in national politics. He might have been the only Republican relieved
when Dewey lost to Truman.
On November 1951 Warren threw his
hat into the ring. He knew he wouldn't be able to win the nomination outright
but he hoped to have enough delegates to possibly be a dark horse and win if
the convention deadlocked between frontrunners Eisenhower and Robert Taft. While he attempted to campaign in Wisconsin
and Oregon, his main focus was a win in the California primary and control of
the 81 delegates. He would win easily and headed to the Chicago convention.
What he didn't know was that the
junior senator from California Richard Nixon was being actively courted by the
Eisenhower forces. Nixon had been making moves even before the convention to
bring the candidates in Eisenhower's fold. Before the convention began Dewey,
high in the Eisenhower food chain, went to Nixon and asked if he would be
interested in becoming Ike's Vice Presidential candidate. (Eisenhower had no
knowledge of this at the time."
At Chicago Taft controlled 525
delegates, Eisenhower about 500. Warren had 81. There was a struggle early on
between contested delegations in Texas, Georgia, and Louisiana of 75 delegates.
If Taft won them he would almost certainly clinch the nomination. Eisenhower's strategist
proposed a 'fair play Amendment' that would force a floor vote about seating
the delegates' with the winner of the nomination almost certainly at stake. The
Eisenhower forces won.
Before balloting began on the
Presidential nomination Taft approached Warren and offered him the cabinet position
of his choice if he released his delegates to him. Warren declined as much
because his views were more moderate then the conservative senator. He didn't release
his delegates to either candidate. Instead Minnesota delegation, led by Harold
Stassen did so after the initial count, which put Eisenhower over the top.
After Eisenhower won election he
would call Warren and promise him the first vacancy on the Supreme Court.
1956 Democratic Primary
In 1956 Tennessee Senator Estes
Kefauver announced he was running for the Democratic nomination. Kefauver had
done extremely well in the 1952 Presidential primaries but concern about him as
a national candidate led to the Democrats choosing on their third ballot Illinois
Governor Adlai Stevenson. Despite Stevenson losing in a landslide to Eisenhower
he chose to run again in 1956. This time, however, he would have to run in the
primaries.
Kefauver would win the New
Hampshire primary in a landslide, then trounce Stevenson in Minnesota and
Wisconsin. The two men battled back and forth but in the California primary
Stevenson trounced California decisively.
Kefauver actually won more
primaries than Stevenson: 9 to 7. At the
Democratic Convention Stevenson decided not to name his Vice Presidential
candidate but leave the decision to the delegates. It quickly became a battle
between Kefauver and the 39 year old junior Senator from Massachusetts John F.
Kennedy. Kennedy would briefly lead on the second ballot but eventually the
delegates shifted to Kefauver and Kennedy made the nomination unanimous.
The Stevenson-Kefauver ticket was
trounced in November but people remembered the impression of Kennedy.
1960 Democratic National
Convention
When JFK made his historic primary
campaign for the White House he intentionally chose to leave California out of
the running. The new governor of the state Edmund 'Pat' Brown ran unopposed and
he would hold the delegation.
The Democratic National Convention
was held in Los Angeles for the first time in 1960. During the convention a
stealth campaign for Adlai Stevenson was running and it kept trying to convince
numerous delegations of five major states to shift their votes to Stevenson on
the first ballot to stop Kennedy from getting the nomination outright. They
would fail in every state except California where governor Brown would agree to
give 41 of the states 81 delegates to Stevenson on the first ballot. Despite that and a rousing nomination speech
by Minnesota's junior senator Eugene McCarthy that led to an hour-long demonstration
Kennedy would end up narrowly winning the nomination on the first ballot.
1964 Republican Primary
All through the leadup to the 1964
Republican convention the party knew it was headed for a disaster during a
confrontation between the two biggest men in the party. New York Governor
Nelson Rockefeller and Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater.
Both men had major drawbacks. Rockefeller's
moderate views, while in touch with the electorate at the time, were
increasingly anathema to the conservative base of the party. The bigger problem
was that he would begin an affair with socialite Happy Murphy while both of
them were married to other people. The two would divorce their respective
spouses and marry each other during 1963. In a conservative America that
considered divorce a sin, many citizens were appalled and Rockefeller seemed
eliminated from serious consideration.
Goldwater's views were popular
with a growing number of conservatives but they were out of touch with the
majority of Republican officeholders who were terrified that if he were to run
they would suffer an electoral disaster at the polls. They felt this well
before the assassination of JFK.
Both men entered the Presidential
primaries and a pattern developed. Goldwater was doing well in caucus states
but not the primaries. This was clear from the start where Goldwater finished
second in the New Hampshire primary to write-in candidate Henry Cabot Lodge.
The pattern held throughout and in Oregon Rockefeller won in a landslide and
Goldwater finished a distant third.
It all came down to the California
primary. The Goldwater camp knew that while
they had a huge number of caucus states it was fragile and if Rockefeller could
sweep California and the New York primaries he would win 178 delegates more
than enough for the bosses to get behind him. And on the Friday before the
California primary Rockefeller was leading by 9 percent over Goldwater 49
percent to 40 percent. The Goldwater forces put out a barrage of press releases
to try and prevail but they were helped by an outside factor.
On May 30, 1964 Happy gave birth
to Nelson Rockefeller, Jr. This reminded
countless conservative Californians of Rockefeller's violation of family values
and overnight Rockefeller's lead collapsed. The final election count was
incredibly close: Rockefeller would carry forty of the forty seven California
districts in play but Goldwater would win Orange County – and Los Angeles by 207,000
votes to narrowly win. Under the unit rule he was entitled to all 86 of the
California delegates. Rockefeller could read the writing on the wall and withdrew
from the fight.
The battle to come up with an
alternative candidate was a disaster. So was the convention at the Cow Palace
in San Francisco. By the time Goldwater uttered his famous words:
"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice…Moderation in the defense
of tyranny is no virtue!" the Republicans across the country knew the
optics and essentially withdrew from the fight, leaving Goldwater to be
landslided by LBJ in November, despite a speech given by an actor named Ronald
Reagan that October in Hollywood to speak for the California base.
1968 Democratic Primary
Robert F. Kennedy's assassination
in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel after giving his speech celebrating his
victory of the California primary on June 6th would mythologize him
in the eyes of millions. It has been commemorated and made a part of the lore
of so many Hollywood films about the era, including those of Oliver Stone to
2006'S Bobby. Lost under the tragedy is the fact that aides would
acknowledge years later: even the
Kennedy campaign was sure that within a matter of days Hubert Humphrey would wrap
up the nomination.
The fact that going into the New
York Primary Bobby Kennedy faced what he knew was an uphill battle against
Eugene McCarthy has been ignored, as well as the fact that the Lyndon Johnson
was more in control of the party and that he loathed Bobby Kennedy. Also ignored is the fact that as events
unfolded during Chicago he considered renouncing his decision to not seek
reelection and had starting talking with the Texas delegation to see what would
happen if he made an appearance in Chicago. (He was only talked out of it
because Mayor Richard Daley said that if
the President showed up in the riotous city, he could not guarantee his
safety.) There is little doubt in my mind that Johnson would have done the same
thing had Kennedy lived.
1972 Democratic Primary,
Democratic Convention
As I've written in multiple
articles the race for the 1972 Democratic nomination ended up turning on the California
primary and a debate between Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern.
Humphrey knew that everything
turned on the California primary, which itself was a subject of controversy.
Before the primary schedule the California primary had been winner take all,
which had angered the McCarthy delegates after Kennedy had won it by a narrow
margin. There had been fight over but it had been decided that it would remain
the same. Now 271 delegates were at stake. If Humphrey were to win, McGovern,
who already had 560 delegates to Humphrey’s 311, might be stopped before the
convention. The Humphrey campaign was understaffed and underfunded against
McGovern and it was only due to the efforts of the campaign treasurer that the
campaign was still solvent. On May 18th, polling showed that
McGovern might win by as much as twenty points.
Humphrey’s campaign decided their
own hope was to show McGovern’s fuzziness on the issues to the California
audience. They would challenge McGovern to three televised debates in order to
wreck him. Humphrey’s position was to attack on his campaign theme :’Right from
the Start.” And that is what he did: “I
believe that Senator McGovern, while having a catchy phrase…”Right from the
start, that there are many times that you will find he was wrong from the
start. We were both wrong on Vietnam. He has been wrong on unemployment
compensation…on labor law. On taxation he is contradictory and inconsistent..”
McGovern froze and peddled water
for several minutes. He told Theodore White that he had not expected such a
ferocity of attack from a friend. He had been advised by his campaign to go
after Humphrey had but he had not taken him seriously.
Humphrey came across as harsh
while McGovern seemed nicer and few people actually saw the debates at the
time. But time and the press were about to catch up. McGovern’s lead in
California began to erode bit by bit. On primary night, McGovern underperformed
by a huge margin. He ended up winning California by five points and that was
enough to eliminate Humphrey - in theory
But while the McGovern campaign considered the debates attack harsh, none of
them yet knew how critical they had been. Before the primary McGovern had been
within five points of Nixon. After that the gap began to widen and he never
came that close to him again in the polls.
Humphrey’s candidacy, however, was
not quite over. The Democratic National Convention the following month should
have been a coronation for McGovern and his followers. The problem was the old
guard could see disaster if McGovern was the nominee and was determined to stop
it. And California was at the center of it.
The ABM (Anybody But McGovern)
coalition insisted that the law of California contradicted the new rules of the
Democratic Party and that McGovern was only entitle to 120 of the 271
delegates. The coalition had taken over the rules committee and by a six vote
majority, McGovern had lost 151 delegates. Everything was being done to deny
McGovern a first ballot nomination: once he lost control of them, the old guard
could take the convention. Humphrey was more than willing to be quoted by the
New York Times as part of that guard.
The McGovern managed to
outmaneuver the ABM – and Humphrey – by a parliamentary maneuver. The McGovern
campaign decided to vote against the seating of the South Carolina women’s
Caucus in order to overturn a ruling that the McGovern seating had already won.
This decision would eventually lead to the California delegation going for
McGovern. The problem was, it appeared to the Women’s Caucus that McGovern had
double crossed him. This would lead to the McGovern coalition beginning to fall
apart. With the omission of so much of the old guard under the quota system, a
platform that went too far for even the most loyal Democrats and the disastrous
hunt for a Vice President, the McGovern campaign was doomed by the end of the
convention.
1976 Democratic and Republican
Primaries
In a sense 1976 marked the highwater
mark for California in presidential politics as two Governors of the states –
one current, one former – were making a concerted effort to receive their respective
parties nomination.
The former was of course Ronald
Reagan who has spent the 1976 primary season in a challenge to incumbent President
Gerald Ford for both the nomination and the direction of the Republican Party. It
had been a back and forth battle the entire year and on the final day of the primary
season Reagan and Ford were still deadlocked with three big states still in
play: California, New Jersey and Ohio. The Ford campaign decided to concentrate
on the latter two states assuming Reagan would naturally sweep his home state.
As a result of some dirty campaign ads which Reagan would never forgive Ford
would manage to overwhelmingly win both New Jersey and Ohio negating the
California sweep.
Leading up to the convention in
Kansas City in two months’ time, both the Ford and the Reagan campaigns made
every effort to try and win over the more than 400 delegates who were
uncommitted. Working through state
conventions Reagan had managed to lock down 178 delegates during state
conventions, while Ford had managed to get 114 with 64 uncommitted. The battles
would go back and forth for the next month, with neither side gaining much of
an advantage and neither side able to give an inch.
As the weeks went on Reagan knew
that he had to do something daring to try and take the momentum from Ford, who
was using all the trappings of the White House to pull delegates in. He then
came up with a daring strategy that seemed inspired but ended up costing him
the nomination. Reagan had never really cared for the traditional, midnight
crash sessions to decide on a vice presidential candidate and considering how
fresh the memory George McGovern’s disastrous pick was in the memories of both
parties, it was hard to argue with him. He chose John Sears and Paul Laxalt,
the manager and chairman of his campaign to make a recommendation for him. Both
these men were tacticians who believed in winning, not ideological purity as
most conservatives clearly did. Their decision was not to worry about the
south, but rather the hope that take could make inroads in the Northeast.
The man Sears and Laxalt
eventually agreed upon was the Republican Senator from Pennsylvania Stephen
Schweiker. While Schweiker was not a
‘knee-jerk liberal’ as was considered by the conservatives later on. While his voting record was liberal, Schweiker
was opposed to gun control, abortion and the ‘Captive Nations’ argument.
Furthermore, he was in the convention as a Ford delegate, so it might very well
undermine the Pennsylvania delegation. Reagan asked simply whether he thought
Schweiker would do it.
On July 24, the two men had their
first meeting. The two got along fairly well. Schweiker told Reagan: “I’m no
knee-jerk liberal.” And Reagan replied: “I’m no knee-jerk extremist.” The next
three hours were spent planning how it could be done, how to make this the
element of surprise that would undermine the Ford campaign.
The first sign that this would not
go as planned for anybody was when Schweiker called Drew Lewis, a friend of his
and a key member of the Philadelphia delegation. Lewis refused to go along with
Schweiker’s decision. The party
conservatives were also shocked and angry, particularly in the Mississippi
delegation. The problems got worse when the official announcement took place.
When questioned on his position on the Panama Canal, a major bugbear among
conservatives that had been one of the guiding forces behind Reagan’s primary
campaign Schweiker bloviated for several minutes before admitting he had no
position. In the eyes of the conservative caucus, this was viewed as a
betrayal. Southern conservatives began to defect and the only way to ensure a
rebound was to make movement about the Pennsylvania delegation that would
trigger switches in New Jersey and New York.
It never happened. Lewis called
Ford at the White House and assured him that he would hold at least ninety
delegates for Ford on the first ballot. The Ford campaign, led by Dick Cheney knew
that they had to make a play for the Southern delegations. Their target was
Mississippi where the Ford campaign had spent a lot of time and energy courting
the head of the delegation Clarke Reed. The state had never been as solid for
Reagan as the campaign had hoped, and the selection of Schweiker lit the
fuse. Reed ended up saying prior to the
convention that he was bringing the 30 delegates to Ford. But nobody was sure.
When the convention finally began,
Sears played one last card. He was determined to force Ford to show his hand on
the vice presidential nominee before the convention. He decided to propose what
amounted to a floor fight over what would be called Rule 16-C and if it worked,
it might undo whatever momentum Ford still had. The problem was the rule didn’t
sit well with conservatives. As Jules Witcover pointed out with some irony:
“they did not look favorably on an upset to the status in any regard, even if
it was to the benefit of their candidate.”
Again everything came down to
Mississippi and Clarke Reed, who was having second thoughts again. Reed’s
haphazard personality kept everybody guessing through the next few days.
Finally after three days the Mississippi delegation of sixty (thirty of them were
alternates) finally voted: 31 to 28 against 16-C. That was the final battle;
the actual role call was anticlimactic.
Later that week, Gerald Ford was nominated with 1187 to Reagan’s 1070.
On the Democratic side the current
governor Jerry Brown (Pat's son) nicknamed Governor Moonbeam because of his spacey
behavior had been favored by many for the nomination since his election. Late
in the campaign season with Jimmy Carter still ahead in the drive of the
nomination Brown and Idaho's Frank Church would challenge Carter in several
late primaries. Brown would end up winning Maryland, Rhode Island, Nevada and
doing well in Oregon while Church would win Nebraska, Idaho, Montana and Oregon.
On the last day of the primaries Brown would win in both California and New Jersey
but when Carter won Ohio Mayor Daley, the last of the big city bosses would
declare Carter the winner. Brown would have his name placed in nomination at
the 1976 Convention role call as Carter ended up winning.
After this California would
increasingly become less important to the determination of the Presidential
nominee, either by coming too late to do anything but confirm the
front-runner's win after the majority of the delegates had dropped out or, as
would be in the case of the 1980 Democratic primary when it went to Ted
Kennedy, serve as an afterthought. It has
been moved about constantly over the years but at this point in campaign history
it is more significant in popular culture's history being critical in Season 1
of 24 or on shows such as The West Wing.
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