
The major candidates for the 1960 Democratic presidential nomination were a young Senator from Massachusetts named John F. Kennedy from Massachusetts, Governor Pat Brown of California, Senator Stuart Symington from Missouri, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson from Texas, Senator Wayne Morse from Oregon, Senator Hubert Humphrey from Minnesota and once again former Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson. At the time only 16 states held primaries. Party bosses and establishment held a lot of sway in deciding who the party's candidate would be. A a result, more established candidates like Symington, Stevenson, and Johnson all declined to campaign in the presidential primaries. This reduced their potential delegate count going into the Democratic National Convention, but each hoped that the other contenders would stumble in the primaries, and they could then win the nomination with the help of party bosses in the states that didn't use the primary system.
Kennedy was seen as charismatic and attractive, but he also had his detractors within the party. Some Democratic Party elders such as former United States President Harry S. Truman, that that Kennedy was too young and inexperienced to be president. They thought he might make a good Vice-Presidential candidate for another Democrat, but did not think he was ready to be at the top of the ticket. Kennedy would have none of it, telling media who asked him about this, "I'm not running for vice president, I'm running for president."
Kennedy had another potential problem. As a Roman Catholic, his religion was an issue. Man Democrats still remembered the last time they had run a Catholic as their Presidential candidate. The experience of 1928 Catholic Democratic presidential nominee Al Smith was met by intense anti-Catholic prejudice and many wondered if that would affect Kennedy's chances of winning the nomination and the election in November.
In spite of these reservations, Kennedy gained considerable momentum by winning every primary he entered. He first challenged Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey in the Wisconsin primary, a state which bordered Humphrey's home state of Minnesota. Kennedy defeated Humphrey by a margin of 56% to 44%. Kennedy had two formidable weapons. The first was his family's money and the second was his family itself. Kennedy's attractive siblings and his wife Jacqueline spread out across the state looking for votes. Feeling overwhelmed, Humphrey complained to the media, "I feel like an independent merchant competing against a chain store." Kennedy's margin of victory in the state came almost entirely from Catholic areas.
Attributing Kennedy's victory to support from his fellow Catholics, Humphrey decided to continue the contest in the heavily Protestant state of West Virginia. It was there that the two candidates participated in the first televised debate of 1960. Kennedy knew that in order to secure his party's nomination, he had to win West Virginia's delegates. Losing would give credence to Humphrey's argument that Kennedy could not win in a state where Catholics were not a significant voting block.
Two years earlier, in 1958, Kennedy had commissioned Louis Harris to poll West Virginia voters to see how he would do running against Richard Nixon. Harris reported that Kennedy led his Republican opponent by fourteen points in the state. Encouraged by those numbers, Kennedy had set up what journalist Theodore White called "a shadow operation" in the state. By 1959, his campaign organization had chairpersons in each county. Harris then polled West Virginia Democrats and reported back to Kennedy that he led Humphrey by the overwhelming margin of seventy percent to thirty percent. Kennedy was confident that he had the votes he needed to carry the state.
Initially Kennedy decided that he would not campaign actively there unless Humphrey entered the primary. Humphrey did so, making an early decision to compete with Kennedy for West Virginia. Humphrey believed that his populist Midwestern background and his protestant faith would appeal to voters in that state far more than JFK's polished Ivy League image and his Catholicism. Although Humphrey had recently lost the Wisconsin primary, he believed that his prospects in West Virginia looked promising. Relying on their polling numbers at a time when polling was not as pervasive as it is today, the Kennedy campaign remained confident that their candidate would trounce Humphrey, who could not even carry his next door state.
By this time the issue of Kennedy's religion had entered the electoral discussion. The Humphrey campaign used this to try to erode Kennedy's support in West Virginia. Four weeks before West Virginia primary day, the tactic appeared to be working for Humphrey. Kennedy found himself trailing Humphrey by 20 points. When the campaign asked the county chairs why the voters had switched allegiance, they told him, "No one know you were a Catholic". Sensing that his campaign was in trouble, Kennedy moved his key campaign aides to West Virginia. he called on his close friends to volunteer their time. County campaign chairs in 39 of the state's 59 counties were trained to staff phone banks, host receptions, and go door to door to distribute literature. The candidate changed his schedule to campaign throughout the state. He brought in Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. to endorse his candidacy.
On April 25th Kennedy decided to directly confront the anti-Catholic bias. He began to tell audiences across the state, "I refuse to believe that I was denied the right to be President the day that I was baptized." On May 8th, two days before the election, in a broadcast paid for by the campaign, FDR, Jr. asked JFK how his Catholicism would effect his presidency. Kennedy replied that taking the oath of office required swearing on the Bible that the president would defend separation of church and state and that any candidate that violated this oath not only violated the Constitution but "sinned against God."
The Kennedy campaign began to frame the key issue in the primary as one of tolerance versus intolerance. Kennedy asked West Virginia's voters to remain faithful to their historical revulsion for prejudice. This spin appeared to make Humphrey, who had championed tolerance his entire career, appear intolerant and it put Humphrey on the defensive. Kennedy had a distinct advantage over Humphrey. He had a significant advantage when it came to spending and Humphrey could not match the well-financed Kennedy operation. Humphrey's campaign was low on funds and could not compete for advertising and other "get-out-the-vote" drives
On the day of the primary Kennedy defeated his rival soundly, winning 60.8 percent of the vote. That evening, Humphrey announced that he was no longer a candidate for the presidency. With a victory in West Virginia, Kennedy showed that his being a Catholic was not an impediment to being victorious in a heavily Protestant state.
Kennedy only competed in nine presidential primaries. He won them all, along with his home state of Massachusetts. Kennedy's other leading rivals, Lyndon Johnson and Stuart Symington, had failed to campaign in any primaries. Adlai Stevenson retained a loyal following of party liberals, but his two landslide defeats to President Dwight D. Eisenhower led most party leaders and delegates to consider him as being unelectable. After winning the Oregon primary in late May, Kennedy traveled around the nation speaking to state delegations and their leaders. As the Democratic Convention opened, Kennedy was far in the lead, but was still a few dozen delegates short of the delegate total he needed to win.

Johnson challenged Kennedy to a televised debate before a joint meeting of the Texas and Massachusetts delegations. Kennedy accepted and most observers believed that Kennedy won the debate. Johnson was unable to expand his delegate support. Kennedy won the nomination on the first ballot at the convention.