Past Campaigns: The 1964 Republican Party Race
What a difference a day makes. In November of 1963 it looked as if John F. Kennedy would be facing a spirited re-election campaign, and then November 22nd happened. While on the first campaign swing of his reelection effort, and an attempt to mend some political fences in the Lone Star State, Kennedy was shot and killed on November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas. The nation was saddened by the loss of the charismatic leader and during the period of mourning that followed, Republican leaders called for a political moratorium, so as not to appear disrespectful. No open politicking was done by the candidates from either major party until January 1964, when the primary season officially began.
For the Democrats, Lyndon Johnson assumed the mantle of leadership and was promptly sworn in as President following Kennedy's death. For the Republicans, it was a different story. The party was badly divided between its conservative and its moderate factions. Former Vice-President Richard Nixon, who had been defeated by Kennedy in the extremely close 1960 presidential election, decided not to run. His subsequent loss of the governorship of California and his petulant reaction to media following that defeat gave him the odor of a loser and he himself realized that he needed to rehabilitate his reputation before running again.
Nixon's absence left a void in the party. He was someone with ties to both wings of the GOP and with the ability to unite both factions, as he had done in 1960. Without someone to unite these groups, the two wings appeared ready to engage in a nasty fight for the nomination.
The leader of the conservative faction was Senator Barry Goldwater from Arizona. The conservatives drew support from the South and West. They supported lower taxes, small government, greater individual rights, support for business interests and opposition to social welfare programs. The conservatives resented how the GOP's moderate wing, based in the Northeastern United States, had controlled the party since the 1940s.
Goldwater's chief opponent for the Republican nomination was Nelson Rockefeller, the Governor of New York and the longtime leader of the GOP's liberal-moderate faction. Rockefeller was considered the front-runner, and at first many expected him to win the nomination. But in 1963, two years after Rockefeller's divorce from his first wife, Rockefeller married Margarita "Happy" Murphy, a woman who was 15 years younger than him. She had just divorced her husband and had agreed for him to have custody of their four children. What was a personal matter became a political one. Murphy's sudden divorce from her husband before marrying Rockefeller led to rumors that Rockefeller had been having an extramarital affair with her. This upset social conservatives in the party. Female Republican voters were polled and many of them called Rockefeller a "wife stealer". When Rockefeller married Murphy, his lead among Republicans dropped 20 points overnight.
One of Rockefeller's leading critics was Senator Prescott Bush of Connecticut, the father of President George H.W. Bush and grandfather of President George W. Bush. He said: "Have we come to the point in our life as a nation where the governor of a great state, one who perhaps aspires to the nomination for president of the United States, can desert a good wife, mother of his grown children, divorce her, then persuade a young mother of four youngsters to abandon her husband and their four children and marry the governor?" Bush articulated what many in the party at the time were thinking.
In the first Republican primary, held in New Hampshire, both Rockefeller and Goldwater were considered to be the favorites, but the voters surprised everyone when U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., finished in first place. Lodge had been Nixon's running mate in 1960 and was a former Massachusetts senator. Lodge won the primary as a write-in candidate. Lodge went on to win primaries in his home state of Massachusetts and in New Jersey before withdrawing his candidacy.
Goldwater pressed on, and he won primaries in Illinois, Texas, and Indiana primaries by healthy margins. He narrowly won Nebraska's primary after facing a challenge from a draft-Nixon movement. Goldwater also won a number of state caucuses and as the convention neared, he had gathered up a large number of delegates. Rockefeller won the West Virginia and Oregon primaries over Goldwater. Governor William Scranton won the primary in his home state of Pennsylvania. Both Rockefeller and Scranton also won several state caucuses, mostly in the Northeast.
The final battle between Goldwater and Rockefeller was in the California primary. Despite of issue of his marriage, Rockefeller led Goldwater in the polls in California, and he appeared headed for victory. But when his new wife gave birth to a son, Nelson Rockefeller Jr., just three days before the primary, his son's birth brought the issue of his alleged adultery back to the front pages and he suddenly lost ground in the polls. Goldwater narrowly won the primary by a 51–49% margin. The net result of this was that Rockefeller was no longer seen as a serious contender.
With Rockefeller's elimination, the party's moderates and liberals turned to Governor William Scranton of Pennsylvania, in the hopes that he could stop Goldwater. When the Republican Convention began in San Francisco on July 13th, Goldwater was seen as the heavy favorite to win the nomination. Senator Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania began a movement to draft Scranton in the hope that Scranton could pull together the support of all the liberal and moderate Republicans. Former President Dwight Eisenhower had encouraged Scranton to officially enter the race. When Scranton had formally entered the race on June 12, Rockefeller dropped out and endorsed Scranton.
Before the convention, Goldwater returned to the Senate where he gave a speech on June 18 in which he stated that he would vote against the Civil Rights bill. This caused a further rift in the Republican Party. New York Senator Kenneth Keating called Goldwater's position was a repudiation of Abraham Lincoln and founding principles of the Republican Party. Scranton also criticized Goldwater's position on civil rights and challenged Goldwater to a debate. Goldwater dismissed the invitation as "ridiculous". Instead Scranton purchased a 30-minute time segment on NBC that aired on July 7. In the spot Scranton spent much of the time criticizing Goldwater's position on many issues.
The 1964 Republican National Convention at Daly City, California's Cow Palace arena was one of the most bitter in party history. The party's moderates and conservatives openly expressed their contempt for each other. Rockefeller was loudly booed when he came to the podium for his speech, one in which he severely criticized the party's conservative wing. Many conservatives in the galleries yelled at him and heckled him, and tried to shout him down. A group of moderates tried to rally behind Scranton to stop Goldwater, but Goldwater had too much support by this point in time. Goldwater was nominated on the first ballot. He received 883 votes, compared to 214 for Scranton and 114 for Rockefeller.
The vice-presidential nomination went to little-known Republican Party Chairman William E. Miller, a Congressman from New York. Goldwater later privately said that that he chose Miller because "he drives [President Lyndon] Johnson nuts".
In accepting his nomination, Goldwater uttered what was perhaps his most famous line, in which he said: "I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." Many GOP moderates took offense to this comment, and many of them would defect to the Democrats in the fall election.
Goldwater was able to rally conservatives, but he was unable to broaden his base of support during the general election. He had alienated many moderate Republicans by his vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Goldwater gave a speech explaining his opposition to the Civil Rights Act, but the Johnson campaign used the vote against the legislation to portray Goldwater as a racist, even though Goldwater supported the civil rights cause in general, and voted in favor of the 1957 and 1960 Civil Rights acts. Goldwater considered desegregation a matter for the individual states, rather than a national policy.
Goldwater frequently spoke "off-the-cuff" and many of his former statements were now used against him. In the early 1960s, Goldwater had called the Eisenhower administration "a dime store New Deal", and Eisenhower never fully forgave Goldwater. Ike did not offered Goldwater much support in the election. However, Eisenhower did not openly repudiate Goldwater and made one television commercial for Goldwater's campaign.
In December 1961, Goldwater had told a news conference that "sometimes I think this country would be better off if we could just saw off the Eastern Seaboard and let it float out to sea". That comment came back to haunt him, in the form of a Johnson television commercial. In his most famous verbal gaffe, Goldwater once joked that the U.S. military should "lob one [meaning a nuclear bomb] into the men's room of the Kremlin."
Goldwater was also hurt by the reluctance of many prominent moderate Republicans to support him. Governors Nelson Rockefeller of New York and George Romney of Michigan refused to endorse him and did not campaign for him. Former Vice-President Richard Nixon and Governor Scranton of Pennsylvania loyally supported the GOP ticket and campaigned for Goldwater, although Nixon did not entirely agree with Goldwater's political positions on many issues. Some moderates even formed a "Republicans for Johnson" organization, although most prominent GOP politicians avoided being associated with it.
Fact magazine published an article polling psychiatrists around the country on the subject of Goldwater's sanity. A total of 1,189 psychiatrists agreed with the statement that Goldwater was "emotionally unstable" and unfit for office, even though none of them had actually interviewed him. (Later, in a libel suit, a federal court awarded Goldwater $1 in compensatory damages and $75,000 in punitive damages.)
One prominent Hollywood celebrity who strongly supported Goldwater was Ronald Reagan. Reagan gave a well-received televised speech supporting Goldwater that was so popular that Goldwater's advisors had it played on local television stations around the nation. Many consider this speech, called "A Time for Choosing", as the beginning of Reagan's transformation from an actor to a politician.
In the election campaign Johnson positioned himself as a moderate and succeeded in portraying Goldwater as an extremist. The Johnson campaign broadcast a television commercial on September 7 dubbed the "Daisy Girl" ad, which featured a little girl picking petals from a daisy in a field, counting the petals. The commercial then transitioned into a launch countdown and a nuclear explosion. "Confessions of a Republican" was another Johnson ad that featured a monologue from a man who tells his audience that he had previously voted for Eisenhower and Nixon, but now worries about the "men with strange ideas", "weird groups" and "the head of the Ku Klux Klan" all of whom were supporting Goldwater. In the ad he states: "Either they're not Republicans, or I'm not". These ads succeeded in portraying Goldwater as a a right-wing fringe candidate. Goldwater's campaign slogan "In your heart, you know he's right" was successfully parodied by the Johnson campaign into "In your guts, you know he's nuts". Johnson's broadcast ads concluded with the line: "Vote for President Johnson on November 3. The stakes are too high for you to stay home."
The election campaign was interrupted for a week by the death of former president Herbert Hoover on October 20, 1964, because it was considered disrespectful to be campaigning during a time of mourning. Both major candidates attended Hoover's funeral.
Johnson led in all opinion polls by huge margins throughout the entire campaign. The election was held on November 3, 1964. Johnson soundly defeated Goldwater, winning over 61 percent of the popular vote, the highest percentage since 1824. Goldwater won only his native state of Arizona and five Deep South states--Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina—that had been increasingly alienated by Democratic civil rights policies.
For the Democrats, Lyndon Johnson assumed the mantle of leadership and was promptly sworn in as President following Kennedy's death. For the Republicans, it was a different story. The party was badly divided between its conservative and its moderate factions. Former Vice-President Richard Nixon, who had been defeated by Kennedy in the extremely close 1960 presidential election, decided not to run. His subsequent loss of the governorship of California and his petulant reaction to media following that defeat gave him the odor of a loser and he himself realized that he needed to rehabilitate his reputation before running again.
Nixon's absence left a void in the party. He was someone with ties to both wings of the GOP and with the ability to unite both factions, as he had done in 1960. Without someone to unite these groups, the two wings appeared ready to engage in a nasty fight for the nomination.
The leader of the conservative faction was Senator Barry Goldwater from Arizona. The conservatives drew support from the South and West. They supported lower taxes, small government, greater individual rights, support for business interests and opposition to social welfare programs. The conservatives resented how the GOP's moderate wing, based in the Northeastern United States, had controlled the party since the 1940s.
Goldwater's chief opponent for the Republican nomination was Nelson Rockefeller, the Governor of New York and the longtime leader of the GOP's liberal-moderate faction. Rockefeller was considered the front-runner, and at first many expected him to win the nomination. But in 1963, two years after Rockefeller's divorce from his first wife, Rockefeller married Margarita "Happy" Murphy, a woman who was 15 years younger than him. She had just divorced her husband and had agreed for him to have custody of their four children. What was a personal matter became a political one. Murphy's sudden divorce from her husband before marrying Rockefeller led to rumors that Rockefeller had been having an extramarital affair with her. This upset social conservatives in the party. Female Republican voters were polled and many of them called Rockefeller a "wife stealer". When Rockefeller married Murphy, his lead among Republicans dropped 20 points overnight.
One of Rockefeller's leading critics was Senator Prescott Bush of Connecticut, the father of President George H.W. Bush and grandfather of President George W. Bush. He said: "Have we come to the point in our life as a nation where the governor of a great state, one who perhaps aspires to the nomination for president of the United States, can desert a good wife, mother of his grown children, divorce her, then persuade a young mother of four youngsters to abandon her husband and their four children and marry the governor?" Bush articulated what many in the party at the time were thinking.
In the first Republican primary, held in New Hampshire, both Rockefeller and Goldwater were considered to be the favorites, but the voters surprised everyone when U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., finished in first place. Lodge had been Nixon's running mate in 1960 and was a former Massachusetts senator. Lodge won the primary as a write-in candidate. Lodge went on to win primaries in his home state of Massachusetts and in New Jersey before withdrawing his candidacy.
Goldwater pressed on, and he won primaries in Illinois, Texas, and Indiana primaries by healthy margins. He narrowly won Nebraska's primary after facing a challenge from a draft-Nixon movement. Goldwater also won a number of state caucuses and as the convention neared, he had gathered up a large number of delegates. Rockefeller won the West Virginia and Oregon primaries over Goldwater. Governor William Scranton won the primary in his home state of Pennsylvania. Both Rockefeller and Scranton also won several state caucuses, mostly in the Northeast.
The final battle between Goldwater and Rockefeller was in the California primary. Despite of issue of his marriage, Rockefeller led Goldwater in the polls in California, and he appeared headed for victory. But when his new wife gave birth to a son, Nelson Rockefeller Jr., just three days before the primary, his son's birth brought the issue of his alleged adultery back to the front pages and he suddenly lost ground in the polls. Goldwater narrowly won the primary by a 51–49% margin. The net result of this was that Rockefeller was no longer seen as a serious contender.
With Rockefeller's elimination, the party's moderates and liberals turned to Governor William Scranton of Pennsylvania, in the hopes that he could stop Goldwater. When the Republican Convention began in San Francisco on July 13th, Goldwater was seen as the heavy favorite to win the nomination. Senator Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania began a movement to draft Scranton in the hope that Scranton could pull together the support of all the liberal and moderate Republicans. Former President Dwight Eisenhower had encouraged Scranton to officially enter the race. When Scranton had formally entered the race on June 12, Rockefeller dropped out and endorsed Scranton.
Before the convention, Goldwater returned to the Senate where he gave a speech on June 18 in which he stated that he would vote against the Civil Rights bill. This caused a further rift in the Republican Party. New York Senator Kenneth Keating called Goldwater's position was a repudiation of Abraham Lincoln and founding principles of the Republican Party. Scranton also criticized Goldwater's position on civil rights and challenged Goldwater to a debate. Goldwater dismissed the invitation as "ridiculous". Instead Scranton purchased a 30-minute time segment on NBC that aired on July 7. In the spot Scranton spent much of the time criticizing Goldwater's position on many issues.
The 1964 Republican National Convention at Daly City, California's Cow Palace arena was one of the most bitter in party history. The party's moderates and conservatives openly expressed their contempt for each other. Rockefeller was loudly booed when he came to the podium for his speech, one in which he severely criticized the party's conservative wing. Many conservatives in the galleries yelled at him and heckled him, and tried to shout him down. A group of moderates tried to rally behind Scranton to stop Goldwater, but Goldwater had too much support by this point in time. Goldwater was nominated on the first ballot. He received 883 votes, compared to 214 for Scranton and 114 for Rockefeller.
The vice-presidential nomination went to little-known Republican Party Chairman William E. Miller, a Congressman from New York. Goldwater later privately said that that he chose Miller because "he drives [President Lyndon] Johnson nuts".
In accepting his nomination, Goldwater uttered what was perhaps his most famous line, in which he said: "I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." Many GOP moderates took offense to this comment, and many of them would defect to the Democrats in the fall election.
Goldwater was able to rally conservatives, but he was unable to broaden his base of support during the general election. He had alienated many moderate Republicans by his vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Goldwater gave a speech explaining his opposition to the Civil Rights Act, but the Johnson campaign used the vote against the legislation to portray Goldwater as a racist, even though Goldwater supported the civil rights cause in general, and voted in favor of the 1957 and 1960 Civil Rights acts. Goldwater considered desegregation a matter for the individual states, rather than a national policy.
Goldwater frequently spoke "off-the-cuff" and many of his former statements were now used against him. In the early 1960s, Goldwater had called the Eisenhower administration "a dime store New Deal", and Eisenhower never fully forgave Goldwater. Ike did not offered Goldwater much support in the election. However, Eisenhower did not openly repudiate Goldwater and made one television commercial for Goldwater's campaign.
In December 1961, Goldwater had told a news conference that "sometimes I think this country would be better off if we could just saw off the Eastern Seaboard and let it float out to sea". That comment came back to haunt him, in the form of a Johnson television commercial. In his most famous verbal gaffe, Goldwater once joked that the U.S. military should "lob one [meaning a nuclear bomb] into the men's room of the Kremlin."
Goldwater was also hurt by the reluctance of many prominent moderate Republicans to support him. Governors Nelson Rockefeller of New York and George Romney of Michigan refused to endorse him and did not campaign for him. Former Vice-President Richard Nixon and Governor Scranton of Pennsylvania loyally supported the GOP ticket and campaigned for Goldwater, although Nixon did not entirely agree with Goldwater's political positions on many issues. Some moderates even formed a "Republicans for Johnson" organization, although most prominent GOP politicians avoided being associated with it.
Fact magazine published an article polling psychiatrists around the country on the subject of Goldwater's sanity. A total of 1,189 psychiatrists agreed with the statement that Goldwater was "emotionally unstable" and unfit for office, even though none of them had actually interviewed him. (Later, in a libel suit, a federal court awarded Goldwater $1 in compensatory damages and $75,000 in punitive damages.)
One prominent Hollywood celebrity who strongly supported Goldwater was Ronald Reagan. Reagan gave a well-received televised speech supporting Goldwater that was so popular that Goldwater's advisors had it played on local television stations around the nation. Many consider this speech, called "A Time for Choosing", as the beginning of Reagan's transformation from an actor to a politician.
In the election campaign Johnson positioned himself as a moderate and succeeded in portraying Goldwater as an extremist. The Johnson campaign broadcast a television commercial on September 7 dubbed the "Daisy Girl" ad, which featured a little girl picking petals from a daisy in a field, counting the petals. The commercial then transitioned into a launch countdown and a nuclear explosion. "Confessions of a Republican" was another Johnson ad that featured a monologue from a man who tells his audience that he had previously voted for Eisenhower and Nixon, but now worries about the "men with strange ideas", "weird groups" and "the head of the Ku Klux Klan" all of whom were supporting Goldwater. In the ad he states: "Either they're not Republicans, or I'm not". These ads succeeded in portraying Goldwater as a a right-wing fringe candidate. Goldwater's campaign slogan "In your heart, you know he's right" was successfully parodied by the Johnson campaign into "In your guts, you know he's nuts". Johnson's broadcast ads concluded with the line: "Vote for President Johnson on November 3. The stakes are too high for you to stay home."
The election campaign was interrupted for a week by the death of former president Herbert Hoover on October 20, 1964, because it was considered disrespectful to be campaigning during a time of mourning. Both major candidates attended Hoover's funeral.
Johnson led in all opinion polls by huge margins throughout the entire campaign. The election was held on November 3, 1964. Johnson soundly defeated Goldwater, winning over 61 percent of the popular vote, the highest percentage since 1824. Goldwater won only his native state of Arizona and five Deep South states--Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina—that had been increasingly alienated by Democratic civil rights policies.