Nixon's Secret (19 page)

Nixon badly bungled an opportunity that the Kennedy men would seize. When Dr. Martin Luther King was arrested and jailed in Atlanta, some Nixon advisors suggested that Nixon reach out to King’s concerned wife or to the judge in the case. Nixon, ever the lawyer, felt these contacts would be inappropriate. Unfazed by ethics, Kennedy, egged on by brother-in-law Sargent Schriver and aide Harris Wofford, would place a greatly publicized call to Coretta King. Robert Kennedy, an attorney himself, first contacted Ernest Vandiver, a hard-line Atlanta segregationist who was nonetheless a Kennedy supporter and the judge in the King case, to have King released. As a result, Dr. King’s father, “Big Daddy” King, a Republican who had supported Eisenhower and Nixon in 1956, publicly switched from Nixon to Kennedy saying, “I’ve got a suitcase of votes, and I’m going to take them to Mr. Kennedy and dump them in his lap.
28
He condemned Eisenhower and Nixon for “not saying a mumbling word.” Years later, Dr. King would express disappointment that Nixon had not seized the opportunity. “I always felt that Nixon lost a real opportunity to express . . . support of something much larger than an individual, because this expressed support of the movement for civil rights in a way,” said King.
29
Nixon press secretary Herb Klein said that Eisenhower Attorney General William P. Rogers had been pivotal in convincing Nixon to make no gesture toward King.
30
Baseball great Jackie Robinson, who was campaigning for Nixon, beseeched the vice president to do
something
. When Nixon declined, Robinson said, “Nixon doesn’t deserve to win.”
31
Robinson and Nixon became estranged, with the civil rights trailblazer supporting first Rockefeller, then Humphrey, for president in 1968.

In retrospect, Nixon’s 32 percent share of the African American vote in 1960 represents a high-water mark for the Republican Party. The GOP’s percentage of the black vote subsequently dwindled, dipping into single digits by 2000.

The Democrats managed to have it both ways. JFK, running with a strong civil rights plank in the platform and the support of big-city Democratic bosses as well as their African American constituents went after black votes in the North, while Lyndon Johnson traveled through the South, quietly reassuring the white courthouse crowds that Kennedy wasn’t serious about the “Nigrahs.”
32
The strategy worked, although Nixon would peel away the border South, Kennedy would be the last Democrat to carry the Deep South until Jimmy Carter arrived on the scene in 1976. LBJ, a lifelong segregationist who had blocked every civil rights and anti-lynching measure in the US Senate in the 1950s, had credibility with the old boys and helped Kennedy hold together the Roosevelt coalition for one more election.

The religious issue was also largely problematic for Nixon. The Kennedy camp had recognized the strengths of a Catholic candidate as early as 1956 when they had Connecticut Democratic State Chairman John Bailey circulate a cogent memo outlining why putting a Catholic on the ticket with Adlai Stevenson would be a plus.

The memo read:

If [a Catholic candidate] bought into the Democratic fold only those normally Democratic Catholics who voted for Ike, he would probably swing New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Illinois—for 132 electoral votes. If he also wins the votes of Catholics who shifted to the Republicans in 1948 or earlier, he could also swing New Jersey, Minnesota, Michigan, California, Wisconsin, Ohio, Maryland, Montana and maybe eve New Hampshire—for a total of 265 electoral votes.
33

JFK’s 1960 religious strategy counted on shaming voters who might have had vague anti-Catholic feelings, but whom largely appealed to fair play and anti-bigotry. The Democrat’s constant repetition of fair play also aroused the sympathy of voters who otherwise might have supported Nixon. Most important, Kennedy’s tactic energized Catholic voters—including those who were Republicans or independents—to turn out
for
a coreligionist movement and to unprove any anti-Catholic argument. A post-election analysis concluded that because of increased Catholic support, Kennedy won six states that he otherwise would have lost: Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and New Mexico, with a total of 132 electoral votes. Anti-Catholic voting, on the other hand, cost him ten states that, as a Democrat, he otherwise might have won: Tennessee, Florida, Montana, Idaho, Utah, California, Oregon, Virginia, and Washington, with a total of 110 electoral votes. The Catholic issue yielded Kennedy a net of 22 electoral votes—a substantial part of his winning margin of only 33 (over the 270 required). His net gain may well have been larger, since it is by no means clear that he could have carried California and Florida had he not been Catholic. In any case, Kennedy’s religion cost him more
states
but won him more electoral votes. These results confirmed Richard Nixon’s preelection expectation, as he described it in
Six Crises
a year after the election. “I believed that Kennedy’s religion would help him in states he needed to win.”
34

It was not however the universal view among Democratic Party chieftains early in 1960 that Kennedy’s Catholicism was an advantage. Kennedy moved aggressively to galvanize and maximize his vote among Catholic voters; indeed, thousands of Catholic Republicans crossed party lines to vote for him in the Democratic states that allowed crossovers. Nixon understood early that he could not be tied to any anti-Papist or anti-Catholic effort, and to his credit there is no evidence that he attempted to benefit at the ballot box from Kennedy’s Catholicism. Protestant Minster Norman Vincent Peale and the Reverend Billy Graham were involved in some national anti-Catholic efforts, but Nixon’s ties to these activities were never proven or established. Just as Barack Obama would act as if his African ancestry was an impediment to his election, Kennedy would act as if his religion was something that he would have to “overcome” when in fact it was an asset. When President Harry Truman was asked whether he was disturbed by Kennedy’s status as a Roman Catholic and would worry about undue papal influence in US affairs, “Give ‘em hell” Harry would reply, “It’s not the Pope I am worried about, it’s the Pop,” referring to John Kennedy’s ambassador father Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.

In 1960 former Democrat Congressman, Assemblyman, and later Mayor of Los Angeles Sam Yorty would cross party lines with a widely distributed book titled,
Why I Can’t Take Kennedy.
It was thinly disguised anti-Catholicism. Yorty would endorse Nixon for governor in 1962. Yorty is among the most colorful and peripatetic men in his political era.

Yorty made an unsuccessful bid for US senator in 1940, losing to Republican incumbent Hiram Johnson. He was then elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1950 and was reelected in 1952 and ran for the US Senate in a 1954 for the two years remaining of the term of Richard M. Nixon. Yorty received 45.5 percent to Senator Thomas H. Kuchel’s 53.2 percent. Kuchel, a former attorney general and moderate Republican, was appointed to the seat in 1953 by then Governor Earl Warren when Nixon became vice president. The following year, Yorty ran for mayor of Los Angeles against incumbent Norris Poulson. Yorty won. In 1965, Yorty was reelected over Democratic Congressman James Roosevelt, son of the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s campaign cost around $450,000. Yorty ran on his record of cutting city taxes, streamlined city government, and improved garbage pickups. He swamped Roosevelt 57.9 percent of the vote to Roosevelt’s 36.5 percent.

Yorty then challenged incumbent Democratic Governor Pat Brown in the 1966 gubernatorial Democratic primary. He won (37.6 percent) to Brown’s 1,355,262 ballots (51.9 percent). Right-wing oilman and Reagan backer Henry Salvatori funded Yorty’s campaign in a bid to weaken Brown in the fall. Yorty showed up election night at the victory party of Ronald W. Reagan, who had won the Republican nomination. Yorty would win another term as mayor in 1969 over Los Angeles City Councilman and former Police Commissioner Tom Bradley in a bitter, racially tinged campaign. In 1970 Yorty would challenge Assembly Speaker Jesse “Big Daddy” Unruh for governor in the Democratic primary and lose.

On November 15, 1971, Yorty announced that he would seek the Democratic nomination for president in 1972. Yorty had received strong support from influential New Hampshire publisher William Loeb. He campaign actively distributing a glossy newspaper with his life story and campaign positions. Yorty was in fact a ringer in the race put in to draw blue-collar votes from Senator Ed Muskie and therefore boost Sen. George McGovern.

My path would cross his in 1972. Yorty would continue while I was working at the Committee for the Re-election of the President.

My boss, Bart Porter, had me take a locked suitcase to Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty and his campaign manager, Robert Philbrick, in New Hampshire. Yorty, a conservative Democrat, was running a campaign for president in the New Hampshire Democratic primary. He was taken seriously only because he had garnered the support of the
Manchester Union Leader
and its right-wing editor, William Loeb, who liked to do his political proselytizing in front-page editorials.

The paper had a following among the working class in Manchester and was the largest daily paper in the state. The idea was to siphon Catholic votes from Maine Senator Ed Muskie to boost the prospects of far-left candidate George McGovern.

I knocked on a motel room door to have “Travelin’ Sam,” as he was known, open the door. He said nothing but took the briefcase and motioned me in, locking the door behind me. He motioned me to a chair. I sat.

I took a key from a sealed envelope given to me by Porter. Philbrick counted the money by pouring it on the bed. It appeared to be in stacks of thousands. “Twenty-five thousand dollars,” said Philbrick. Yorty turned on me. “You tell Murray it was fifty and I want the other half. Now get the fuck out.” Yorty would poll but 6 percent statewide but siphoned off up to 12 percent in some of the wards of Manchester, hurting Muskie, who was already wounded by his public meltdown over a Nixon dirty trick, the famous Canuck letter smearing Muskie as well as a
Manchester Union Leader
front-page editorial critical of his wife.

Nixon would also long be criticized for not making more effective use of Eisenhower in the campaign. A flip comment Eisenhower made at a news conference had haunted the vice president as he attempted to stress his experience in the advisory role he had played in the Eisenhower administration. Asked at a press conference to name a Nixon idea that he had adopted, Eisenhower responded with, “If you give me a week I might think of one. I don’t remember.” It was just a slip, at worst facetious, but it led to terrible press for Nixon.
35

Eisenhower’s comment, expressed in a fit of pique when reporters kept pressing him on Nixon’s role, severely undercut the “Experience Counts” theme Nixon was campaigning on.

It damaged Nixon’s campaign badly as the press corps, enthralled with Kennedy and hostile to Nixon, jumped on it.

Eisenhower himself was hurt and frustrated that Nixon did not ask him to take a more active role in the campaign. Unbeknownst to Eisenhower, his wife, Mamie, and Dr. Howard Snyder had secretly told Nixon that Eisenhower’s frail health and weak heart would not tolerate an aggressive campaign schedule. Mamie Eisenhower would appeal directly to Pat Nixon on the matter. “Ike must never know I called you,” Mamie said.
36

After a luncheon meeting in which Nixon declined to ask Ike to increase the limited campaign schedule to which he had agreed, Eisenhower would be privately angry. “Goddammit, he looks like a loser to me,” said Eisenhower. “When I had an officer like that in World War II, I relieved him.”
37
Nonetheless, Eisenhower did make late-campaign appearances in Philadelphia, New York City, Cleveland, and Pittsburg in the final week. Eisenhower’s participation drew large and enthusiastic crowds and greatly aided Nixon’s closing drive in. Even with Ike’s limited help, Nixon would essentially move to a tie with the better-funded JFK.

Eisenhower was invigorated on the stump and took Kennedy on. He seized full advantage of his limited, late appearances, and his tone took on an impassioned partisan and political color uncharacteristic of the old general. “Now I have heard complaints about the country not moving,” Eisenhower said, making a sly and bashing reference to the Kennedy slogan “Let’s Get this Country Moving Again.” “Of course you can move easily—you can move back to inflation, you can move back to deficit spending, you can move back to the military weakness that allowed the Korean War to occur . . . no trouble at all.”
38

Two days later, Eisenhower attacked Kennedy’s qualifications and questioned his judgment. “More money, they say, will be saved by military reorganization . . . Now where did this young genius acquire the knowledge, experience, and wisdom through which he will make vast improvements over the Joint Chiefs of Staff?”
39
Ike came through for Dick, taking on a tough tone that was uncharacteristic but effective.

Nixon shut out his closest aides and advisors, making all decisions regarding the campaign, speech content, press releases, and tour arrangements himself. The campaign was marked with horrible temper outbursts and tantrums. Nixon became more exhausted and haggard as he campaigned at a frantic pace to make up for lost ground. One secret service agent said he “would snap when the campaign became too much.” Bob Haldeman recalled a day when Nixon became frustrated over a poor schedule while touring Iowa by car. “Don Hughes, Nixon’s military aide, was in a seat directly in front. Suddenly, incredibly, Nixon began to kick the back of Hughes’s seat with both feet. And he wouldn’t stop . . . The seat and the hapless Hughes jolted forward jaggedly as Nixon vented his range. When the car stopped at a small town in the middle of nowhere, Hughes, white-faced, silently got out the car and started walking straight ahead, down the road and out of town. He wanted to get as far away as he could from the Vice President.”
40