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MATT PORTER: On tarmacs and small towns across America, then Senator John F. Kennedy spoke to delegates and influential party members, several years before the 1960 election that would carry him to the White House. Kennedy would fly his way across America, visiting many cities and towns, to introduce himself as a national candidate.
He spoke to anyone he could, that would help him secure the delegates he would need at the 1960 Democratic National Convention. Historian Fredrik Logevall, author of a soon-to-be-released biography of John F. Kennedy, says the trips flew under the radar at the time.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: It's a fascinating part of this story, in my judgment. He is traveling often just with Ted Sorensen, to small places all over the country, speaking before an audience of 10 people on this airport tarmac, or this small audience in this auditorium, but making connections. So at these stops some aide-- often it's Sorensen himself-- is taking names of the people with whom Jack Kennedy interacts.
This is all filed away. They have names. They have addresses. These people are then contacted for further assistance as the campaign goes on.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: The idea of candidates hitting the campaign trail well before the primary season is the political norm today, but in the late 1950s it was never done in any serious way. Kennedy, knowing he didn't have the immediate support of party leaders, knew he would need to lay groundwork early to win.
Logevall says what Kennedy understood but his opponents didn't was that he could make up for his lack of notoriety by barnstorming the country. We'll tell you more, coming up on this first episode of 60/20.
RICHARD NIXON: While it is dangerous to see nothing wrong in America, it is just as wrong to refuse to recognize what is right about America.
JOHN F. KENNEDY: Today our concern must be with our future, for the world is changing, the old era is ending. The old ways will not do. It is time, in short, for a new generation of leadership.
MATT PORTER: 60 years ago, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon would face-off in one of the closest elections in the nation's history.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: The election would leave lasting impacts on future races, right up to today.
MATT PORTER: For our first episode, we'll look at the primary race the created opportunity for Kennedy's insurgent campaign to take the Democratic presidential nomination.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: And how it would set new precedents for campaigns to come. This is 60/20.
When John F. Kennedy began his campaign for president almost immediately after the 1956 election, he had already learned what an early start could do from his congressional campaigns.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: He knew from his first House campaign in '46. He knew from his Senate campaign in '52 against Lodge that a key to victory was to start early. So one of the things that characterizes all of his campaigns is that he just gets out there before his opponents do.
Against Lodge in '52, he was traveling around Massachusetts, meeting with voters, talking to party leaders in various towns in the state. Critically important. He basically adopts that same strategy on the national level.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Today, candidates raise millions of dollars to finance their ability to travel the country early, well before the official election season. In the lead up to 1960, only Senator Kennedy had the forethought and the financial support from his father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., to hit the trail so far in advance.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: This is where you see it makes a difference. Because few other contenders-- maybe no other contender-- quite apart from starting early, nobody can really afford to do what Kennedy does, which is to travel all over the country to make connections with party leaders, in the way that he does. And that helps enormously in the end.
MATT PORTER: One of Kennedy's political advisors from his congressional campaigns was Larry O'Brien. O'Brien described his political philosophy as, quote, "nothing beats manpower," end quote. JFK saw how well this idea worked on a national level with Senator Estes Kefauver, who ran for president in 1956.
Kefauver lost the presidential bid, but Kennedy saw how Kefauver's cross-country campaign paid off for him in the convention battle for vice-president. Logevall said Kennedy, who challenged Kefauver for VP, would take that into account as he started to build his campaign for president leading up to 1960.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: I think that the Kennedy people had insight that nobody had really had before about the importance of early preparation, about the importance of having people--that the more people you had involved in your campaign in various places, the better you off you were.
MATT PORTER: Coming up we'll take a closer look at the 1960 primary elections, and how then Senator Kennedy faced bigger and more difficult challenges than many expected.
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Are you enjoying the 60/20 podcast? This podcast is just one of many initiatives, programs, and resources supported by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation. The JFK LibraryFoundation is a nonprofit that provides financial support, staffing, and creative resources for the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Learn more about the JFK Library and Foundation at JFKLibrary.org.
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SPEAKER 1: Iowa is choosing. The world is watching. And this night will change the course of the 2016 campaign.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: The primary elections today are major prime time events, often with campaigns hanging in the balance after each vote.
MITT ROMNEY: Can we do better here in New Hampshire?
SPEAKER 2: Who comes in second may be as important as who comes in first.
SPEAKER 3: You have a chance to change the world.
SPEAKER 2: It's New Hampshire's choice.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: But long before Iowa and New Hampshire help determine presidential nominees, many candidates often skipped the primaries altogether.
MATT PORTER: Primary elections didn't really exist until the Progressive Era in the late-19th century. And many states didn't establish primaries until after World War II. Even then it wasn't until Kennedy that the primaries made such a significant contribution to the nomination process.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: But before we look ahead at the primary race, let's take a moment to hear about the other major candidates involved, from the former director of the Nixon Presidential Library and historian Tim Naftali. First up, there is Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri, who had run before in 1956, and had the important backing from former president Truman.
TIM NAFTALI: Stuart Symington's an attractive senator from Missouri, who is well-known for his foreign-policy views-- in fact, mainly for his views on national defense-- and was very concerned that the Eisenhower administration was not taking seriously Soviet strategic rocket developments.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: On the liberal side of the Party, there were two major candidates in the race. The first was Senator Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota. He had made a name for himself by passing the first Fair Employment Law, while he was mayor of Minneapolis, in 1948. That decision earned him a role at the Democratic National Convention that year.
TIM NAFTALI: He had pushed for an extraordinarily progressive civil-rights plank in the 1948 Democratic platform. And it is that plank that pushed Southern segregationist Democrats to abandon the Party at that convention and form their own little party under Strom Thurmond.
Well, Hubert Humphrey, the senator from Minnesota, had continued to be viewed as sort of the-- it's hard to argue that he was an extreme liberal at the spectrum. The political spectrum on the Democratic side has shifted left ever since. But he was viewed as on the edge of liberals.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Also from the liberals, perennial candidate and former governor of Illinois Adlai E. Stevenson remained a possible contender.
TIM NAFTALI: Adlai Stevenson, a man who would run twice and lost-- and by the way, did worse in 1956 than in 1952. There were many, many Democrats who couldn't imagine anyone else but Adlai Stevenson being the nominee.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Finally for the Democrats, the establishment candidate and favorite among many was Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas. Johnson was more of a centrist, and could appeal to more conservative Southern white voters.
TIM NAFTALI: Lyndon Johnson was without a doubt the candidate of the South. He was the candidate of the speaker of the House. You can't imagine a more powerful member of the Democratic establishment than the Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Historian Fredrik Logevall says many still debate where John F. Kennedy fits on the political spectrum at this time.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: I think in terms of his own political position, his own temperament, his own preferences, I would call him a centrist. I don't think as some have suggested that the John F. Kennedy was a conservative. By the same token, I would not say he was on the progressive side of the party.
Across the aisle, Vice-President Richard Nixon seemed the odds-on favorite to win his party's nomination in 1960. However, Tim Naftali points out that the party was not entirely sold on the candidate from California, who was almost removed from Eisenhower's ticket twice in 1952 and once more in 1956.
TIM NAFTALI: Richard Nixon was still a controversial member of the Republican Party. By the time we get to 1960, Nixon is well-aware that he's not beloved by some Republican leaders. I would argue that he was beloved by many, many Republicans. There was emotional attachment to him among rank-and-file Republicans. But there was never any great love between Eisenhower and Nixon.
MATT PORTER: Some thought Governor Nelson Rockefeller, a more progressive Republican who won a big election in New York, would challenge Nixon.
TIM NAFTALI: Among the more progressive Republicans on civil rights, for example. He had a national reputation. He also had a lot of money.
MATT PORTER: There was also the threat from a young Senator Barry Goldwater, who was a leader among more-conservative Republicans.
TIM NAFTALI: Nixon did not face any serious challenger, but he was never sure of that. And so just before the convention, he did a deal with Rockefeller, to make sure that Rockefeller didn't come in on a white horse and try to take the nomination away from him.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Many of the candidates in 1960 chose not to run in any of the primaries, including favorites like Senator Johnson and Governor Stevenson. Oftentimes winners of primaries were not any of the major candidates, but instead so-called favorite sons, who could be high-ranking local political officials, like governors or senators. Favorite sons only ran in their own state primaries, in order to receive some bargaining power at the national convention. And they weren't usually challenged.
In 1960, Senators Kennedy and Humphrey did choose to run in some primary races-- something rarely seen at this point in political history.
TIM NAFTALI: People who were not well-liked by the establishment needed the primaries to try to change the politics-- change the optics of the process. So both Hubert Humphrey and John F. Kennedy recognized that the primaries were their way of getting the nation's attention.
So these two relatively young men, Hubert Humphrey and John F. Kennedy, see the primary process as a way of shifting the politics of 1960 in their favor. But they were not as significant in determining the nominee as they would become.
And in many ways, it's John F. Kennedy's use of the primary that would heighten their importance in subsequent elections.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Up next, Kennedy and Humphrey go head to head in two critical primaries. And we'll tell you about how those historic elections remind some of the early primaries of another change candidate decades later.
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Are you listening to our podcast and wondering if there's more to the story? Of course there is. If you want to learn more about what you've heard today, we have links to resources from the JFK Library's archives, including photos, films, and primary-source documents. We also have oral history interviews from some of the key members of Kennedy's campaign. Visit JFKLibrary.org/6020 to get started.
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CHRIS MATTHEWS: Barack Obama, the senator from Illinois-- the junior senator from Illinois has won the Iowa caucuses. The Democratic caucus--
INTERVIEWER: When a young senator Barack Obama won in Iowa and then in New Hampshire in 2008, it set him on a path to the Democratic nomination for president. David Axelrod advised the Obama campaign in '08.
DAVID AXELROD: Barack Obama was four years out of the Illinois State Senate. So people watched closely how he performed during the campaign-- how he dealt with pressure, how he dealt with challenges-- and concluded, largely on the basis of what they saw, that, yeah, he was ready to lead the country. And in certain ways, JFK did the same.
MATT PORTER: In 1960, state primaries like Iowa and New Hampshire didn't have the same monumental stakes as they do today. However, Axelrod says he can draw parallels between Obama and Kennedy's primary fight.
DAVID AXELROD: He ran such a proficient campaign, and was recognized as having run a proficient campaign. Hubert Humphrey was very active in those primaries. And Kennedy went into his backyard, and went into a state where anti-Catholicism was a real issue. And he demonstrated to the decision makers that he could overcome these challenges. That was very important, as it was to us that Obama could win as the first African American candidate.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Wisconsin and West Virginia were two key states for Kennedy, but for different reasons. In Wisconsin, Kennedy had to prove his electability after fending-off Hubert Humphrey in New Hampshire.
TIM NAFTALI: And it's important for him to win in Wisconsin, because he has to prove that he is a national candidate. Winning a New England primary is not a big deal for some of Massachusetts. Well, winning in Wisconsin, which is much closer to Minnesota-- Humphrey territory-- winning there would matter.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Kennedy had advantages, with Wisconsin being a largely Catholic state. However, it also bordered Humphrey's home state of Minnesota. Unlike Humphrey,Kennedy had financial advantages, including a private plane to take him across the state quickly. The race became an expectations game for the Kennedy campaign.
TIM NAFTALI: The press had already decided that Kennedy was going to win.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: When Kennedy announced he would run in Wisconsin, the press asked him about his frontrunner status, which Kennedy downplayed.
SPEAKER 4: Do you consider yourself an underdog in this race?
JOHN F. KENNEDY: I never attempt to put myself in any category I would say it's a very tough fight.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Ultimately, Kennedy would edge Humphrey, with 56% of the vote. This tight margin surprised many, since 40% of Wisconsin voters were Catholic.
TIM NAFTALI: And when Kennedy didn't win as big as he was supposed to in Wisconsin, some in the press did not consider this the knockout blow that Kennedy thought it should be.
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FREDRIK LOGEVALL: Even in a heavily Catholic state, they could take nothing for granted. The outcome, in fact, was disappointing to them. Robert Kennedy was downright depressed after Wisconsin-- I think took from Wisconsin a sense that they were going to have to work even harder, that they were going to have to address the Catholic issue at some point more head-on than they had done, and that they were going to have to perhaps make greater use of surrogates and others who would assist them.
MATT PORTER: With Humphrey still hanging on after Wisconsin, Kennedy set his sights on Protestant West Virginia for a deciding blow.
TIM NAFTALI: The Kennedy team didn't think Hubert Humphrey-- his fantasy would last. Humphrey had very little money. What Humphrey was trying to do was to build momentum.And Kennedy wanted to knock out Humphrey quickly.
MATT PORTER: When Kennedy decided to run in West Virginia, his pollster Lou Harris showed polls predicting a strong Kennedy win.
TIM NAFTALI: Lou Harris said to Kennedy, I think you're going to win 70/30 It's a blow-out. You're going to really win.
MATT PORTER: But after leaving Wisconsin, the polls tightened up. In West Virginia, the Stop Kennedy forces decided to make a final all-out attack before the convention.
TIM NAFTALI: West Virginia isn't simply Kennedy versus Humphrey. It's Kennedy against Johnson and Symington and Humphrey-- and all those in the Party that did not want John Kennedy to be its standard bearer. That's what makes West Virginia epic.
MATT PORTER: The biggest threat to Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, wasn't even on the ballot. However, he used surrogates like West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd to make the case against Kennedy, and for Humphrey instead.
TIM NAFTALI: Johnson did what he did indirectly in West Virginia. He wasn't on the ballot, but he was very much involved, working with Byrd and others to support Hubert Humphrey to stop Kennedy.
MATT PORTER: Byrd composed the campaign tune based on the melody of the gospel song "Old-Time Religion," that brought Kennedy's Catholicism to the front of the debate.
TIM NAFTALI: Byrd certainly used what we would now call is a dog whistle, to make clear to Protestants that they would not be properly represented by a Catholic nominee.
MATT PORTER: In West Virginia, Kennedy would face the religion question head-on for one of the first times in the campaign. His campaign would attack the question directly, including making it the centerpiece of one television spot called "You and Kennedy."
SPEAKER 5: You would be divided between two loyalties, to your church and to your state, if you were to be elected president.
JOHN F. KENNEDY: Let me just say that I would not. I have sworn to uphold the Constitution. In the 14 years I've been in Congress, in the years I was in the service, the Constitution provides in the First Amendment that "Congress shall make no laws abridging the freedom of religion."
I must say I believe in it. Many countries have unity between church and state. I would be completely opposed to it. And I say that whether I'm elected president, or whether I continue as a senator, or whether I'm a citizen.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Democrats still remember the embarrassing defeat of the first Catholic presidential candidate, Al Smith, to Republican Herbert Hoover in 1928. Kennedy would face that lingering memory through his entire campaign.
FRED LOGEVALL: He needed to show that as a Catholic he could be competitive and prevail in a state like West Virginia, where one can imagine there would be considerable anti-Catholic sentiment.
MATT PORTER: West Virginia wasn't just different from Wisconsin because of religion. It was also a poor and rural state dominated by coal mining. Many union coal miners supported the more liberal, New Deal wing of the Party that was still hesitant about Kennedy-- who historians say was perceived as more of a centrist.
TIM NAFTALI: Eleanor Roosevelt was not a Kennedy fan. But Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr. liked Kennedy a lot. And the Kennedy team campaign deployed him in West Virginia.
MATT PORTER: Today, candidates usually have armies of surrogates they can deploy across the country to stump for them. But for Kennedy surrogates were a new part of campaigns, that he was able to use effectively with FDR Jr. in West Virginia.
TIM NAFTALI: He also played a dirty trick. He talked about Hubert Humphrey's draft status unfairly and erroneously in World War II.
MATT PORTER: The campaign released a statement regretting the issue had been made political. However, Naftali says, while campaign leaders publicly chastised their top ally in West Virginia, they may not have been as upset behind the scenes.
TIM NAFTALI: If FDR Jr. had exceeded his mandate in West Virginia-- and had it really embarrassed the campaign-- he would not have been someone that John F. Kennedy worried about during the transition. But we have evidence that John Kennedy was worried about what position he could give FDR Jr. And he knew he had to give him one. That's evidence, to meat least, that the campaign wasn't embarrassed by what FDR Jr. did in West Virginia, but it couldn't embrace his tactics.
MATT PORTER: Meanwhile, Humphrey's campaign tried to paint Kennedy as a lavish and out-of-touch millionaire, who could not empathize with the working poor. But for Kennedy, Tim Naftali says West Virginia was an opportunity for Kennedy to witness the extreme poverty in parts of America firsthand. He would later push for assistance to help communities like the ones he saw on the campaign trail.
TIM NAFTALI: But he was committed to creating a social safety net. John Kennedy, especially after viewing the poverty in West Virginia, signed-up to push hard for what they called at the time aid to depressed areas. It was really a mini New Deal for Appalachia.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: FDR Jr. wasn't the only operative Kennedy used to bring coal miners to his side. Kennedy also had African American attorney Marjorie Lawson as his civil rights director. She had been on his staff since 1958.
In the primary, she helped organize Black voters in both Wisconsin and West Virginia-- though she was initially resistant to going to the latter state, because the campaign didn't promise money or access to the candidate to help organize voters. She only agreed after she secured funding for the hiring of Black campaign workers in southern West Virginia.
She also got the campaign to agree to have Kennedy make a stop in the region to speak to black coal miners.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: It helped convince, I think, Kennedy to go to coal mines-- to coal mines where there were significant numbers of African American coal miners and speak to them there-- meet with them-- which of course garnered headlines. It got attention.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Marjorie Lawson shrewdly targeted southern parts of the state, because those votes were more winnable, rather than going to the capital, Charleston.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: She helped to persuade him that there were in fact votes to be gained among African Americans outside of the bigger urban areas. West Virginia doesn't have all that many. But certainly said to him, look, there a ripe ground here more in the southern part. And you're going to need them, because this could be a very close race with Humphrey.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: In an oral history at the JFK Library, she said almost 95% of Black voters there would ultimately cast their vote for Kennedy, because of the investment in the region.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: She is correctly credited with bringing a sizable segment of the Black vote to Kennedy's side in West Virginia, even though Black leaders in the state-- most Black leaders in the state-- said Humphrey is more our man than Kennedy.
MATT PORTER: As the polls got tighter, the state of John F. Kennedy's anxiety increased.
TIM NAFTALI: And so West Virginia becomes the test of the Kennedy campaign. Kennedy worked that campaign so hard he lost his voice in the course of it.
MATT PORTER: With no voice JFK, flew across West Virginia with his friend and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charlie Bartlett. He did the interview using note cards, which are held at the JFK Library. And on one, he was asked about how much he wanted to beat Humphrey in West Virginia. JFK simply wrote Bartlett, "I'd give my right testicle to win this one."
Kennedy had a reason to be worried. A loss in West Virginia would be a significant blow to the Kennedy campaign, which had invested heavily in the state.
TIM NAFTALI: A loss in West Virginia, despite the fact that it had very few delegates-- a loss there would have undermined his basic argument for the nomination-- which is, I'm the guy that can win. I'm the guy who represents the future. I'm the one with charisma. I'm the one with momentum. That would have stopped the momentum.
The outcome, however, was a solid Kennedy victory in a largely Protestant state. And that ended Hubert Humphrey's campaign.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: West Virginia and Wisconsin would be the proving grounds for Senator Kennedy. Winning both these states gave him significant credibility with members of the Party who doubted his ability to win across multiple coalitions. It's a parallel political advisor David Axelrod reflects on about the Obama campaign in 2008.
DAVID AXELROD: One of the things that opened the door for Obama nationally was he won the Iowa caucuses in a state that was overwhelmingly white. So I do think that there are parallels. If you're a young and untested candidate, the nominating process can be a proving ground.
MATT PORTER: Unlike today, the 1960 primaries alone would not deliver enough delegates to win the nomination outright. And Kennedy only would run in 10 out of the 17 primaries.
TIM NAFTALI: One thing to keep in mind is that John Kennedy was not assured of victory in Los Angeles after these primaries. He would have to win delegates from states that had not had problems. And he would have to win a lot of support from people who had been fence-sitters all along.
MATT PORTER: But the visits to states and party delegations JFK made during the lead-up to the convention were critical.
TIM NAFTALI: He used them to raise his national profile, to meet with leaders of the Democratic Party in those states, and to lay the groundwork for a convention victory.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: His major rival, Lyndon Johnson, would stay out of the primary races, to avoid any potential electoral defeats. Instead, he worked through Congress to raise his profile and build support.
TIM NAFTALI: Lyndon Johnson didn't think he could win a primary in the North. And Johnson had used his role as majority leader in the Senate to lay the groundwork for a national campaign. He had quarterbacked the Civil Rights Act of 1957-- the first civil-rights act since Reconstruction-- as a way of laying the ground for a national appeal for votes. His strategy was all tied up with an understanding that the Democratic establishment could actually give him the nomination.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: But historian Frederik Logevall says Kennedy's new campaign strategy would influence future campaigns, all the way to today.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: This key theme of getting started early, of meeting voters where they lived-- of contesting primaries, to show that you actually could win contests. In all of those regards, he was ahead of his competitors-- and in some ways, anticipates the kinds of campaigns we've seen ever since.
MATT PORTER: David Axelrod says Kennedy's campaign would influence major reforms less than a decade later, in 1968.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: So he kind of took the process in many ways out of the hands of the people who were used to controlling it and forced their hand. And that was, I think, the beginning of what would unfold over time. The big change came in 1968. After 1968 and the disastrous Democratic Convention in Chicago, there was a accelerated move to democratization of the nominating process. But Kennedy was on the cutting edge, in terms of understanding how the process could be used in order to force your way into the conversation.
MATT PORTER: Today the system JFK influenced is still going through changes.
BRIAN WILLIAMS: And just talk about the Bloomberg dynamic-- the guy who is not in New Hampshire getting--
MATT PORTER: For example, Michael Bloomberg tried to use his immense wealth to skip early primaries and build an organization in the larger states that followed.
SPEAKER 6: The results app that they were using-- this was a new app that they were supposed to be reporting each result from each precinct location around the state-- has not been working.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: And many more upset when the critical first state, Iowa, saw major technical issues in its caucus. Many are asking if racially homogeneous states like Iowa and New Hampshire should play such large roles simply because they're first.
DAVID AXELROD: Given what's happened in 2020, there's probably going to be a very intensive discussion after this nomination process about how it should move forward in the future, and which states should play what roles. And those early states-- those primary states provide an opportunity for candidates to actually interact with people, and for people to interact with them. And I think that's a very important part of the process.
MATT PORTER: Axelrod remembers the last major change to the primary system.
DAVID AXELROD: I was one of those young firebrands after the 1968 debacle. I was just a teenager then, by '72 and so on, who felt that the Party bosses needed to take a back seat-- and that we ought to democratize that process.
I still think that that is largely true. But I'm less judgmental about Party bosses, because Party bosses actually made some pretty good decisions over the years. And there is a value to having some input in the process from people who have personal knowledge of how a particular leader functions in public office.
MATT PORTER: He says it is wise to still have Party leaders involved somewhat in the process of picking their candidate.
DAVID AXELROD: So it's an unpopular position to take today, but I think some hybrid of the two is valuable. Party bosses but should take into full consideration the will of the people.And the will of people should be prominent, or dominant in these decisions. But there should be some place for people who are in the process to speak to the direction of the party and its candidates.
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JAMIE RICHARDSON: As Kennedy and his team prepared to fly to Los Angeles for the convention, nothing was certain-- despite holding a large delegate lead from the primaries.
TIM NAFTALI: It was not a foregone conclusion that they would win-- that John F. Kennedy would win the nomination. They recognized that most of the delegates were not pledged.They knew that LBJ was tough, that he was a good counter. And he had the speaker of the House.
FREDRIK LOGEVALL: And there was some basis for this. It wasn't an irrational thought that Kennedy would fail to win on the first ballot at the convention, and that would then lead to a peeling-off of support for Kennedy. And on the second ballot, because of Johnson's prominent position within the Party and his broad support, he could then rise-up and become the nominee, ultimately. And there was there was substance to that belief.
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MATT PORTER: Kennedy would land in LA uncertain of his future, but looking ahead to a new frontier yet to come. That story on next week's episode of 60/20.
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Thank you for listening to this episode of 60/20. Along with Jamie Richardson and myself, 60/20 is made possible with help from our co-producer, Rick King.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Thank you to our research assistants, Megan McKee and Cassie Marando. Special thanks to our foundation colleagues, in particular, Meaghan Hohl and Executive Director Rachel Flor.
MATT PORTER: Our music is composed by Blue.Sessions, and artwork by Brian Kang. We also thank all of our guests for lending their voices and expertise to this podcast.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: And of course, none of this would be possible without the work by archivists and other staff at the JFK Library and Museum, who make much of the material discussed available to all online and to visiting researchers.
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