David S. Broder: How the 1960 West Virginia Election Made History
[David S. Broder is a columnist for the Washington Post.]
Last Wednesday night, the John F. Kennedy Library marked the 50th anniversary of one of the most significant elections in American history -- the West Virginia Democratic primary of May 10, 1960, between Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey.
It was an evening for reminiscence -- and maybe for exaggeration. Ted Sorensen, who was at Kennedy's side throughout the campaign fight, argued that if Kennedy had lost to his Minnesota rival, as many had expected, he would have been denied the nomination, which almost certainly would have been the case. Then, Sorensen said, more speculatively, any of the other Democrats -- Humphrey, Stuart Symington, Lyndon Johnson or Adlai Stevenson -- would have lost to Richard Nixon. And Nixon would have responded more belligerently to the 1962 installation of Soviet missiles in Cuba -- possibly provoking a nuclear war.
You don't have to believe all of that to agree that the West Virginia election was a turning point like few other votes in the past century. As the library exhibit and the roundtable both emphasized, it was a crucial test for the "religious issue" in American life, measuring whether West Virginia, heavily Democratic but overwhelmingly Protestant, would support a Roman Catholic, Kennedy, for president....
After watching the bustling activity in the local Kennedy headquarters and observing the almost-suspicious lassitude in the Humphrey forces led by Sheriff Okey Mills, who confided that he would be absent himself on Election Day, I concluded -- and wrote for the Star -- that despite the apparent odds, Kennedy might well win Raleigh County and the primary.
Last week, I reached Mills's widow, Lettie, and what she recalled was not the Kennedys' contributions to the "slate card" funds that local Democratic organizations used to cue the voters but how impressed her husband had been when Kennedy and his kid brother Ted came campaigning in Beckley.
She had it right. Kennedy carried Raleigh County easily on his way to an equally easy statewide victory. And history was made.
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Last Wednesday night, the John F. Kennedy Library marked the 50th anniversary of one of the most significant elections in American history -- the West Virginia Democratic primary of May 10, 1960, between Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey.
It was an evening for reminiscence -- and maybe for exaggeration. Ted Sorensen, who was at Kennedy's side throughout the campaign fight, argued that if Kennedy had lost to his Minnesota rival, as many had expected, he would have been denied the nomination, which almost certainly would have been the case. Then, Sorensen said, more speculatively, any of the other Democrats -- Humphrey, Stuart Symington, Lyndon Johnson or Adlai Stevenson -- would have lost to Richard Nixon. And Nixon would have responded more belligerently to the 1962 installation of Soviet missiles in Cuba -- possibly provoking a nuclear war.
You don't have to believe all of that to agree that the West Virginia election was a turning point like few other votes in the past century. As the library exhibit and the roundtable both emphasized, it was a crucial test for the "religious issue" in American life, measuring whether West Virginia, heavily Democratic but overwhelmingly Protestant, would support a Roman Catholic, Kennedy, for president....
After watching the bustling activity in the local Kennedy headquarters and observing the almost-suspicious lassitude in the Humphrey forces led by Sheriff Okey Mills, who confided that he would be absent himself on Election Day, I concluded -- and wrote for the Star -- that despite the apparent odds, Kennedy might well win Raleigh County and the primary.
Last week, I reached Mills's widow, Lettie, and what she recalled was not the Kennedys' contributions to the "slate card" funds that local Democratic organizations used to cue the voters but how impressed her husband had been when Kennedy and his kid brother Ted came campaigning in Beckley.
She had it right. Kennedy carried Raleigh County easily on his way to an equally easy statewide victory. And history was made.