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- <text>
- <title>
- (64 Elect) Primaries:The News from New Hampshire
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1964 Election
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- March 20, 1964
- REPUBLICANS
- The News from New Hampshire
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> Rarely have so much energy and money been spent on so few.
- For weeks, Republican Presidential Candidates Nelson
- Rockefeller and Barry Goldwater crisscrossed snowy little New
- Hampshire, making speeches, shaking hands, telling terrible
- jokes, and viewing each other's views with vast alarm.
- Goldwater's people poured $150,000 into his campaign. Rocky's
- considerably more. Newsmen and pollsters swarmed in the
- candidates' wake. TV crewmen tumbled and stumbled all over one
- another--NBC alone had some 600 workers on the job. In all, the
- media coverage of the New Hampshire primary ran into hundreds
- of thousands of dollars.
- </p>
- <p> And all for what? All to find out about the political
- likes and dislikes of some 93,000 New Hampshire Republicans who
- went to the polls.
- </p>
- <p> The Hampshiremen knew what they liked, all right. They
- liked the idea of a revenue-raising sweepstakes lottery
- (already approved by the legislature), and they voted by a
- 3-to-1 majority to permit lottery tickets to be sold at 49 state
- liquor stores and three race tracks. They also knew what they
- didn't like, and high on that list stood Rockefeller and
- Goldwater. In a remarkable protest vote, 35.4% of the state's
- Republicans wrote in the name of a man who had spent the entire
- campaign 10,000 miles away--Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., the U.S.
- Ambassador to South Vietnam.
- </p>
- <p> The final standings in the nation's first presidential
- primary of 1964 were: Lodge, 33,007 votes; Goldwater, 20,692;
- Rockefeller, 19,504; Richard Nixon, also a write-in candidate,
- 15,587; Maine's Senator Margaret Chase Smith, 2,120; and
- hapless Harold Stassen, 1,373. Almost all of New Hampshire's
- top Republicans were running as delegates for either Rockefeller
- or Goldwater--among them Senator Norris Cotton, former Governor
- Hugh Gregg, former Congressman Perkins Bass, and Doloris
- Bridges, widow of the late Senator Styles Bridges. All were
- beaten. Instead, New Hampshire's delegation to the July
- Convention in San Francisco will consist of 14 relative
- unknowns--all committed to Lodge.
- </p>
- <p> But Lodge's victory was even more impressive than such
- figures indicate. For one thing, while it is easy enough to
- write in a candidate's name on a paper ballot, which almost all
- of New Hampshire uses, it is fairly tricky to register a
- write-in on a voting machine. This requires turning a latch,
- which releases a lock, which free a slide, which opens to permit
- space for the write-in. Yet in Portsmouth (pop. 27,500), the
- only New Hampshire city with machines, enough voters went to all
- this trouble to give Lodge a lead over all rivals.
- </p>
- <p> Not a Candidate. In South Vietnam, Ambassador Lodge got the
- news of his victory while returning from an inspection tour with
- visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and the
- Vietnamese Premier, General Nguyen Khanh. Plainly pleased, he
- sent his thanks to New Hampshire but refused further comment,
- noting that Foreign Service regulations bar him from seeking
- public office while still an ambassador. And three days later,
- in an interview with TIME's Hong Kong Bureau Chief Frank
- McCulloch, he sounded convincing when he insisted that he meant
- to stay an ambassador. "My position is so simple," he said. "I
- can't get anyone to believe it. I am not a candidate. I say
- without qualification that I have no intention of returning home
- to become a candidate. I can say with equal certainty that I
- have a bog job to do here, and I intend to stay here and do it,
- period."
- </p>
- <p> Yet the Lodge write-in vote was not entirely spontaneous,
- and it received some encouragement from the ambassador himself.
- The draft-Lodge movement began as early as last July. It was
- the brainchild of a pair of political amateurs from
- Massachusetts--Promoter and Importer David Grindle, 43, and
- lawyer David Goldberg, 34. Both had worked as volunteers for
- Lodge's son George, 36, in his unsuccessful 1962 Senate campaign
- against Teddy Kennedy. Now they started keeping files and news
- clippings, collected small donations, brought in onetime
- Eisenhower Public Relations Man Robert Mullen to act as
- coordinator. Through George Lodge, they kept Ambassador Lodge
- informed of their activities, and he acquiesced in their
- decisions.
- </p>
- <p> Following President Kennedy's death, the Lodgemen decided
- to go all-out. They opened headquarters in New Hampshire, picked
- up volunteers as they went along, got hold of mailing lists.
- They sent out pledge cards and brochures to enlist a few
- regional chairmen, who found 21 area chairmen, each of whom
- found ten district leaders, who in turn signed up ten district
- captains, who were responsible for signing up 40 Lodge voters
- apiece. By the time the Lodge organizers had sent out their last
- mailing, almost every potential Republican voter had received
- a sample ballot showing how to write in the name of Henry Cabot
- Lodge Jr. Said Paul Grindle, just before the primary: "If we get
- 20,000 votes, we're really rolling. If we get 15,000, we
- struggle bravely onward. If we get under 15,000, we fold up
- quietly."
- </p>
- <p> The results, of course, exceeded all Grindle's
- expectations. And where did they leave the losers?
- </p>
- <p>-- Arizona's Goldwater was badly hurt. Touted as the front
- runner at the start of the campaign, he hobbled into New
- Hampshire with one foot in a cast (a minor operation) and the
- other in his mouth (a major affliction). He showed no knack for
- person-to-person politicking, and his formal speeches were
- stilted. His argument that social security should be made
- voluntary was confused, leading New Hampshire's sizable number
- of retired person to believe that Barry was against the whole
- pension program. Sensing that the was slipping, Goldwater began
- to depreciate the importance of the New Hampshire primary. Said
- he: "The person who wins in California will win the
- nomination." He may have been right, but he did not endear
- himself to Hampshiremen, who think highly of their little
- primary. After it was all over, he frankly faced up to his
- blunders. Speaking to campaign workers at a Washington hotel,
- he said: "I don't want you people who worked so hard for me to
- get your daubers down. I did something wrong. I goofed up some
- place--and I think I know several places."
- </p>
- <p> But in terms of convention delegates, Goldwater remains
- the Republicans' front-running candidate. Oklahoma (22
- delegates) and North Carolina (25 out of 26) have already
- committed themselves to him. The South and Southwest remain
- almost solidly in his corner. It is mostly in the Midwest that
- he may have suffered slippage because of New Hampshire. In such
- states as Illinois, which holds its own primary April 14, North
- Dakota, Kansas, Kentucky and Iowa, most prospective delegates
- still seemed to be leaning toward Goldwater--but not as far as
- before.
- </p>
- <p>-- New York's Rockefeller was mortally wounded. Rocky went
- to New Hampshire's Dartmouth College, has many acquaintances in
- the state, is the Governor of a neighboring state. Moreover,
- New Hampshire's postage-stamp size seemed made to order for
- Rockefeller's ebullient, back-slapping brand of campaigning.
- Beyond question, Rocky made gains in the closing weeks, but not
- nearly enough to overcome the political handicap of his divorce
- and remarriage. That handicap will likely plague him wherever
- he goes. But after his New Hampshire defeat, he put on an
- optimistic air. Lodge's win, he said, was "a victory for
- moderation," since the voters had rejected "extremism in the
- party." He insisted that he had made a good showing: "I feel
- today's results are clear evidence of the strength I can develop
- by campaigning."
- </p>
- <p>-- Richard Nixon, the beneficiary of a low-keyed but
- rewarding write-in campaign that was led by former Governor
- Wesley Powell, is hale and heartened. He lost no time showing
- his satisfaction. At a post-primary press conference, he said
- again that he is not an active candidate, but declared that
- there is no one else in the Republican party "who can make a
- case against Mr. Johnson more effectively than I can." To prove
- his point, he blasted Johnson in a Newark speech, criticizing
- the Administration's foreign policies and warning of a new mess
- in Washington. He said that unless President Johnson "ends his
- silence with regard to the Bobby Baker case, unless he
- disassociates himself from that kind of hanky-panky, this
- country could be in for a series of situations in the next four
- years of wheeling and dealing and influence peddling which is
- unprecedented in the history of this country." Nixon also
- announced plans to expand his personal staff, taking on a press
- aide and possibly several other helpers.
- </p>
- <p>-- Pennsylvania's William Scranton was not a New Hampshire
- entry, had no write-in campaign going for him--yet as a result
- of New Hampshire many have taken the longest step forward of all
- the potential nominees. For with Goldwater and Rockefeller
- bloodied, with Lodge's victory leaving many professional
- Republicans unimpressed, and with Nixon widely viewed as a
- last-resort nominee, Scranton seems increasingly appealing. He
- is genuinely reluctant to run, but his hard-pushing aides insist
- that his stay-out-of-it attitude adds up, at least for the
- present, to good tactics. They recall that he had to be drafted
- to run for Governor in 1962, accepted the nomination only after
- feuding branches of Pennsylvania's Republican Party agreed to
- work together under his leadership. If Scranton could accomplish
- the same result with national Republicans, he would almost
- certainly be the party's strongest presidential candidate. It
- has been said repeatedly that Scranton must become better known
- among Republicans outside his own state. Yet reams have been
- written about him; he recently made a skillful Meet the Press
- appearance, achieved headlines with New York and Cincinnati
- speeches. So Republicans must surely be getting at least to know
- of him.
- </p>
- <p> Popular with the People. But all such speculation still
- leaves Cabot Lodge unaccounted for--and that, in the light of
- New Hampshire, is impossible. A remarkable politician, he has
- not won an election in 18 years, still has remained consistently
- in the forefront of U.S. public affairs. To be sure, he had a
- good deal going for him in New Hampshire, a state where 52% of
- the population lives within 50 miles of Boston and regards
- Brahmin Lodge as virtually one of their own.
- </p>
- <p> That does not, however, explain his New Hampshire showing,
- which was a positive tribute. Perhaps Hampshiremen recalled
- Lodge as the handsome young Senator who resigned his seat to
- enter the Army, served as a tank officer in North Africa and a
- liaison officer in Europe during World War II. Or it may have
- been the memory of his long, successful career as Ambassador to
- the United Nations during some of the coldest days of the cold
- war. Always urbane, seemingly unflappable, often cutting in his
- remarks, he gave the Russians much better than he got in debate.
- </p>
- <p> That urbane unflappability became further apparent during
- the two weeks in 1959 when Lodge was assigned to shepherd
- visiting Nikita Khrushchev around the U.S. In cornfields,
- factories and cities, Lodge was the man who represented America
- to the Russians, and in the process he got to know Khrushchev
- on an informal basis.
- </p>
- <p> This background fits well in the framework of the Lodge
- family's dedication to public service. Lodge's grandfather and
- namesake was a Senate leader during the early part of this
- century. And in addition to Son George's political endeavors,
- Cabot can claim a younger brother, John, 60, who was Ambassador
- to Spain (1955-56) as well as a U.S. Congressman and Governor
- of Connecticut. Cabot's wife Emily, while not a political
- figure herself, displays the kind of attractiveness and charm
- that help win elections.
- </p>
- <p> But if Lodge is popular with the people--in New Hampshire
- and elsewhere--he is less so with professional Republicans,
- many of whom complain about his seemingly haughty airs. The main
- cause of the G.O.P. defeat in 1960 was, of course, Nixon's
- performance in the debates; but many pros assign Lodge some of
- the blame too. Particularly irritating to them was his habit of
- napping each afternoon, regardless of the press of his schedule.
- Said Goldwater, in a slightly snide aside during last week's
- primary-night post-mortem: "We can't beat the Democrats with
- a man who campaigns only an hour or two a day."
- </p>
- <p> Into a Crossfire. Perhaps the foremost obstacle to Lodge's
- winning the 1964 G.O.P. nomination is his present position in
- South Vietnam. Last year, anxious to get back into public life,
- he volunteered his services to President Kennedy, specified only
- that he be assigned to a truly meaningful overseas post. He got
- South Vietnam--which some people thought was rather cunning on
- Kennedy's part.
- </p>
- <p> Lodge's dilemma is twofold. As ambassador, he does not
- formulate U.S. policy for that exasperating war; that is made
- by the President on the articulate advice of Secretary of State
- Rusk and of Defense Secretary McNamara, who has made three trips
- there in five months. But as a loyal ambassador, Lodge is
- immobilized. He cannot stand aside and comment on, much less
- criticize, Administration policy. And since Vietnam promises to
- be a key election issue, Lodge, if he were to head the ticket,
- could hardly avoid an embarrassing crossfire of criticism
- himself.
- </p>
- <p> Academic. The New Hampshire primary opened the field well
- beyond Announced Candidates Goldwater and Rockefeller. Yet, at
- the same time, with the nation's first primary out of the way,
- the G.O.P. possibilities are definitely more limited. Goldwater
- and Rockefeller delegates meet head-on in the June 2 California
- primary, where write-ins are not counted. But by that time the
- results may be academic. Looming as more important is the May
- 15 Oregon primary--where Goldwater, Rockefeller, Lodge, Nixon
- and Scranton all will be on the ballot. From those five names
- will almost certainly come the Republican presidential nominee.
- </p>
- <list>
- <l>April 17, 1964</l>
- <l>ELECTIONS</l>
- <l>What Wisconsin Meant</l>
- </list>
- <p> A month before the Wisconsin presidential primary,
- Democratic Governor John Reynolds knew he had trouble on his
- hands. That was when Reynolds, running as a favorite-son front
- man for President Johnson, heard that Alabama's Segregationist
- Governor George Wallace had filed against him. Reynolds
- promptly canceled a junket to Europe, flew to Washington for
- advice from Administration leaders, returned home to campaign
- for all he was worth. As the voting neared, he predicted that
- Wallace would get no more than 100,000 votes--but even that
- "would be a catastrophe."
- </p>
- <p> By that standard, the outcome of last week's Democratic
- primary was worse than catastrophic. Reynolds won handily
- enough, collecting 511,000 votes. But Wallace made an
- astonishing show with 264,000. In the Republican primary an
- unopposed favorite son, U.S. Representative John Byrnes, got
- 301,000 votes.
- </p>
- <p> The Crossover. National Democratic leaders were quick to
- blame Wallace's showing on Republicans who, they claimed, had
- crossed party lines in droves to vote for Wallace in an effort
- to embarrass the Johnson Administration. But Wisconsin's
- Reynolds knew better. Said he in a postprimary statement: "All
- that Mr. Wallace has demonstrated is what we've known all along.
- We have a lot of people who are prejudiced." Politically inept
- as that remark may have been, Reynolds had a point. The real
- issue in the primary was civil rights. Wallace had entered the
- Wisconsin primary to demonstrate that many Northern, as well as
- Southern, whites are unhappy about current civil rights trends,
- And he demonstrated just that--dramatically.
- </p>
- <p> To be sure, Republicans did cross over--as they are
- permitted to do under Wisconsin primary laws and as Democrats
- do when their own primary offers no contest. But there were
- indications that nearly as many Republicans last week jumped
- party lines to vote for Reynolds as for Wallace. For example,
- John Byrnes' home district is heavily Republican, went for him
- by 63% in 1962 and is likely to do so again in his campaign for
- re-election to Congress this year. But in the presidential
- primary, Byrnes got only 40,000 votes as against 45,000 for
- Reynolds and 22,000 for Wallace. The clear implication was that
- thousands of Republicans, spotting a chance to express
- themselves on a key issue, cast Democratic ballots and split
- more or less evenly on civil rights.
- </p>
- <p> The Fears. Alabama's Wallace actually ran strongest in
- Democratic districts heavily populated by lower-middle-class,
- second-generation Poles, Italians and Serbs. These voters
- obviously were apprehensive that the Negro drive for equality
- would harm their own economic interests. Thus, in southside
- Milwaukee, and in comparable districts in Racine and Kenosha,
- Wallace won majorities. In the newly created Ninth District,
- which includes Milwaukee's north-shore suburbs, there was a
- different story with the same ending. The Ninth is generally
- Republican, boasts Wisconsin's highest per-capita income level.
- But the district is also rimmed by Negro neighborhoods. And last
- week Republican Byrnes took only 25% of the Ninth's vote, while
- Reynolds got 28% and Wallace made a killing with 47%. That
- result could only be read as a protest against the threat of
- Negro incursions into a white district.
- </p>
- <p> The effects of the Wisconsin primary were as yet
- intangible, but would almost certainly be considerable. For one
- thing, Democratic segregationists who oppose the civil rights
- bill pending before the Senate were vastly encouraged. For
- another, Northern Democrats who have made civil rights a
- political selling point were given pause. The civil rights
- drive, worthy as it is, does have a political backlash.
- Alabama's Wallace hopes to dramatize that fact further in
- contesting the May 5 Indiana primary and the May 19 Maryland
- primary. Said he, in triumphantly commenting on his Wisconsin
- performance: "The people in both national parties are going to
- have to take a hard look at this. I think they know what it
- means."
- </p>
- <p> As North Carolina's Democratic Senator Everett Jordan
- noted, Wallace made his point in Wisconsin despite his "bad
- image." Northern liberals might well shudder to think of what
- might have happened if a man with a "good image"--Virginia's
- Harry Byrd, for example, or Georgia's Dick Russell--had run
- in Wisconsin instead.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-