Mayor Daley was also a Catholic—not surprising, since downtown Chicago was still largely Catholic. But the country as a whole—and Illinois as a whole—was not. Thus the possibility of a Catholic candidate for president and a Catholic candidate for governor—especially when there was already a Catholic in the mayor’s office—did not excite either the Cook County political machine or the Kennedy organization. Shriver for governor might be one Catholic too many—the rock that would sink the whole Illinois Democratic slate. And with Illinois being such a large electoral state, the sinking of its slate could drag down the national ticket.
The second potential problem was too many Kennedys. The family had nowhere near the ubiquity or celebrity it has possessed since the 1960s, but it was already very much in the news. Jack’s political operatives feared that another Kennedy—even a Kennedy in-law—running for political office would not sit well with the voters.
The third potential problem, related to the second, was limited family resources. The way the Kennedys worked was everyone coming together and pressing toward the same goal. This had worked in Jack’s campaigns for the House of Representatives and in his two Senate campaigns, and it had almost worked at the 1956 Democratic campaign. If Shriver were to run for governor, it would mean the family would have to divide its financial and political resources, giving full attention to neither Jack nor Sarge.
Although Shriver had little to offer Jack Kennedy in the way of money or a field organization, Kennedy probably needed Shriver more than Shriver needed him, largely because of Sarge’s political clout in Illinois. Joe Kennedy did have his own direct conduit to Mayor Daley and the Cook County political machine—a connection that may well have been the decisive factor in the 1960 election—but it couldn’t hurt to have Shriver, who had his own relationship to Daley, in the fold as well. Also, the civil rights movement was gaining momentum within the Democratic Party, and Jack had not yet proven his bona fides to the civil rights activists. Someone like Shriver, with his work at the CIC and his connections to prominent African Americans, might help Jack build connections to that wing of the party.
Finally, there was that unique resource: Eunice. No one threw herself more zealously into campaigning than she did. But could she possibly have the time to campaign for both Jack and Sarge?
“I don’t have any gnawing compulsion to run for political office,” Sarge told an interviewer around that time. “I can be very happy in private life.” Still, he felt the call of public service strongly. Politics, in Shriver’s eyes, fell not far below the priesthood in the hierarchy of worthy callings. He felt sure he could do some good as governor.
All this was swimming through his mind when he traveled with his family to the Kennedy retreat at Palm Beach for Easter 1959. Shriver’s cousin Mollie and her husband, Stuyvie Pierrepont, also had a place in Palm Beach and were visiting that weekend. Mollie recalls coming over to the Kennedys’ one day for lunch with Sarge and Eunice. The four of them sat in the garden outside, while the Ambassador sunbathed in his “bullpen,” a separate fenced-in area alongside the house at the top of the beach, completely naked but for his wide-brimmed planter’s hat, as was his custom. “Mollie?” she remembered him saying, “Is that you? C’mon over here. I want to see you.” She went into the bullpen and stood before Mr. Kennedy, feeling uncomfortable as he lay there smeared in cocoa butter, naked but for a small towel perched delicately over his privates, while he looked her up and down.
They talked briefly and then Kennedy asked Mollie to fetch Sarge, which she did.
“Sarge,” Kennedy said, “now what’s this I hear about you running for governor?” Shriver explained that it was true he had been approached by Illinois political operatives encouraging him to run, and that he had been told by people in the know that he had a good shot at winning if he ran, but that he himself had not made any decision on the matter. “Good,” Mr. Kennedy said, “because under no circumstances are you to run for governor next year.” He went on to make it clear that 1960 was to be Jack’s year and that all the family’s political efforts were to be channeled in that one direction. A Shriver campaign, Kennedy continued, would be a drain and a distraction for the family. “Besides,” he concluded, “Jack needs your help on the campaign.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Dawn of the New Frontier
Shriver had no inkling of how signing on to work for his brother-in-law’s campaign would dramatically alter the direction of his career. For years after he moved to the East, he would cast nostalgic glances toward the Midwest, hoping someday to resume the life he had left: his business career, his Catholic lay work, his civil rights work, his old friends, and his political prospects. For more than a decade, he kept close tabs on the local Chicago political scene, talking discreetly to his friends among the ward bosses and the newspaper columnists, waiting for the right opportunity to return to his adopted home city. Several times, such opportunities appeared to present themselves. Each time, however, whether because he hesitated too long before taking decisive action or because other demands asserted themselves, the moment would pass.
Some of Sarge’s friends, especially those with more jaundiced views of the Kennedy family, hated to see him give anything up on that family’s behalf. Even some disinterested observers were puzzled. The political columnist Charlie Bartlett, a friend of Jack’s, reflected later, “I’m not so sure I’d drop everything just because my brother-in-law wanted to be elected something or other.” Especially since, as Bartlett observed, Shriver’s own chances for governor in 1960 or 1964 looked pretty good. Why, in short, when he was so happy in Chicago—and clearly had so much potential as a politician there—would he abandon everything to become merely “a subaltern in his brother-in-law’s presidential drive”?
The simple answer was because he had been asked. Jack, Ted Kennedy said several years later, “knew and respected Sargent’s abilities and quite naturally expected him to respond to a call for help when he was really needed.” Also, Jack’s request came with the implicit endorsement of the two people to whom Sarge was least likely to say no: Joe Kennedy and Eunice.
In October 1959 Shriver reluctantly stepped down from the presidencies of the school board and the Catholic Interracial Council. “Chicago’s Loss, Kennedy’s Gain,” declared the headline of an editorial in the Sun-Times; “An Unwelcome Resignation,” declared the Chicago American; “Shriver Did Well,” declared the Daily News. “He was a public official who did his ‘homework’ well,” one paper editorialized. “He tackled the work with verve and dedication. While he cannot, of course, take sole and personal credit for improvements, it is a fact that during his tenure as president the city school system improved.” “Along with many Chicagoans, we regret the resignation of R. Sargent Shriver Jr. as president of the school board,” editorialized another. “Shriver has made an outstanding record of the post.”
THE PRIMARIES
In 1960 Shriver was considered to be on the liberal edge of the Kennedy clan; Jack, among others, joked good-naturedly that Sarge was the “house Communist.” In truth, Shriver was as anti-Communist as anyone in the family—and as befit a protégé of Joe Kennedy, he was friendly to business, as well—but his interest in civil rights and his abiding Christian concern for the poor placed him to the left of the Kennedy wing of the Democratic Party. Shriver hoped he could help Kennedy win the election with a strong complement of liberal support, so that as president he wouldn’t be beholden to retrograde Southern—and often segregationist—Democrats. According to Harris Wofford, Shriver
badly wanted Kennedy’s nomination to come through liberal support (along with the more natural Irish and Catholic constituency), not through an alliance with Southern conservatives. Kennedy was saying that himself during this period—at least to liberals. Shriver well knew that there was a tug-of-war within Kennedy and within the family … between the liberal and conservative poles. Kennedy spoke disparagingly of those “doctrinaire ‘liberals’ … who are so opposed to me” but said
if “professional liberals made him uncomfortable” he “knew too many conservatives with whom I have nothing in common” to identify with their camp. When asked whether he would be a liberal or conservative President, he had replied, “I hope to be responsible.” Shriver hoped Kennedy would find himself responding to a convention and a campaign in which the liberal wing gave him decisive support.
This affected how Shriver campaigned. His first campaign assignments were in the crucial Wisconsin and West Virginia primaries. By the spring of 1960 the principal contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination appeared to be Minnesota senator Hubert Humphrey and Kennedy, with Missouri senator Stuart Symington and Senate majority leader Lyndon Johnson waiting to move into the picture if either Humphrey or Kennedy faltered. Meanwhile, Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic candidate from the two previous elections, lurked in the background, hoping in his diffident way to be drafted to run once again. Thus although Kennedy and Humphrey led in Democratic polls going into 1960, each felt he needed to demonstrate strength in key primaries to prove to Democratic party bosses that he was a viable national candidate.
In Wisconsin, Shriver was placed in charge of the First and Second Districts, a region of agriculture and dairy farms (along with some small patches of industry) in the southern part of the state, just over the northwestern border with Illinois. Half of Shriver’s job would be easy and half would be hard: The First District was predominantly Catholic, so Kennedy could expect to do well there, but the Second District, centered on the state capital of Madison, was largely Protestant. Consequently, Shriver concentrated his efforts in the Second District. Sarge and Eunice wore out their shoe leather walking the precincts, knocking on doors from early in the morning until late at night.
The Second District would be challenging for Kennedy because, in addition to its Protestantism, Madison was a hotbed of Left-liberalism. The University of Wisconsin was there; so was Progressive magazine, founded by Wisconsin liberalism’s patron saint Robert La Follette. Jack Kennedy, Shriver knew, lacked Humphrey’s liberal bona fides. Although Wisconsin voters had elected the infamous Joe McCarthy to the Senate some years earlier, the progressives around Madison faulted Senator Kennedy for not being a vocal enough critic of McCarthyism; with a brother who had worked for McCarthy’s committee, a father who had made political contributions to McCarthy, and a sister who had dated him, Jack seemed to Madison liberals to be guilty by association.
In order to compete with Humphrey in the Second District, then, Shriver knew he would have to bring in someone from outside the family, a prominent liberal who could speak credibly on Jack’s behalf and who could allay concerns about Kennedy’s platform being inimical to progressive concerns. The obvious choice, Shriver thought, was Chester Bowles. Bowles, who in his illustrious career in public service had worked for both FDR and Truman and who had, in the 1950s, served as ambassador to India, was now a congressman from Connecticut. Although some suspected that the sixty-year-old Bowles still harbored presidential aspirations himself, he signed on in early 1960 as Kennedy’s senior foreign policy adviser, with the understanding that he would become secretary of state if Kennedy were elected. Bowles was known to be a proud arch-liberal, and Kennedy had enlisted him not only for his wisdom but to appease the progressive wing.
If Shriver could get Bowles to campaign in the Second District, it would surely swing some liberal Humphrey supporters to Kennedy. He made a desperate phone call to his friend Harris Wofford. In 1959 Notre Dame president Ted Hesburgh had written to Shriver telling him that Wofford, who was teaching law at Notre Dame, was “exceptionally able” and that he ought to draw on him for his work with the Catholic Interracial Council, even though Wofford was Protestant, because of his strong background in civil rights. So in the autumn of 1959 Shriver went to the Chicago City Club to hear Wofford give a talk on the work of the Civil Rights Commission. Shriver was fascinated to learn of Wofford’s deep commitment to civil rights, and in particular to the teachings of Mohandas Gandhi, whom Wofford and his wife had met during a long sojourn in India, an experience they recounted in their book India Afire. After Wofford’s talk, in which he had referred to Gandhi’s concept of “symbolic action,” Shriver stood up and asked, “As someone who has studied Gandhi, what would you suggest that the school board of the city of Chicago do—what symbolic action could it take—to help break the vicious circle of race and poverty in our school system?” Afterward Shriver introduced himself and asked if Wofford would be willing to reflect further on the question of how symbolic action might help end racism in Chicago schools. A week later, Shriver wrote to Wofford saying that “because of de facto segregation in housing, the school system [is] in real trouble,” and that if Wofford had any ideas about what to do, please send them along.
A few weeks after that, Wofford recalled, “the phone rang and it was Shriver in town for a Notre Dame football game, asking me to join him at the stadium. Off and on for two hours he laid out the Chicago problem and pressed me for suggestions—all the time following the game. By the fourth quarter, he had enlisted me to spend some time at the school board in Chicago, reviewing the facts and brainstorming about solutions.”
In the spring of 1960 Wofford was teaching at Notre Dame and at the same time helping out Ted Sorensen by writing speeches for Senator Kennedy. Shriver knew that Wofford was close to Chester Bowles, and he pleaded with him to get Bowles to campaign in Wisconsin.
The problem was, however, that Bowles had signed on with Kennedy on the condition that he would never have to campaign directly against his friends Stevenson and Humphrey. This left Shriver in a bind. Kennedy’s forthrightly liberal foreign policy adviser would be conspicuous by his absence in the Wisconsin campaign, particularly around Madison. Needing a replacement, someone who could speak convincingly of Kennedy’s liberal credentials, Shriver asked Wofford if he might be willing to fill in for Bowles at a campaign rally at the University of Wisconsin. Wofford was respected by liberals and civil rights activists, even though he was a young man with none of Bowles’s national reputation at that point. Wofford agreed to stand in for Bowles. Speaking to the liberalism of the region Wofford said, “I am campaigning here for Kennedy because I know that he has approximately the same view of the world as Humphrey, Stevenson, and Chester Bowles.… It is the vision of a world community, of a world in revolution, of a world in unprecedented economic development, of a world waiting for full American participation, waiting for American leadership to end the cold war and establish and strengthen the institutions of peace and law.” The speech earned Wofford a handwritten note from his friend Humphrey. “Et tu, Brute” was all it said.
It was a good speech, Shriver thought; it delicately addressed Kennedy’s perceived liberal deficiencies. Unfortunately, Wofford lacked Bowles’s drawing power and, as Wofford recalled, “to our dismay, about twenty people were scattered about the good-sized law school lecture hall when I arrived.” So Shriver had thousands of copies of the speech printed and distributed around the state.
The Kennedy family charmed the Wisconsin press, which had never seen such a large and glamorous family campaigning together. As the primary drew nigh, predictions ran increasingly in Jack’s favor. Some even projected he would sweep all ten districts, effectively ending Humphrey’s campaign then and there. But when the primary votes were tallied on April 5, the results were less than decisive. Kennedy had won the state, but in garnering only 56 percent of the total vote, he had failed to score the smashing victory he needed to demonstrate his electoral strength to party leaders. (Of Shriver’s districts, Jack won the heavily Catholic First District and lost the heavily Protestant Second.)
“What does it mean?” Eunice asked her brother, as they watched the ambiguous results broadcast on television. “It means,” he said, “that we’ve got to go to West Virginia in the morning and do it all over again.”
In retrospect it is easier to see that Humphrey’s loss in Wisconsin all but ended his presidential hopes for 1960. If he co
uld not win his neighboring state, one similar in demographic and economic composition to Minnesota, what hope had he farther afield? But Humphrey was convinced that the Wisconsin result had been a fluke—that its 31 percent Catholic population and its open voting rules, which allowed Republicans to cross over to vote in the Democratic primary, had allowed Kennedy to sneak to an unmerited victory. For its part, the Kennedy campaign remained worried: It had failed to make enough of an impression on political observers to drive Symington, Johnson, and Stevenson out of contention.
This made the next primary loom even larger. West Virginia was 96 percent Protestant, and its stricter voting rules limited the Democratic primary to Democrats only. Humphrey salivated at the prospect of defeating Kennedy outside of the Midwest and demonstrating to the party bosses that the young Massachusetts senator had no viability in solidly Protestant areas. For the Kennedys, beating Humphrey in a heavily Democratic, heavily Protestant state would demonstrate that Jack’s appeal was more than narrowly parochial. The risk was that losing could destroy Kennedy’s chance at the nomination.
Kennedy’s early polling in West Virginia in 1959 had shown him leading Humphrey, but that was before his religion had become widely known. By April 1960 it was clear that the Catholic question would arise in national politics for the first time since Al Smith’s last presidential campaign in 1928. When West Virginia voters learned that Kennedy was Catholic, he plummeted in the polls, falling 20 points behind Humphrey.
Shriver arrived in West Virginia on April 11, six days after the Wisconsin primary to meet with the other Kennedy “area commanders” at the Kanawha Hotel. Larry O’Brien, Kenny O’Donnell, and Bobby Kennedy doled out the marching orders. Shriver, one of eight commanders, was sent to the city of Huntington, which lay in the Ohio River Valley near the intersection of West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky, and placed in charge of Cabell County. The county lay in the southwestern corner of the state extending eastward to the Kanawha River; parts of it were the poorest, most underdeveloped section of the state. “My first night in West Virginia, I was taken to a minstrel show, where white guys got dressed up in black face and mimicked black people. There was lots of fanfare and revelry to accompany it. That gave me an idea right away of how backward parts of the state were.”
Sarge: The Life and Times of Sargent Shriver Page 20