Shriver threw himself into campaigning with gusto. Mary Ann Orlando served as his deputy. Congresswoman Edith Green, from Oregon, who would later become a Shriver nemesis when he ran the War on Poverty, came to help, as did Marjorie Lawson, an African American civil rights lawyer from Washington. According to an academic study of the West Virginia primary, Shriver was a real “ramrod” for the region. He walked the precincts and shook hands eighteen hours a day.
Because of Shriver’s insistence on frugality, the Cabell County headquarters was a store front in Huntington that “should have been condemned years before.” “In the middle of the floor,” Mary Ann Orlando recalled, “there was this hole, and I can’t tell you how many times people fell through that hole, including me. You were in such a rush you’d forget about it and fall in the hole.” Everyone took turns trying to get everyone else to fall in the hole, which contributed to the general hilarity of the enterprise.
At first Kennedy declined to address the religion question head on. But it quickly became clear that religion was the issue for West Virginia voters. “We’ve never had a Catholic president and I hope we never do,” said one little old lady, echoing a common refrain. “Our people built this country. If they had wanted a Catholic to be president, they would have said so in the Constitution.” In 1960, anti-Catholic bigotry was still virulent among West Virginian Protestants. The counties Shriver was responsible for, he recalled, “were the poorest part of the state, the most rural part, the most peasantlike [and] also the most anti-Catholic part.” Ministers from some mainline churches—Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists—directly attacked Shriver’s brother-in-law, and “not a single Protestant minister rose to Kennedy’s defense.” “They would distribute flyers saying that the Romans had killed Christ,” Mary Ann Orlando recalled, “and that therefore we were Christ killers.” Shriver recalls standing at the entrance to a coal mine by the Kanawha River, trying to shake hands with the miners as they came to work, as he had done with factory workers in Wisconsin. In West Virginia, it sometimes seemed as though more men swore at him or slung anti-Catholic epithets than shook his hand. “I remember one day I was standing in front of a coal mine, handing out literature about Kennedy. One of the guys came out and I handed him a pamphlet. He looked at the picture of Kennedy and then he looked at me and spit right in my face.”
As the primary drew closer and the religious issue failed to recede, Jack told his advisers he thought he ought to confront his Catholicism head on; most of them disagreed, saying that would torpedo his candidacy. Shriver dissented from these advisers. Kennedy’s pollster, Louis Harris, agreed with Shriver and produced data showing that it would be beneficial for Jack to speak to the question directly. Ultimately, Kennedy did so, in a television broadcast to West Virginia voters the weekend before the May 10 primary election, directly addressing Protestant fears that a Catholic president’s primary obeisance would be to the pope rather than to the US Constitution. “When any man stands on the steps of the Capitol and takes the oath of office of president,” Jack said, “he is swearing to support the separation of church and state.” After that Humphrey’s lead began to dwindle and then to evaporate completely.
On a raw, rainy primary day, Kennedy won the state, 61 to 39 percent, and shocked the country. At about 1:00 a.m., Humphrey sent a concession telegram to Kennedy headquarters and was soon declaring that he was no longer a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. Kennedy had proven himself to the nation.
THE CONVENTION
Shriver now moved his operation to Democratic Party headquarters at 1028 Connecticut Avenue in Washington and established a broad portfolio composed of doing “whatever was necessary” to help Jack get the nomination. At first, his duties consisted mainly of raising money and maintaining communication between the Kennedy campaign field offices and the Democratic National Committee. Later, Shriver was also given responsibility for rounding up convention delegates for many of the states between the Rocky Mountains (Teddy Kennedy’s territory) and the East Coast.
But by far Shriver’s most important assignment was to create the campaign’s civil rights division. Officially, this meant he was responsible for formulating Kennedy’s civil rights positions and policies; in practice this meant doing whatever was necessary to win the support of black voters. While in the Senate, Kennedy had not been particularly active on civil rights issues. Kennedy was not opposed to civil rights; it was just that they had yet to arouse his passion, and he saw them at this point more in terms of political strategy than moral cause. By May 1960, right around the time of the West Virginia primary, the Kennedys were realizing that the Negro vote might be a problem for them.
Kennedy knew that Harris Wofford had good connections to civil rights figures. One day Kennedy called him into his office. “Are we in as much trouble with Negroes as it seems?” Jack asked him. Wofford told him he was; Kennedy’s reputation among black leaders was poor. Also, Wofford told him, the black advisers Kennedy had consulted were not in the mainstream of the civil rights movement. Kennedy asked Wofford to do what he could to rectify this. Wofford and Shriver in turn set up meetings for Jack with Martin Luther King Jr. and Roy Wilkins, head of the NAACP.
Kennedy failed to impress these black leaders. In early May, Bobby Kennedy summoned Wofford to his office. “We’re in trouble with Negroes,” Bobby told him. “We really don’t know much about this whole thing. We’ve been dealing outside the field of the main Negro leadership and have to start from scratch.” Bobby went on to explain that they were asking Sargent Shriver to supervise the work of attracting the Negro vote because “he knows all these things.” “We want you to head up a Civil Rights Section,” Bobby told Wofford, “and work through Sarge and do everything you need to do to deliver every Negro delegate going to the convention.” Shriver was made director of the section and Wofford the coordinator. To help Wofford, Shriver also recruited his friend Louis Martin, the publisher of the Chicago Defender, Chicago’s leading black newspaper. “Kennedy knew himself to have only weak support from African Americans,” Shriver recalled. But Shriver was close to William Dawson, the congressman (and acolyte of Dick Daley, the Chicago mayor) known to be able to deliver the majority of Chicago’s black vote to Democratic candidates of his choosing. He also knew Martin Luther King Jr.: “I introduced him at the Orchestra Hall on Michigan Avenue in Chicago,” Shriver has noted, “at what I think was the first speech he ever made north of the Mason-Dixon Line.”
The inner circle at Kennedy headquarters considered the Civil Rights Division to be only a marginally important assignment. “I had responsibility for all the African American vote, wherever it was located,” Shriver recalled. “This was the part of the campaign nobody else gave a damn about—this wasn’t like being given responsibility for the state of New York or California. I got the assignment because Bobby and his advisers said, ‘Well, this guy is the brother-in-law of the candidate and he knows the minority community and we need someone to fill the position, so why not give it to Shriver?’ ”
The Democratic National Convention was to begin on July 11 at the Sports Arena in Los Angeles. Shriver arrived two days early to check into the Biltmore Hotel and begin meeting with black delegates from around the country. Based on his careful tallies, it appeared that Kennedy had the support of a majority of the more than 250 black delegates (out of about 4,500 total delegates) and alternates at the convention. Moreover, every leading black Democrat—save for the mercurial congressman from Harlem, Adam Clayton Powell, who had declared himself for LBJ—had come out for Kennedy. “Early each morning, for a couple of hours, our civil rights contingent operated a hospitality suite in the Biltmore,” Wofford recalled. “By now this group included Kennedy’s early black supporters and civil rights activists in a dozen delegations. Delegates came to talk, to question Kennedy’s record, and to ask what they could do to help.” To ensure that the black delegates did not get swept up in the movement to draft Adlai Stevenson, Shriver and Wofford repeated
ly pointed out that there was nary a black face among the pro-Stevenson demonstrators outside the convention hall.
The convention itself began under beautiful sunny skies that lasted for the duration of the event. The Kennedy campaign nerve center was on the eighth floor of the Biltmore Hotel. Shriver was responsible for several Midwestern delegations, the most important of which was Illinois. Although he had been assured by Mayor Daley, who controlled the delegation, that he could deliver solid support for Kennedy, Shriver was nervous: As momentum for Adlai Stevenson built, he worried there would be a groundswell of support for the former governor from his home state. On the Sunday afternoon before the opening ceremonies, Shriver fretted outside a hotel conference room while the Illinois delegation caucused in secret within. When Daley emerged, he announced to Shriver’s great relief that Illinois would vote 59½ for Kennedy, 5½ for Symington, and only 2 for Stevenson.
Still, Shriver knew from Bill Blair and Newt Minow that Stevenson still coveted the nomination and believed he could win it if the first ballot was not decisive. That night, Blair arrived at a preconvention party thrown by Peter and Pat Lawford at their Santa Monica home and found himself seated between Nat King Cole and Judy Garland. Shriver came over and pulled Blair aside, asking whether there was any way Blair could dissuade Stevenson. Blair said he would see what he could do.
Over the course of the week, Kennedy’s momentum waxed and waned. The early signs from the delegate counters were encouraging; it looked as though Jack was on his way to wrapping up the nomination easily. But when Minnesota senator Eugene McCarthy nominated Stevenson in a soaring peroration (“Do not reject this man who has made us all proud to be Democrats. Do not leave this prophet without honor in his own party.”) the convention erupted with hosannas for Stevenson. On Tuesday night, a burgeoning revolt in the North Dakota delegation threatened to unravel that state’s support for Kennedy. “All through the night,” as Theodore White reported in his account of the convention, “brother-in-law Sargent Shriver had worked on the wavering North Dakota delegate whose half-vote carried the necessary majority to invoke the unit rule [which required the state’s delegation to vote as a bloc], and North Dakota’s eleven votes were safe again.” On Wednesday, Shriver’s first concern, once again, was Illinois. But after tracking down Dick Daley on the floor, he was assured that the mayor had the situation well in hand. A few minutes later, Daley would tell Stevenson that he didn’t have any significant support in the Illinois delegation. The Stevenson threat was extinguished.
On Wednesday night at eight o’clock Los Angeles time, the voting began with Alabama, which went primarily for Johnson. But as the vote proceeded alphabetically through the states, Kennedy rapidly piled up delegates, passing the 100 mark with Illinois. Shriver cruised the floor, counting and recounting delegates and giving encouragement to those who hadn’t yet voted. As the votes were tallied, he noted with satisfaction that every black delegate, save for a few who went for favorite sons, had voted for Kennedy. When Wyoming cast all 15 of its votes for Kennedy, lifting him to a total of 763, Jack became the Democratic nominee for president of the United States. (Johnson finished second with 409 votes.)
Jack, who had been watching the vote on television from a friend’s house nearby, made his way to the Sports Center, stopping first in his communications center outside the arena. As he came in, he saw Shriver and Bobby Kennedy talking in a corner, with jubilant looks on their faces. On the other side of the room, 30 feet away, stood some of the more powerful members of the party establishment, the kingmakers and wise elders. Averell Harriman. Dick Daley. Carmine de Sapio. Mike DiSalle. John McCormack. John Bailey. Abe Ribicoff. As Jack entered, these political behemoths started instinctively toward the new nominee and then froze. They seemed to shrink, as though in awed deference to what they had created; only Shriver, it seemed, retained his natural presence. Kennedy walked over to him and Shriver congratulated him warmly. “They stood apart,” Theodore White recorded, “these older men of long-established power, and watched [Kennedy]. He turned after a few minutes, saw them watching him, and whispered to his brother-in-law. Shriver now crossed the separating space to invite them over.… No one could pass the little open distance between him and them uninvited, because there was this thin separation about him, and the knowledge that they were there not as patrons but as clients.” Perhaps it was only appropriate that Shriver—who was often kept at arm’s length from the campaign’s inner circle because he was seen as too liberal, too Catholic, too much of an independent operator—would be the one to bridge this symbolic gap, to bring together the old guard and the new.
From there, Jack went into the arena to greet the cheering convention.
LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON
The next order of business was to pick a running mate. When Jack left the convention that night a little before 2:00 a.m., most campaign insiders thought that his choice would come down to Stuart Symington and Washington senator Henry Jackson. But before Kennedy climbed into bed that night, he read a congratulatory telegram from the defeated Lyndon Johnson, whose effusiveness implied that he might, despite initial evidence to the contrary, be interested in the second spot on the ticket.
In some ways, Johnson seemed an unlikely choice. For one thing, Johnson had always said he would “never, never, never trade his senatorial vote for the vice presidential gavel.” Moreover, as a Southern Democrat, Johnson would be anathema to many of the Northeastern and Midwestern liberals whose support had helped carry Kennedy to the nomination.
But about 2:30 a.m., the phone rang in the Biltmore Hotel room Shriver and Wofford shared. Shriver answered and Wofford overheard him say, “Lyndon will? All right, I’ll get the word to Jack first thing in the morning.” Shriver hung up the phone and rolled over to face Wofford’s bed to tell him one of Johnson’s top aides had called. “Johnson will accept the vice presidential nomination if Jack offers it to him,” Shriver said. “We’ve got to wake up early so I can warn him before any move is made.”
At eight the next morning, Shriver was waiting at the eighth-floor headquarters when the nominee arrived. Buttonholing his brother-in-law, he quietly described to Jack the 2:30 a.m. phone call. Jack raised his eyebrows. He summoned his assistant, Evelyn Lincoln, and asked her to set up a meeting with Johnson for later that morning. Then he instructed Shriver to call around to party leaders and discreetly solicit their opinions of Johnson as a running mate.
Just at that time Bobby Kennedy arrived at the suite. When Jack told him about Shriver’s late night chat with the Johnson aide, Bobby grew visibly perturbed, and when Jack said that he planned to meet with the Senate majority leader Bobby became even more upset and pulled his brother into the bedroom, leaving Shriver outside. Disgruntled voices were audible from within. Before long, the suite was filling up with the Kennedy inner circle. When Bobby told O’Donnell that Jack was considering putting Johnson on the ticket, O’Donnell was irate. “I was so furious I could hardly talk,” he recounted in his memoir. He had a visceral dislike of Johnson and moreover had promised many liberal supporters that under no circumstances would Johnson be on the ticket. “I felt that we had been double-crossed.”
A wound that was to fester for years had been opened. And Shriver—who, as it happened, would later be drawn into close orbit around Johnson, earning the additional enmity of certain Kennedy acolytes—now appeared to be implicated in causing the wound, simply by virtue of having been the messenger from the Johnson camp.
In truth, Shriver, too, was dubious about the wisdom of hitching Johnson to the ticket. Before the convention, the Washington Post had run an article reporting that if Kennedy won the presidential nomination, Johnson would be the most likely running mate. Upon reading this, many black delegates were furious. LBJ, although he would later be known for passing landmark civil rights legislation in the 1960s, was best known among blacks for having eviscerated similar legislation in the late 1950s. So Shriver and Wofford had been dispatched to assure them that Kennedy would n
ever pick Johnson. Now, as Kennedy contemplated doing precisely that, Shriver was afraid he would look like a liar. Thus, although Shriver was planning to call some of the party bosses to get their thoughts on Johnson, he now told Wofford specifically to call liberals and civil rights activists to see how they would react to Johnson’s being named. “There’s still a chance to stop this if there’s enough opposition,” he told Wofford.
While Jack went to meet with Johnson, the grumblings in the Kennedy suite continued. And when Jack returned to say that Johnson was in fact interested, the grumblings became even louder. Bobby Kennedy, who already instinctively disliked Johnson and would grow to loathe him (a feeling Johnson reciprocated), would later say that Jack had offered him a place on the ticket purely as a pro forma gesture, fully expecting that Johnson would respectfully decline.
In any event, when Jack returned from his meeting with Johnson, all hell broke loose in the Kennedy suite as “key members of their staff and liberal, labor, and civil rights supporters besieged and beseeched them.” O’Donnell, in particular, was seething. “This is the worst mistake you ever made. You came here … like a knight on a white charger … promising to get rid of the old hack politicians. And now, in your first move after you get the nomination, you go against all the people who supported you.” Jack explained that he didn’t plan to die in office and that Johnson would help him secure a large electoral mandate to govern on.
Sarge: The Life and Times of Sargent Shriver Page 21