Friends, old supporters, and business and party leaders from all over the state approached me by letter, phone, or in person, urging me to run. I replied that I wasn’t interested in running for anything so soon after the 1960 presidential election, and urged that they look elsewhere for a candidate.
But the pressure continued and by the beginning of the summer I began for the first time to consider seriously the possibility of running. My intuition was unchanged—I still thought it would be a case of running for the wrong office at the wrong time.
I had a long talk with Eisenhower at the El Dorado Country Club near Palm Springs. He thought that I should run for governor in 1962 and then run for the presidency again in 1964. He said, “It has been my experience that when a man is asked by a majority of the leaders of his party to take on an assignment, he must do so or risk losing their support in the future. If you don’t run and the Republican candidate loses, you will be blamed for it, and you will be through as a national political leader.”
A few weeks later I wrote a long letter to Eisenhower outlining the pros and cons of running. In this letter I expressed the deepest underlying reason for my apparent indecisiveness and lack of enthusiasm:
Another argument which is made against my running is that from the time I started the campaign in January through the period I served in office, I would have to devote my attention almost exclusively to the problems of California. It is true that Rockefeller has been able to comment at times on national and international issues but my own belief is that our problems here are so complex and also we are, frankly, physically so far away from the centers of national and international news media that I simply do not believe it would be possible for me to continue to speak at all constructively on national and international issues if I decided to run for governor.
The polls were then indicating that I could defeat Brown fairly easily; one had me beating him 5 to 3. I am not sure that Eisenhower’s advice would have been the same had he thought there was a considerable risk of my losing.
Rose Woods had come to California to be my secretary at the law firm. She called me at home on the afternoon of July 11 to tell me that Whittaker Chambers had died. The news hit me hard. I knew that Chambers had not been well, but he had survived so much in his life that I suppose I had come to think of him as indestructible. Now he was dead.
That night I reread the last letter he had written to me, shortly after I had returned to California in February 1961:
It seems possible that we may not meet again—I mean at all. So forgive me if I say here a few things which, otherwise, I should not presume to say.
You have decades ahead of you. Almost from the first day we met (think, it is already 12 years ago) I sensed in you some quality, deep-going, difficult to identify in the world’s glib way, but good, and meaningful for you and multitudes of others. I do not believe for a moment that because you have been cruelly checked in the employment of what is best in you, what is most yourself, that that check is final. It cannot be. . . .
You have years in which to serve. Service is your life. You must serve. You must, therefore, have a base from which to serve.
Some tell me that there are reasons why you should not presently run for governor of California. Others tell me that you would almost certainly carry the state. I simply do not know the facts. But if it is at all feasible, I, for what it is worth, strongly urge you to consider this.
Friends whose political judgment I respected were sharply divided as to what I should do. Eisenhower, Tom Dewey, and J. Edgar Hoover urged me to run for governor so that I could have a new political base. Herbert Hoover and General Douglas MacArthur advised me to run for Congress so that I would have a forum from which I could address national and international issues. MacArthur put it in his characteristically oracular way: “California is a great state but it is too parochial. You should be in Washington, not Sacramento.”
Early in August I had a long talk with Bob Finch. We discussed some of the political forces that would be arrayed against me if I ran.
First, there would be the all-out opposition of the Kennedy administration. They would do everything they could to stop me from getting a new political lease on life by winning the governorship. Nor could I count on the support of the many California Republicans who favored Rockefeller or Goldwater for President in 1964. The two men would be opposing each other as the convention neared, but they would join in opposing me now.
Joe Shell, the Republican leader in the state assembly, had already begun to campaign for the gubernatorial nomination, and had picked up considerable conservative support and money. Finally, there was Pat Brown himself. Although generally considered something of a bumbler, he was in the enviable political position of being a man whom no one particularly disliked.
By the end of the conversation I was more convinced than ever that my first intuition was right: I should not run for governor in 1962. The word found its way back to Washington, and within a couple of days I received a call from Len Hall and Cliff Folger urgently requesting to talk with me before I announced my decision. The next afternoon they were on a plane for California.
Hall said, “Either you run or you’re finished in national politics. In 1962 you’ll have Rockefeller running in New York, another strong candidate for governor in Pennsylvania, another in Michigan. Who will remember Dick Nixon? You can only win in ’64 if you run and win for governor now.” They both stressed how much Eisenhower was counting on me to run and win.
My own political judgment at that point told me that Kennedy would be almost unbeatable in 1964. If I ran for governor I felt I would have to pledge to spend the full term in Sacramento. That would leave someone else to square off in 1964 against Kennedy, his money, and his tactics.
The real problem was that I had no great desire to be governor of California. Equally compelling was my knowledge of how strongly Pat felt against my running. She thought that we owed it to ourselves as well as to Tricia and Julie to spend more time with them during their adolescent years.
My inclination was against making the race. But Eisenhower’s advice and the pressures brought to bear by Hall and Folger, by Whittaker Chambers’s letter, and by the importunings of many close friends began to tip the balance in favor of a decision to run.
I dreaded bringing up the subject with Pat and Tricia and Julie, so I left it until the last possible moment. I had asked Bob Finch to arrange a press conference on September 27, when I would announce my decision. On September 25, as we all sat around the table after dinner, I described some of the factors and the conflicting advice I had been receiving and weighing. I said that I was now thinking of running, but I wanted to know their feelings before I made up my mind.
Pat, as I expected, took a strong stand against it. Many women would give everything they have to be a celebrity, but Pat has always been one of those rare individuals whose ego does not depend on public attention. Her deepest feelings have always been private, and she shares them only with her family and loved ones. She had been by my side through all the invective and controversy of the congressional campaigns; she had endured nobly and silently the agony of the fund crisis; and during the vice presidency she had constantly balanced the requirements of national office with the importance of maintaining a normal and loving home for Tricia and Julie. But there had been so many campaigns and dinners and trips that after the 1960 defeat she had looked forward to building a new and private life in California for ourselves and the girls. She said, “If you run this time, I’m not going to be out campaigning with you as I have in the past.” Tricia and Julie at fifteen and thirteen were still too young to exert a major influence on my decision, but I wanted to hear their views. When Julie saw that Pat and I had such a strong difference of opinion, she said that she would approve whatever I decided. Tricia was the only one who took a positive line: “I am not sure whether you should run,” she said, “but I kind of have the feeling that you should just to show them you aren’t finishe
d because of the election that was stolen from us in 1960!”
We talked about it for almost an hour. Finally I went upstairs to my study. I sat at my desk and started to make some notes for the press conference, announcing that I had decided not to run for governor.
Half an hour later Pat came in. She sat down on the sofa, outside the pool of light cast by my desk lamp. Her face was in the shadows, but I could tell from her voice that she was fighting not to show her tremendous disappointment. “I have thought about it some more,” she said, “and I am more convinced than ever that if you run it will be a terrible mistake. But if you weigh everything and still decide to run, I will support your decision. I’ll be there campaigning with you just as I always have.”
“I’m making notes to announce that I won’t be running,” I said, pointing to the yellow pad before me on the desk.
“No,” she said firmly, “you must do whatever you think is right. If you think this is right for you, then you must do it.”
We sat for some time in silence. Then she came over to me, put her hand on my shoulder, kissed me, and left the room. After she had gone, I tore off the top sheet of paper and threw it into the wastebasket. On a fresh page I began making notes for an announcement that I had decided to run.
On September 27 I held a press conference at the Statler Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles.
I said I had two decisions to announce. The first was that I would not be a candidate for President of the United States in 1964. The second was that I would be a candidate for governor of California in 1962.
This wasn’t enough for many of the reporters, who demanded more. One of them referred to General William Tecumseh Sherman’s famous statement, “If nominated I will not run and if elected I will not serve.” I told him, “I think General Sherman’s statement meant that he wasn’t a candidate. Calvin Coolidge’s statement was that he did not choose to run. The Nixon statement is that I shall not be a candidate in 1964.”
Pat Brown greeted my announcement by immediately stating that despite my claim to the contrary, I would be a candidate for President in 1964: “He sees the governorship of this state only as a stepping-stone for his own presidential ambitions.”
Instead of beginning to plan strategy and plot the campaign, I now had to spend the next three months writing and editing the final draft of my book, Six Crises. I had undertaken to write it a few months after Kennedy’s inauguration, when the prospect of running for anything in 1962 had seemed unthinkable. Now I was up against a publisher’s deadline at the very time that I had to make vital decisions about the campaign.
As I traveled through the state before the June primary, I met with a lot of heckling—but it was different from the heckling in 1950. Then I had been heckled by the far left; now I was being heckled by the far right. Members of the ultra right-wing John Birch Society had infiltrated a considerable number of Republican organizations. One of the costliest and most difficult decisions I made was to disavow support for or from any Republican candidate who was a member of the John Birch Society and who would not repudiate the extremist statements of the society’s founder, Robert Welch, namely that President Eisenhower was “a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy,” and that Foster Dulles was “a Communist agent.”
Congressmen John Rousselot and Edgar Hiestand were two of my closest personal and political friends. But both were members of the John Birch Society. Whether or not they personally believed any or all of Welch’s accusations, neither would repudiate them. Thus I lost not only their support but the support of their friends in two heavily Republican districts. Politically it was a no-win proposition, but as a matter of conscience I had no choice. I could not accept support from an extremist group whose leader had defamed Eisenhower and Dulles.
The primary was held on June 5. Although I won easily, Shell got over a third of the vote. I took that as a portent of the kind of Republican defections I might have to expect in November.
Fortunately my campaign organization was excellent and already was functioning smoothly; some of those who participated gained valuable experience that served us well six years later in my campaign for the presidency. Bob Haldeman was campaign manager; Maurice Stans was finance chairman. Herb Klein was my major press adviser, and a young man named Ron Ziegler worked on his staff.
Immediately after the primary, pressure began for a candidates’ debate. Brown was now running ahead in the polls, so I felt that a debate would be in my interest. Brown tried to avoid a debate for just that reason, and the closest we got was a joint appearance before a group of newspaper editors and publishers in San Francisco on October 1. The Los Angeles Times ran a front-page account of the session under the headline: Brown and Nixon in Violent Clash.
After Brown and I made brief opening statements, one of the first to ask a question was Tom Braden, publisher of the Oceanside Blade Tribune. Braden was a liberal columnist whom Pat Brown had appointed to the State Board of Education.
“I wanted to ask you whether you as Vice President, or as a candidate for governor, think it proper for a candidate for governor, morally and ethically, to permit his family to receive a secret loan from a major defense contractor in the United States?” he said.
The chairman of the meeting jumped in immediately. “Mr. Nixon, you don’t need to answer that question if you don’t want to. I would rule it out on the basis that it is outside the issues of this campaign.”
“As a matter of fact, Dr. Robinson, I insist on answering it,” I replied. “I welcome the opportunity of answering it. Six years ago, my brother was in deep financial trouble. He borrowed $205,000 from the Hughes Tool Company. My mother put up as security for that loan practically everything she had—a piece of property, which, to her, was fabulously wealthy, and which now is producing an income of $10,000 a year to the creditor.
“My brother went bankrupt six years ago. My mother turned over the property to the Hughes Tool Company. Two years ago in the presidential election, President Kennedy refused to make a political issue out of my brother’s difficulties and out of my mother’s problems, just as I refused to make a political issue out of any of the charges made against the members of his family.
“I had no part or interest in my brother’s business. I had no part whatever in the negotiation of this loan. I was never asked to do anything by the Hughes Tool Company and never did anything for them. And yet, despite President Kennedy’s refusing to use this as an issue, Mr. Brown, privately, in talking to some of the newsmen here in this audience, and his hatchetmen have been constantly saying that I must have gotten some of the money—that I did something wrong.
“Now it is time to have this out. I was in government for fourteen years as a congressman, as a senator, as Vice President. I went to Washington with a car and a house and a mortgage. I came back with a car and a house and a bigger mortgage.
“I have made mistakes, but I am an honest man. And if the Governor of this state has any evidence pointing up that I did anything wrong in this case, that I did anything for the Hughes Tool Company, that I asked them for this loan, then instead of doing it privately, doing it slyly, the way he has—and he cannot deny it, because newsmen in this audience have told me that he has said, ‘We are going to make a big issue out of the Hughes Tool Company loan’—now, he has a chance.
“All the people of California are listening on television. The people of this audience are listening. Governor Brown has a chance to stand up as a man and charge me with misconduct. Do it, sir!”
Brown was taken completely off guard by the way I had turned the issue around, and he made an unsuccessful attempt to deny that he and his staff had been raising it in the campaign. In fact, they continued to raise it throughout the campaign. The media loved the story and played it up big—both because it made such tantalizing copy and because it was so damaging to me.
I felt that I came out considerably ahead of Brown in this meeting; apparently he agreed, because he refused to participate in oth
er joint appearances when I challenged him to do so.
Aside from the Hughes loan and my repudiation of the John Birch Society, my biggest problem in the campaign was the question of my actual interest in being governor of California. Despite my constant disclaimers of any plans to run for presidency in 1964, I was simply not able to convince many people. A poll taken during the campaign showed the extent of the difficulty: 36 percent thought I was interested in serving as governor, 64 percent thought I was interested in running for President.
Looking back, I recognize that there was a measure of truth in what the polls showed the public perceived. I thought that Kennedy would be unbeatable, so my disclaimers of any interest in running for President were absolutely honest. But I was really not all that eager to be governor of California.
Despite my efforts to campaign on the issues, every press conference brought questions about the personal attacks being made against me—I must have answered the question about the Hughes loan at least a hundred times. Reporters never tired of asking if I had repudiated the John Birch Society, or of having me reiterate my refusal to support Rousselot and Hiestand. There was no morning, afternoon, or evening that I did not deny that I was planning to use the governorship as a stepping-stone to a presidential candidacy in 1964. Most reporters showed little interest in the many detailed proposals I made on the cost of state government, crime, education, or the necessity for creating a better business climate in California.
On the evening of October 22 President Kennedy reported in a dramatic television address that the Soviets had moved medium-range nuclear missiles into Cuba. He announced a U.S. naval blockade of Cuba and demanded that the Soviets dismantle and remove the missiles immediately. The world waited tensely for Khrushchev’s response to this direct challenge. For almost two days, America seemed to be tottering on the brink of nuclear war. As always in time of international crisis, the nation rallied behind the President. I strongly supported Kennedy’s actions in a statement I made in Oakland and a statewide television address in San Diego.
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