Report of the County Chairman

by James A. Michener

  I felt so miserable that I had to be alone and went into the lavatory, where I sat for upwards of an hour with my head in my hands. I wouldn’t say that any tears actually came to my eyes, but I was desolate. The prize for which we had worked so hard, the near-victory that we had ripped from the caverns of religious prejudice, the administration of hard-working idealists that might have operated in the next years, rekindling flames of imagination in our nation, all these things were about to be lost because of an irrelevant fluke. I swore and beat my fists together and sat with my misery in the little cubicle, until Stan Musial or one of the gang shouted, “Somebody dead in there?” I wanted to reply that I was, but I got up and rejoined my gloomy crowd. This was the low-water mark of the campaign, and I would not like to live it over again. When I looked at the tense faces of my companions I had to acknowledge to myself how desperately I wanted to win, how disconsolate I would be in defeat.

  We landed on schedule in Bloomington, and sure enough two reporters lunged right for me shouting, “You’ve been in Asia a good deal, Mr. Michener. How will they take the news about Khrushchev’s defeat?” I stalled as we had agreed and the reporters rushed over to Byron White to ask him how the startling news from Russia would affect the election. He also stalled, and over his shoulder I could see Chuck Roche calling Associated Press and talking earnestly. In a moment he hung up the receiver and with no change of expression walked behind me as a radio crew zeroed in to ask me about the election.

  In a low, guttural whisper that no one else could hear Chuck said, “Story’s a fake.”

  What an admirable interview I gave that day at the airport in Bloomington! I was expansive. I exuded confidence and I wanted to hug the radio man. There was warmth in my voice as I explained everything, ending with a flourish, “Of course Mr. Kennedy’s going to be elected. The whole nation knows that.” The day of anguish was over and I knew that victory was ours.

  On November 8, 1960, in Bucks County 125,052 voters went to the polls and supported Mr. Nixon by a score of 67,501 to 57,177, giving him 54 percent of the vote and a majority of more than 10,000. Five resolute citizens wrote in their votes for Adlai Stevenson and one, getting ready for 1964, backed Barry Goldwater. By a clear-cut majority we lost the battle for Bucks County. I also failed to win my own precinct for Kennedy, losing it by 178 to 115. Likewise I lost my township, the vote there being 514 for Nixon and only 289 for Kennedy. And of course my home town of Doylestown voted Republican by its customary 71 percent.

  Of the eight states in which I campaigned with the barnstormers and the four where I spoke alone, every district in which I appeared went Republican. Nebraska, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, Indiana and Kentucky all voted for Nixon. In fact, I can think of no area where I worked in which my efforts modified any important segment of the vote and there exists good reason for calling me the Typhoid Mary of the 1960 campaign. Where I went disaster struck.

  And yet, when one looks at the facts in Bucks County, one discovers that something extraordinary happened in this crucial county. To understand what it was that took place, let us consider the norm established by five major Pennsylvania counties which, like Bucks, had large German religious groups which were vigorously anti-Catholic as an inherited ecclesiastical principle. In 1956, during the Eisenhower landslide, Adams, Berks, Lancaster, Lebanon and York counties voted Republican by the biggest majority recorded in recent decades, 84,849. In 1960, when across the nation the Republicans fared more poorly by 10,000,000 votes than in 1956, these five German counties raised their Republican margin to 88,440.

  But in equally German Bucks County the results were different. In the Eisenhower sweep of 1956 our county had given the Republicans a majority of 59,721 to 38,442, or more than 21,000 votes. In 1960, reversing the trend established by the five German counties, we cut the Republican majority in half, to 10,000. This meant that the majorities built up by Senator Kennedy in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh were not diminished by the number of Republican votes that were expected from Bucks and other similar counties. And on his big-city majorities Kennedy was thus able to win the state.

  If one isolates the votes of suburbia, he finds that the area gave Kennedy an unexpected majority of 9,000 votes. The central and northern rural areas gave Nixon a majority of 19,000. If one further isolates the votes of Levittown, it is seen that this new area shifted sharply from its slight Republican advantage of 1956 to a 58-42 division in favor of Kennedy. Considering the county as a whole, Nixon ran about 2,000 votes behind the rest of his county ticket, Kennedy ahead of his by 3,000. This was due to the popularity of the local Republican incumbents.

  As for the religious question, careful study of available records leads me to conclude that in the 1960 election the religious factor produced these obvious though sometimes contradictory results:

  1. In central and northern Bucks County, Kennedy’s Catholicism cost him not less than 4,500 votes, represented by Democrats who switched to Nixon and by Republicans who might otherwise have been won over to the Kennedy banner. This resulted in a swing of 9,000 votes.

  2. In suburbia there were two distinct and measurable effects. In the town of Bristol, which has Catholic concentrations, Kennedy’s Catholicism enabled him to pick up some votes he might not otherwise have been expected to win. But in the expensive sections of Levittown he undoubtedly lost, for the same reason, approximately the same number of votes he gained in Bristol. Thus in the southern end of the county the religious issue neither hindered nor helped.

  3. If these figures are correct, then had there been no religious issue involved, Nixon would have carried Bucks County by about 1,000 votes instead of the 10,000 by which he did carry it. Thus Kennedy’s Catholicism cost him a 9,000-vote differential in Bucks County.

  4. However, it seems highly probable that the vicious attacks made upon the Catholic religion in areas like Bucks County directly influenced the large concentrations of Catholics in Philadelphia, where wholly unprecedented Democratic majorities were rolled up. Before November 8 the most realistic hope was for a Kennedy majority of 250,000 in Philadelphia. The actual majority was 331,000. Of this about 95,000 can be attributed to unexpectedly vigorous Catholic voting. Identical factors operated in Pittsburgh, where the Kennedy majority was 110,000.

  5. This means that the Republican strategists who wrote to me for help in quarantining the religious issue were correct in their assumption that the issue must ultimately hurt their side. The unwelcomed bigots made it possible for the Republicans to pick up increments like the 9,000 votes in Bucks County, but at the same time helped the Democrats acquire massive windfalls like the 95,000 unexpected votes in Philadelphia.

  6. Nevertheless, if John Kennedy had not been a Catholic he would probably have won Pennsylvania by a substantially bigger margin than he actually did. On balance, the religious issue hurt the Democrats grievously.

  7. Across the nation the same relationships prevailed. If Kennedy had not been a Catholic it seems likely that he would have gained not less than 53.5 percent of the total vote and somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 electoral votes. That he won at all in the face of the religious odds that faced him indicated a political triumph of enormous proportions.

  8. It was ironic that some of the largest concentrations of Catholics happened to be in the largest cities of the states having the largest electoral vote. That this demographic accident enabled the Democrats to win seems obvious, but it must not obscure the deeper truth that if the religious issue had not beclouded the election in the first place, the Democrats would have won by a much wider margin.

  Some facts to support the above contentions might be in order. Haycock Township in the northern end of the county is a rural area containing the county’s largest hill, called hopefully Haycock Mountain, and also the most typically Dutch of our small communities, Applebachsville. For some curious reason it has always been a Democratic enclave in the midst of Republican strength and this year had the usual secure registration of 370 Democrats to 262 Repub
licans. Here Mrs. Eva Horne Derr has long reigned as state committeewoman and cannot recall when she last lost an election. This year the vote was 312 for Nixon to 213 for Kennedy.

  After the election I talked with Mrs. Derr about this disappointing showing and with much embarrassment she confessed, “I never thought I’d see the day when I would have to do what I did this time.”

  “You try to vote dead people?” I asked.

  “Worse,” she said. “I gave lessons to good Democratic friends on how to split their tickets and vote for all the Democrats except Kennedy.”

  “You did that?”

  “I had to,” the committeewoman claimed. “My best friends told me, ‘Eva, I’m willing to vote the rest of your ticket, but I won’t vote for a Catholic.’ So I had to teach them how to vote against my own candidate.”

  “Was it that bad?” I asked.

  “Worse,” she insisted. “Because those damned Republicans found out what I was doing and they warned all my people, ‘It’s very difficult to split a ticket. You vote for even one Democrat and the judges are likely to give Kennedy a vote, too, and you wouldn’t want that. So play it safe and just pull a straight Republican lever. Then nobody can mix you up.’ ”

  “Did their argument work?” I asked.

  “Not entirely,” Mrs. Derr said brightly. “Kennedy trailed the rest of the Democratic ticket by 35 votes. So my instructions accomplished some good.” I said it was strange that a committeewoman would find joy in the fact that she had taught her people to cut their own Presidential candidate, but she said, “This was a strange election. We were lucky to salvage any votes.”

  There are three other districts in northern Bucks County that normally go Democratic, even though they are surrounded by strong Republican areas. This year the combined vote was Nixon 1,358, Kennedy 744.

  Now it might be argued that these four specific districts had voted for Mr. Nixon because of economic, social or personality reasons, but interviews in the area fail to support this theory. Ministers preached from their pulpits that a vote for Kennedy was a vote against the basic religion of the area, and parishioners either stayed home or voted Republican.

  The figures from normal Republican areas also support the reasoning given above. The prettiest old settlement in northern Bucks County, in my opinion, is Bedminster, where sturdy red-brick homes and carefully tended lawns outline an almost perfect little community, whose German attributes are conspicuous in the cleanliness and orderliness of the village. Bedminster is a gem, and the farms around it are among the best in our county. Several Mennonite churches dot the nearby countryside, and if I wanted to show a stranger my county at its best, I think I would take him to Bedminster.

  As the following table shows, Bedminster’s registration has always been strongly Republican, but in 1960 Republican registrations increased and in the final election the party took votes away from the Democrats.

  THE VOTE IN BEDMINSTER EAST

  In a non-Catholic part of Bristol one of the hardest-working Democratic workers, Jack Ward, personally saw to it that 938 Democrats registered to 361 Republicans. On Election Day, Jack personally supervised the voting of almost all registered Democrats. Naturally, he felt assured that he had rolled up a strong lead for Kennedy in his district and so reported to me. But when the votes were counted, the official tally showed that only 682 people had voted for Kennedy, whereas 436 had voted for Nixon. Says Ward, “At first it infuriated me to think that I had been driving good Democrats to the polls, and all the time they knew they were going to vote for the other man. But now I’m philosophical about it. I joke with them and I suspect that if we put up good local candidates next time, they’ll vote with me because they know they cut my throat in the Presidential. And of this I’m sure. If Kennedy does a good job in the White House, come 1964 they’ll be willing to vote for a Catholic, because I know that in their hearts they’re Democrats.”

  Dozens of individual districts could be cited to demonstrate the effect of the religious issue. In Bucks County it is a little easier to trace cause and effect because many voters were willing to state their determination not to vote for a Catholic. And in the later stages of the campaign some Catholics who might otherwise have voted Republican, publicly announced that they were going to switch to Kennedy because of the religious tracts that had outraged them. In my group-discussions prior to the election, I was constantly surprised at the freedom with which people in Bucks County expressed what otherwise would have been private religious conviction, and I was also surprised at the freedom from rancor in which such discussions were held.

  Finally, I would like to state for the record, because I have heard what I am about to say controverted many times, that of the four Catholics I knew best, and two of them I knew intimately, all voted for Nixon in spite of my earnest entreaties that they vote otherwise. They did so for social and economic reasons and I believe they represented many other Catholics in this area. Certainly, in my public meetings well over two dozen avowed Catholics claimed they were going to vote for Nixon and gave good reasons why, but none of these were my personal friends so I cannot judge whether they did so vote or not. My strong reformation friends in the northern end of the county claimed that all such public disclaimers had been ordered by the Pope to confuse honest men, and perhaps I was so confused.

  The vote in suburbia was reassuring. Levittown, instead of repeating the 51 percent advantage it had given President Eisenhower in 1956, gave Kennedy 58 percent of the votes, a swing of 9 percent.

  At Red Rose Gate, for example, where the posh houses are called Country Clubbers ($18,000) and where from outward appearances everybody ought to be a Republican, the vote was only 374 for Nixon and 324 for Kennedy. “A lot of Jews and Catholics live there,” a Republican said, explaining the closeness.

  At the other end of the social spectrum, in Holly Hill, where the houses are Ranchers ($9,000), the vote even in 1956 had been Stevenson 337, Eisenhower 291. This year, with a somewhat larger registration, the vote was Kennedy 473, Nixon 259.

  In Vermilion Hills, where the houses tend to be Jubilees ($11,700) and where the inhabitants seem to be a good cross section of the type of energetic younger people who move into Levittowns and who keep them attractive by tending their lawns and improving their properties where-ever possible, the vote in 1956 was as one might expect, a typical suburbia vote: Eisenhower 667, Stevenson 445. This year, however, as a result of intensive campaigning and political discussion, the vote turned out to be Kennedy 852, Nixon 621. Here the Republican vote stayed about the same, but the Democratic vote nearly doubled.

  Combining the returns from five high-cost Levittown districts, one finds that in 1956 their vote gave Eisenhower 58 percent; whereas in 1960 the same areas with almost the same people voting gave Kennedy 58 percent. It was this unexpected swing of 16 percent in suburbia that enabled Bucks County to cut the normal Republican advantage in half.

  TOTAL LEVITTOWN VOTE

  It would thus seem that suburbia, after an exhilarating flirtation with the social respectability of Republicanism, found the experience a bit cloying and remembered the Democratic party of its parents. One of the explanations I heard repeated many times was, “When we moved out here my wife expected the gracious country living of the magazine advertisements, and we thought that the key to this was joining the Republican party. But when we did join all they wanted was our votes. The gracious country living escaped us and we realized with some embarrassment that we had been played for jerks. Or had played ourselves as jerks.”

  One of the greatest surprises of the 1955-1960 period in the bigger suburbias was the discovery that a community might have enough vital Democrats with reasonably good table manners so that one could vote for Jack Kennedy, retain interesting friends, and still feel as if one were part of a socially acceptable world. Not a little of the credit for this transformation of thinking habits must be accorded to the amazing Kennedy girls, who toured suburbias wearing chic outfits, well-manicured nail
s and flashing white smiles. I had the humbling experience of addressing several very swanky morning affairs in the various suburbias where hundreds of obviously well-placed women listened in bored tolerance while I gave them the pitch, then filed in excited wonder past one of the Kennedy girls. As one of my captive audience said to me as she came away from meeting Mrs. Peter Lawford, “That girl has real class. It’s a privilege to be in the same room with her.” Somehow the class of the Kennedy girls rubbed off onto the Democratic party and in suburbia it once more became fashionable to be a Democrat.

  Whether the Democrats can hold the prodigals is a major problem for the party. One of the reasons why suburbia was willing to consider the Democratic party this time was Kennedy’s youthful vigor. In their own business, professional and intellectual lives, the young suburban families have begun to recognize that a certain amount of raw vigor is necessary if one is to survive. They discovered that the outward appearances of respectability are no substitute for inner vitality. If during its incumbency the Democratic party exhibits no vigor, it will lose these suburban voters. Year by year the average age of voting suburbia is going to increase until a natural conservatism begins to set in. If in the next four years the Democrats do not build strong allegiances, they may lose this powerful voting block forever. It is certainly available to the Republicans and they are going to work hard to win the suburbs back.

  In 1956 the four great suburban counties that rim Philadelphia—Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, Bucks—gave President Eisenhower a total of 384,020 votes to Stevenson’s 199,617, a massive majority of 184,403. In 1960 those same four counties gave Mr. Nixon only 399,028 votes to Kennedy’s 304,192, a majority of only 94,836. The difference is accounted for by the changing patterns of suburbia, and I believe that it has been this shift which has helped the eastern big-city states to swing Democratic. It was not the cities alone that won for Kennedy.