Word: humphrey
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Dates: during 1960-1960
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...logical guess. Kennedy's big victory had produced a sinking feeling in the camps of his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination. Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey withdrew from the race and hurried home to campaign for the Senate. Texas' Lyndon Johnson and Missouri's Stuart Symington, the candidates who had sidestepped the primaries, now had every reason to form a grand alliance. Each made the usual brave comments. Said Symington: "The primary will not be any more decisive than Wisconsin." Said Johnson: "The nation can start judging on the basis of merit." But nobody was fooled...
Jack Kennedy had figured the West Virginia odds at 60-40-against himself. His odds were right; he had just predicted the wrong winner. When the final returns were in, he had swept West Virginia by 220,000 votes to Hubert Humphrey...
...triumph that confounded the experts. Kennedy had carried all but seven of West Virginia's 55 counties. Despite the pressure of venerable United Mine Worker John L. Lewis for Humphrey, the miners in the depressed coal fields turned out for Kennedy. Despite the warnings of their militantly Protestant pastors, the hillbillies south of the Kanawha River voted for a Catholic; Kennedy, in fact, brought his campaign to a climax with a statewide Sunday evening television assurance that if any President of the U.S. took "dictation" from anyone, the Pope included, it would be contrary to his oath of office...
Razzle-Dazzle. Reporters, pollsters and politicos who had predicted a narrow Humphrey victory (although most had hedged their bets in the last days by noting a Kennedy campaign surge) cast about for explanations. There were several in sight. The smooth, battle-proven Kennedy organization had never worked more efficiently. Most West Virginians thought that the Kennedy moneybags had been used not to buy the election ("We're running for President, not for sheriff," snorted a Kennedy aide) but to finance a razzle-dazzle, all-out fight. In the last 72 hours Kennedy poured out $40,000 for radio...
Negative factors worked for Jack Kennedy, too. Humphrey drew good crowds and held them like an evangelist, but he just could not get across the idea that he was a serious presidential candidate. His silent partnership with Candidates Stuart Symington and Lyndon Johnson did him no good, and the pro-Humphrey campaign of West Virginia's Senator Robert Byrd, an avowed Johnson man, boomeranged savagely. Kennedy even carried Byrd's home town, Sophia, 237-135. As a former Ku Klux Klansman, Byrd probably accounted for a large part of Kennedy's big Negro vote...