Historical Figure Series: The Remarkable Career of Hubert Humphrey, Part 3
His First Presidential Campaign, His Rise to Power During the Kennedy Adminstration And The Struggle for Civil Rights Continues
In my articles on the Kennedys I made it very clear that part of the reason I had a large amount of contempt for them was because of how their relentless ambition led them to run roughshod over anyone that got in their way. Humphrey was never an enemy in the Kennedy narrative the same way that LBJ and Eugene McCarthy were but he was an obstacle and they had no problem running over them.
I’ve already argued that when John Kennedy ran for the Democratic nomination in 1960 he was by far the least qualified candidate in the field of nominees. And when you compare his track record to Humphrey, who would be his initial rival in 1960, there was truly no comparison. Humphrey had been on the national stage for since the Democratic Convention of 1948. Kennedy had raised his profile when he had contended for the Vice Presidency in 1956 but no one thought much of that at the time. It’s worth noting that while Humphrey had wanted to be Stevenson’s running mate in 1956 because of his admiration for him and his views, the Kennedys had no respect for Stevenson and did precious little campaigning for him in the general election. (Robert Kennedy didn’t even bother to vote for him.)
Humphrey had a far better track record on JFK to that point on every respect, perhaps nowhere more clearly than on the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Where as Humphrey had been actively vital in the legislations being passed, Kennedy had to be arm-twisting into voting for it by Johnson. He took little part in the debate and his remarks were done more to win the support of liberals in the North and persuading the South this would not effect their way of life that much.
Whether Humphrey could have won the nomination had Kennedy not been running that year will never be certain. It is worth noting that even as he considered the campaign, Humphrey himself did not think highly of his chance. He had no organizational status outside Minnesota.
Talking to Theodore White later he said: “I thought there was no more than one in ten chance of me getting the nomination. Still, there was that chance.” He was also realistic enough to think that even if he lost, it would be a moral victory: First, I’d condition the entire political climate of the campaign, and then, second, we would write the platform and…the nominee…would have to accept it.”
Like Kennedy, Humphrey knew his only chance was to win was to prove himself in several of the nation’s sixteen primaries. Up until this point the political primaries affect on the selection of the eventual nominee was still negligible; eight years earlier Estes Kefauver had swept the Democratic primaries but had been rejected in favor of Adlai Stevenson. The party bosses were still in charge of the nomination. Humphrey and Kennedy were using them to prove their electability. Neither would run in all sixteen; Kennedy ended up choosing seven and Humphrey would select five. The other major contenders for the nomination — Stuart Symington of Missouri, Adlai Stevenson, hoping for a draft, and Lyndon Johnson — all chose to sit them out, in their belief the convention would turn to them on a second or third ballot as a compromise.
Humphrey knew that in order to prove himself, he had to choose his primaries carefully: both to earn delegates and to prove his electability. He chose to run in the D.C. and South Dakota primaries for the former purpose. In neither case would victory truly mean much — the former was a heavily African-American bloc that would be committed to Humphrey in general, and he had grown up in South Dakota. Critical in the Humphrey campaigns thinking were the Wisconsin and West Virginia primaries. Wisconsin was next door to Minnesota and Humphrey had occasionally been introduced as Wisconsin’s third senator. West Virginia was chosen for more or less the opposite reason — it was so far away from Minnesota a victory there would be seen as proof he was a national candidate. Oregon’s wide open primary would be considered a good choice for him, but he never got there.
The larger problem was money. Even if he had not been running against the millionaire family, the campaign never had anywhere near enough money to build a serious organization. That was in part of the reason for the campaign in Wisconsin. It was thought of as a “separate, local campaign. That was a mistake. Within a few weeks it became clear his strength rested mainly in the sparsely populated western regions of the state; in the east, towards Milwaukee, he had next to no resources.
It did not help the Kennedys were much better organized and better funded. His organizers struggled to assemble small groups for meeting, but the Kennedy’s could pack ballrooms in the largest cities. Humphrey, a man of working class origins, could not help but be bitter. “Mink never wore so well, cloth coats so poor.” One day while Humphrey was campaigning in a small town, a jet flew overhead. “Damn it, Jack!” he shouted, “Play fair!” This was not hyperbole. Kennedy flew to events in a private plane; Humphrey had to chug across the state in a rented bus.
The Kennedy campaign expected a rout on April 5th. It seemed to be one — 56% to 43% in numbers. The problem came from the breakdown. At the time there were ten congressional districts in Wisconsin. Kennedy won six, but the four he lost had a heavily Protestant lean. In the four districts he had won in a landslide, there was a heavily Catholic lean. There was no way that any reasonable students of politics could view the results as the Catholic vote — the religious issue Kennedy had been trying to not make significant — being essential to Kennedy winning in Wisconsin. The Kennedys knew that Wisconsin had been a Pyrrhic victory.
Humphrey viewed as a moral one and chose to go on to West Virginia. The problem was Humphrey has misread the tea leaves. As he was unable to win in a state that was in his backyard, the bosses would read him as persona non grata as a national candidate. Even if he were to win in West Virginia, from that point on he had no chance at the nomination. All he would do would defeat as Kennedy as a national candidate in the eyes of the party bosses.
Even if Humphrey had wanted to run a true campaign, by the end of the primary he was virtually broke. His entire budget for the state was $25,000, paltry even by the standards of the time. Kennedy might have spent as much as $100,000 in a single county.
Kennedy’s decision to make his religion front and center was a critical part to his national victory and it left Humphrey in a dilemma when it came to campaigning — if he were to highlight his own Protestant background, Kennedy might call him a bigot; if he campaigned on his own beliefs of tolerance, he might encourage this heavily Protestant state to vote for his opponents. The Kennedys showed no compunction when it came to taking the low road. One of their most prominent supporters, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. charged that Humphrey had avoided military service while Kennedy had a distinguished military record. Humphrey never forgave either Roosevelt or Bobby Kennedy, who he suspected of prompting the charge.
On primary day, Humphrey was flattened by Kennedy 61% to 31%. A glum Humphrey announced he was bowing out and then shifted his focus for running to reelection to the Senate that fall.
Humphrey was understandably bitter at the convention in July and part of me truly wonders if that was reflected in how Minnesota’s delegation ended up voting at the convention. The convention essentially voted for him, though it did not effect the outcome. Orville Freeman, the governor of Minnesota put Kennedy’s into nomination. Minnesota’s junior senator Eugene McCarthy put Adlai Stevenson’s name into nomination — and his speech was so rousing that the galleries and the convention floor demonstrated for over an hour and a half. That the bosses had more or less told Stevenson he had no chance at leading the ticket was irrelevant.
Furthermore when it to the Democratic platform on civil rights, the Humphrey bloc of the party got everything it wanted — practically by accident. A Kennedy advisor named Chester Bowles had drafted a forceful and extensive platform plank on civil rights. The Kennedy reviewed the draft without knowing that it was the most extreme version they had presented and that they had intended to use as a starting point for negotiations to compromise from. There is a good chance the neither John nor Robert knew that. When the Kennedy delegates had taken control of the convention, even Bowles was shocked when it ended up being almost completely passed without them even knowing it was their position. The Southern Democrats by this point knew that they were in such a weaker position that they merely filed a minority report that was quickly voted down. In just 12 years, the Democratic Party had come around to the position of men such as Humphrey.
Lyndon Johnson, who had been Kennedy’s most prominent rival for the Democratic nomination, was given a token offer of the vice presidency. Johnson had no intention of taking it and there’s no indication it may have been a genuine offer. This argument has been litigated so many times over the years that I have no interest in representing it here. It’s worth noting one of the reasons Kennedy persuaded the liberal wing was that he wanted LBJ out of the way as an obstacle. Mike Mansfield, the Democratic whip was next in line for leadership, and Kennedy thought he could handle him.
What I will note is that the liberal bloc was appalled by it — but Humphrey was happy for his friend. He then actively went to work trying to persuade liberals to get on board, many of whom including Humphrey’s major ally Joseph Rauh were vehemently against it. The more practical ones saw that Johnson’s presence on the ticket would help win in November in both Texas and the South. However, the moment after he became vice president Johnson would quickly realize that he had lost all power he had held over the Senate and fellow Democrats.
Humphrey’s fortunes, by contrast, had immediately improved with both Kennedy and the Democrats. He convinced a reluctant Adlai Stevenson to take Kennedys offer to become ambassador to the United Nations. Stevenson accepted and would hold the position until his death in 1965. With Johnson’s influence, Humphrey decided to take the position of majority whip. Stevenson argued this would take away his independence, but Humphrey demonstrated his pragmatism: “I have made mud pies and built dream houses long enough. I want to do something.” Now Humphrey was the number two Democrat in the Senate and a leading member of this party’s steering and policy committees. His seniority had made prominent on three major committees, among them Foreign Relations and Appropriations. And as Mansfield more or less abdicated his role as majority leader (“He tried to be effective without being oppressive” Humphrey would say diplomatically) Humphrey was now the man behind the scenes in the Senate.
One could argue that many of the major legislative acts of the Kennedy administration were made law because of Hubert Humphrey. The Peace Corps is credited as a Kennedy accomplishment but it had been a pet project of his for years before that. In the first three months, he increased the minimum wage, passed an aid to education bill and helped with the farm appropriations.
Where he could not make progress was on the issue of Civil Rights and this was in large part due to Kennedy’s decision to approach the issue with building pressure, executive orders and Justice department suits. One of the administrations biggest flaws was that it completely underestimated the brewing discontent among the African-Americans in the South. When the Freedom Rides began in May of 1961, John Lewis, one of those riders said that it was done as a test to the Kennedy administration. When he was told about it, in fact, he thought it would serve as a distraction to a meeting with Khrushchev and cast America in a bad light. He demanded it to be called off, and only after being rebuffed did the Attorney General order federal marshals to Alabama. Civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Ralph Abernathy and Thurgood Marshall publicly made it clear they would not settle for words. Eventually he would order integration of public bus stops but refused to either announce a civil rights bill — or even address it in the State of the Union.
Kennedy’s approach when it came to incremental change pleased few, and even after two years Kennedy only seem to pay attention to civil rights when there were issues and crises. There were plenty of those in the first two years of his administration but all of his actions were devoted to solving the immediate crisis and not long-term solutions. Kennedy was well aware of the balance of power the South had in the Senate, but this did little satisfy those African-American voters who had voted him in 1960. His deference to Southern members of Congress did not help him legislatively; most opposed his domestic policies outright. Only in January of 1963 was a civil rights bill introduced in Congress — and it was introduced by a group of House Republicans led by New York’s John Lindsay.
Kennedy was more or less embarrassed into action by this and the following February introduced a voting rights bill with minor education provision and an extension of the Civil Rights commission, among other minor details. It pleased no one and was swiped at by everyone, especially Republicans like Governor Nelson Rockefeller. At this point Humphrey was using his weekly leadership breakfasts to pester Humphrey and stood firm even when Kennedy publicly rebuked him.
Finally in May, motivated by massive protests in Birmingham in which King had been briefly jailed, Kennedy finally realized he had to draft a major civil rights bill. No one in his administration believed it had a remote chance of getting through Congress before the 1964 election. Even Thurgood Marshall thought Kennedy’s action was noble, but that he was betting his Presidency on the most polarizing issue of the day.
On the day of march on Washington — August 28th — Hubert Humphrey was among the attendees. The administration had been resistant to it most of the way, saying it would alienate voters but Humphrey had advocated for it in the Senate. When Martin Luther King delivered his historic address, Humphrey said it finally seemed possible to pass the President’s bill.
On November 22, 1963 Humphrey and his wife were attending a luncheon in the Chilean Embassy when he received a call from a White House aide about Kennedy’s assassination. Humphrey tried but failed to hold back tear. He muttered to himself as he and Muriel rode through the streets: “John Kennedy is gone” over and over.
That evening when Air Force One touched down at Andrews, Humphrey was waiting for his old friend. Later that evening Humphrey and other Congressional leaders huddled with Johnson in the Old Executive Office Building where Johnson humbly asked for their support. When it ended Humphrey lingered to assure Johnson that he would do everything he could. Johnson embraced him. He needed Humphrey ‘desperately.’
In the next entry we will deal with the first year of LBJ’s Presidency which would lead to the realization of Humphrey’s greatest hopes, legislatively and personally — and which would lead to a permanent souring in his relationship with the man who had been his closest ally for more than a decade and doom his Presidential prospects.