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The 1960 Democratic National Convention was held in Los Angeles, California, on July 11–15, 1960. It nominated Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts for president and Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas for vice president.
Some of the nominees (e.g. the Whigs before 1860 and Theodore Roosevelt in 1912) received very large votes, while others who received less than 1% of the total national popular vote are listed to show historical continuity or transition.
- Overview
- The primary campaign
- The conventions
- The general election campaign
United States presidential election of 1960, American presidential election held on November 8, 1960, in which Democrat John F. Kennedy narrowly defeated Republican Vice Pres. Richard M. Nixon. Kennedy thus became the first Roman Catholic and the youngest person ever elected president. Kennedy was also the first president born in the 20th century.
The campaign began in earnest in January 1960, when Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts and Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota announced their candidacies for the Democratic nomination. From January until the West Virginia primary in May, Kennedy and Humphrey crisscrossed the country in quest of delegate votes for the Democratic convention. Other Democratic candidates, avowed or unavowed, included Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, the Democratic leader in the Senate; Sen. Stuart W. Symington of Missouri, former secretary of the air force; and Adlai E. Stevenson, former governor of Illinois, who had been the Democratic nominee in 1952 and 1956.
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On the Republican side there was little doubt that their nominee would be Nixon. Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York, who had indicated late in 1959 that he might seek the Republican nomination, withdrew in late December in the face of almost total opposition by Republican Party leaders. Nixon entered some of the primaries, but only to demonstrate his vote-getting abilities. He never faced any serious opposition.
Throughout the primaries and the fall campaign, Kennedy’s religion was a dominant issue. He would become only the second Roman Catholic ever to be nominated for president by a major party (the first was Democratic Gov. Al Smith of New York, who lost to Herbert Hoover in 1928). Some Protestant ministers and prominent laymen expressed fears that a Catholic president would be under the domination of the pope and would not always be free to act in the best interests of the country, charges which Kennedy denied.
Kennedy and Humphrey were the only major Democratic contenders to enter presidential primaries in 1960. Their first significant primary was in Wisconsin in April. Both Humphrey and Kennedy campaigned energetically in that state, which borders Humphrey’s home state of Minnesota. Kennedy won easily and was especially strong in Milwaukee and other areas where there were large numbers of Catholic voters. A month later Kennedy all but eliminated Humphrey from consideration by defeating him in West Virginia, a heavily Protestant state, proving that he could win in a state with few Catholics.
Kennedy went to the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, held July 11–15, 1960, as the front-runner for the nomination, with some 600 delegates of the 761 needed for nomination secured. Johnson, however, hoped to wrest the nomination from Kennedy. Nevertheless, Kennedy won the nomination on the first ballot, with 806 votes. Kennedy then surprised most of his supporters by picking Johnson as his vice presidential running mate. The selection was generally interpreted as a move to hold the South, where opposition to Kennedy’s religion was strong and where the traditional Democratic leanings of the voters were changing. The party platform adopted at Los Angeles promised to expand the country’s defense and foreign aid programs. It also committed the Democratic Party, controversially, to civil rights. In his acceptance speech, Kennedy said the American people needed to be prepared to sacrifice in the years ahead. There were, he said, stimulating “new frontiers” to be crossed by the United States.
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Two weeks later, in Chicago, the Republicans nominated Nixon. Nixon chose as his running mate Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., a former U.S. senator from Massachusetts. Throughout the administration of Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953–61), Lodge—whose grandfather had 30 years earlier led the Senate opposition to U.S. participation in the League of Nations—was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and as such the principal U.S. spokesman in that world organization. Leaders of both parties considered Lodge a formidable choice.
Presidential posturing began in earnest when the U.S. Congress reconvened in August, after the political conventions had been concluded. Both nominees were principal figures in the session, which was held in a politically charged atmosphere. As vice president, Nixon presided over the Senate. He also was a key figure in determining Republican strategy in a Congress that was controlled by the Democrats. As a senator from Massachusetts and as an author of the minimum-wage bill that was one of the principal measures to be acted upon during the session, Kennedy had an important stake in seeing to it that the achievements of the session were substantial.
The legislative achievements of Congress were mixed, but, by the time the traditional presidential campaign season kicked off on Labor Day in September, Nixon’s and Kennedy’s responsibilities in Congress were all but forgotten. At the time, the presidential campaign was the longest and the most intensive ever held in the United States. Crisscrossing the country on planes, trains, automobiles, and buses, Nixon and Kennedy were speaking, shaking hands, and conferring with politicians from coast to coast for most of September, for all of October, and for the seven days of November preceding the election.
Kennedy tackled the election issue of his Catholicism in a speech to a group of Protestant ministers in Houston. In that speech, on September 12, he declared:
I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish—where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source—where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials—and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.
An unprecedented series of four television debates between the two nominees constituted the highlight of the campaign. A provision of the Federal Communications Act had been suspended by Congress earlier in the year to permit the networks to broadcast the debates without having to provide equal time for candidates of minor parties. Although the debates were sometimes compared to the historic debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas (see also Lincoln-Douglas debates), they were more in the nature of joint press conferences, with reporters asking questions. They did, however, provide voters with an opportunity to compare the two candidates. Although Nixon showed a mastery of the issues, it is generally agreed that Kennedy, with his relaxed and self-confident manner, as well as his good looks (in contrast to Nixon’s “five o’clock shadow”), benefited the most from the exchanges. An estimated 85–120 million Americans watched one or more of the debates.
Kennedy and Nixon both used set speeches in their public appearances. Kennedy said that the United States was falling behind the Soviet Union in the race for world supremacy and that the United States must “do better.” He pointed to the regime of Fidel Castro in Cuba—“just ten minutes by jet from the United States.” Kennedy also stressed the need for programs to deal with unemployment in chronically depressed areas and for more rapid U.S. economic growth. Nixon, the first presidential nominee to campaign in every state, emphasized that he would carry on the basic policies of the Eisenhower administration, but he also indicated that he would improve upon them in such areas as welfare programs, foreign aid, and defense. Eisenhower, who went on a “nonpolitical” inspection tour of the country in mid-October, took an active part in the last week of the campaign, when Eisenhower and Nixon appeared together in New York City. Until then, however, the president had seemed to stay in the background.
Full text and audio mp3 and video of John F. Kennedy's 1960 Democratic National Convention Address.
July 11 to 15, 1960. Nominated: John F Kennedy of Massachusetts for President. Nominated: Lyndon B Johnson of Texas for Vice President. Senator Kennedy had worked tirelessly for the nomination from the time of the 56 election. Kennedy had won the majority of the primaries.
The Museum recreates the sights and sounds of the 1960 Democratic National Convention and the main streets of America traveled by candidates Kennedy and Nixon. Listen as Senator John F. Kennedy accepts his party’s nomination at the 1960 Democratic National Convention.
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1960s. By 1968, primaries played a larger role in American politics. That turbulent year (and, for the Democrats, riotous convention) led both parties to find ways to increase popular participation in the nomination process. By 2000, Democrats held 44 primaries, after only holding 16 in 1960. Since 1968, neither party has nominated a