Kevin White (mayor) - Other Political Campaigns

Other Political Campaigns

In his 1970 campaign for governor of Massachusetts, White won a hard-fought multi-candidate Democratic primary election on September 15, 1970, with only 34.33 percent of the vote and by fewer than a two percentage points more than his nearest opponent, Massachusetts Senate President, Maurice A. Donahue. White lost the November 3, general election against Republican Frank Sargent. White's running mate was Michael Dukakis, who challenged and defeated Sargent for the governor's office four years later in 1974. White failed to win more votes than Sargent in the city of Boston in the 1970 general election. White's campaign for governor was interrupted for several days when he underwent emergency stomach surgery for an ulcer.

In 1972, during the Democratic National Convention, White was on the verge of becoming the Democratic Party's vice-presidential nominee. After a number of better-known politicians, including Senators Ted Kennedy and Gaylord Nelson, and Governor Reubin Askew, turned down the position, White briefly became the front-runner for the post. Ted Kennedy, economist John Kenneth Galbraith and others in the Massachusetts delegation opposed White's potential nomination, because White had supported Maine Senator Edmund Muskie during the presidential primaries. Presidential nominee Senator George McGovern decided to turn elsewhere and selected Senator Thomas Eagleton, who was later embroiled in a controversy over his failure to disclose having received electric shock therapy for depression. Ultimately, the vice presidential nominee was former Peace Corps head, Chicago School Board President, and later Ambassador Sargent Shriver, who had married into the Kennedy family. McGovern commented ten years later, in 1982: "Choosing White would have been much better than what happened . We probably should have overruled" Kennedy and the others.