List of 1960 Swing States - Nominations - Democratic Party - Democratic Convention

Democratic Convention

The 1960 Democratic National Convention was held in Los Angeles, California. In the week before the convention opened, Kennedy received two new challengers when Lyndon B. Johnson, the powerful Senate Majority Leader from Texas, and Adlai Stevenson, the party's nominee in 1952 and 1956, officially announced their candidacies (they had both privately been working for the nomination for some time). However, neither Johnson nor Stevenson was a match for the talented and highly efficient Kennedy campaign team led by Robert F. Kennedy. Johnson challenged Kennedy to a televised debate before a joint meeting of the Texas and Massachusetts delegations; Kennedy accepted. Most observers felt that Kennedy won the debate, and Johnson was not able to expand his delegate support beyond the South. Stevenson's failure to publicly launch his candidacy until the week of the convention meant that many liberal delegates who might have supported him were already pledged to Kennedy, and Stevenson—despite the energetic support of former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt—was unable to break their allegiance to JFK. Kennedy won the nomination on the first ballot.

Then, in a move that surprised many, Kennedy asked Johnson to be his running mate. Kennedy realized that he could not be elected without support of traditional Southern Democrats, most of whom had backed Johnson. Kennedy offered Johnson the vice-presidential nomination at the Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel at 10:15 a.m. on July 14, 1960, the morning after being nominated for president. Robert F. Kennedy, who hated Johnson for his attacks on the Kennedy family, said later that his brother offered the position to Johnson as a courtesy and did not expect him to accept. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. and Seymour Hersh quote Robert Kennedy's version of events, writing that John Kennedy would have preferred Stuart Symington as his running-mate and that Johnson teamed with House Speaker Sam Rayburn to pressure Kennedy to offer the nomination. Biographers Robert Caro and W. Marvin Watson offer a different perspective; they write that the Kennedy campaign was desperate to win what was forecast to be a very close race against Richard Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge II. Johnson was needed on the ticket to help carry Texas and the Southern states. Caro's research showed that on July 14, John Kennedy started the process while Johnson was still asleep. At 6:30 a.m. John Kennedy asked Robert Kennedy to prepare an estimate of upcoming electoral votes "including Texas". Robert called Pierre Salinger and Kenneth O'Donnell to assist him. Realizing the ramifications of counting Texas votes as their own, Salinger asked him whether he was considering a Kennedy-Johnson ticket, and Robert replied, yes. Some time between 9 and 10 a.m., John Kennedy called Pennsylvania governor David L. Lawrence, a Johnson backer, to request that Lawrence nominate Johnson for vice president if Johnson were to accept the role and then went to Johnson's suite to discuss a mutual ticket at 10:15 a.m. John Kennedy then returned to his suite to announce the Kennedy-Johnson ticket to his closest supporters and Northern political bosses. He accepted the congratulations of Ohio governor Michael DiSalle, Connecticut governor Abraham A. Ribicoff, Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, and New York mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr.. Lawrence said that "Johnson has the strength where you need it most"; he then left to begin writing the nomination speech. O'Donnell remembers being angry at what he considered a betrayal by John Kennedy who had previously cast Johnson as anti-labor and anti-liberal. Afterward, Robert Kennedy visited with labor leaders who were extremely unhappy with the choice of Johnson and after seeing the depth of labor opposition to Johnson, he ran messages between the hotel suites of his brother and Johnson; apparently trying to undermine the proposed ticket without John Kennedy's authorization and to get Johnson to agree to be the Democratic Party chairman rather than vice president. Johnson refused to accept a change in plans unless it came directly from John Kennedy. Despite his brother's interference, John Kennedy was firm that Johnson was who he wanted as running mate and met with staffers such as Larry O'Brien, his national campaign manager, to say Johnson was to be vice president. O'Brien recalled later that John Kennedy's words were wholly unexpected, but that after a brief consideration of the electoral vote situation, he thought "it was a stroke of genius".

Norman Mailer attended the convention and wrote his famous profile of Kennedy, "Superman Comes to the Supermart," published in Esquire.