Political Career
O'Donnell's friendship with Bobby Kennedy found him involved with the Kennedy family's political career already in 1946, when Bobby enlisted him to work for John F. Kennedy’s first congressional campaign, and in 1952 the two campaigned together to get JFK elected to the United States Senate. O'Donnell then went on to serve as JFK’s unpaid political observer in Massachusetts, until he in 1957 was employed as assistant counsel of the 1957–59 Senate Labor Rackets Committee by Robert Kennedy, who had been appointed chief counsel of the committee.
In 1958, O'Donnell became a member of JFK’s staff, and in 1960 he was the organizer and director of John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign schedule. The following year he became Kennedy's special assistant and Appointments Secretary. In this role he functioned in many ways as Kennedy's Chief of Staff, a position that Kennedy never filled during his tenure in the White House.
O'Donnell unofficially advised Kennedy during the planning for the Bay of Pigs invasion as well as during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, and was an early critic of the Vietnam War, advising Kennedy to bring an end to America's involvement in the conflict.
O'Donnell arranged JFK's trip to Dallas in November 1963, and was in a car just behind the president's when Kennedy was assassinated. It was an enormous blow to O'Donnell, who long blamed himself for the death of the president.
After having served as a Presidential Aide to Lyndon Johnson until 1965, O'Donnell tried to win the Democratic nomination for the election for Massachusetts Governor in 1966, losing by only 64,000 votes to Edward McCormack, which was much less than the polls had predicted. In 1968, he served as campaign manager for Robert Kennedy, when Kennedy challenged President Johnson for renomination.
Following Robert Kennedy's assassination in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968, which was an even worse blow to O'Donnell than the assassination of JFK five years earlier, he joined, as did many others in Kennedy's campaign, Hubert Humphrey's presidential campaign, serving as campaign manager for Humphrey as well.
In 1970, he made another attempt to win the Democratic nomination for the election for Massachusetts Governor, but finished fourth in a primary field of four Democrats, with just 9 percent of the vote.
The combination of personal electoral disappointments and the assassinations of his two best friends drove him to increasing levels of alcoholism. He died in September 1977, just months after his wife Helen.
Read more about this topic: Kenneth O'Donnell
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