Kent Courtney - Courtney and Goldwater

Courtney and Goldwater

In July 1960, Courtney organized a "Goldwater for President" rally in Chicago on the eve of the Republican National Convention. He hoped to derail the certain nomination of Vice President Richard M. Nixon as the presidential nominee. Courtney considered Nixon as liberal as nearly any Democrat and also grew disillusioned with Goldwater because he perceived the Arizona senator as too accommodating to the moderates in the Republican Party. In January 1964, Mrs. Courtney wrote about Courtney's meeting with Goldwater after the senator announced his presidential candidacy. According to Phoebe, "Kent told Goldwater that on the basis of the strong anti-communist position contained in his opening announcement that the Independent American would support him."

In April 1961, Courtney sponsored a "Convention of Conservatives" to call again for a new political party. He claimed that Goldwater, who had once called the Eisenhower administration a "dime store New Deal," had been tainted by "socialism". Courtney and seventeen others signed a "Declaration of Conservative Principles." Phoebe Courtney had urged Goldwater to quit the GOP and to campaign as an independent conservative. The Courtneys were outraged when Goldwater said that were he a New Yorker, he would vote in 1962 to reelect Governor Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller and U.S. Senator Jacob K. Javits, both liberal Republicans.

In the 1964 pre-convention campaign, Goldwater's last intraparty rival, Governor William Warren Scranton, Sr., of Pennsylvania, questioned the senator's connections with Kent Courtney. Scranton asked why Courtney, identified nationally as a "radical," was supporting any Republican candidate for president.

Despite their reservations, the Courtneys still voted for Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election over the victorious Lyndon Johnson.