1968 Democratic Party presidential primaries

In 1960, John F. Kennedy won the Democratic nomination over Lyndon B. Johnson. After he secured the nomination at the party convention, Kennedy offered Johnson the vice presidential nomination; the offer was a surprise, and some Kennedy supporters claimed that the nominee expected Johnson to decline. Robert F. Kennedy, the nominee's brother and campaign manager, reportedly went to Johnson's hotel suite to dissuade Johnson from accepting.[1] Johnson accepted, and the Kennedy-Johnson ticket was narrowly elected, but the 1960 campaign intensified the personal enmity between Robert F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, which dated to as early as 1953. President Kennedy named his brother to his cabinet as United States Attorney General.

President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963; Johnson succeeded him with tremendous national popularity amid a wave of mourning and sympathy. Robert Kennedy remained in the cabinet for several months amid what Johnson staffers began to refer to as "the Bobby problem": despite the personal hatred between the two, Democratic voters overwhelmingly favored Kennedy as Johnson's running mate in the 1964 election.[2] Kennedy began to plan for a nationwide campaign,[3] and in the informal New Hampshire vice-presidential primary, Kennedy defeated Hubert H. Humphrey in a landslide.[4] In July 1964, Johnson issued an official statement ruling out any cabinet member for the vice presidency.[5] Instead, Kennedy ran for and won election to the United States Senate from New York. Johnson was elected in a landslide.

United States involvement in the Vietnam War began as shortly after the end of World War II. In 1964, President Johnson began to dramatically escalate American military presence after the Gulf of Tonkin incident. General William C. Westmoreland, whom Johnson had appointed to command American troops in Vietnam, expanded U.S. manpower from 16,000 to more than 553,000 by 1969.

As U.S. involvement escalated throughout 1964 to 1966, protests against the war escalated in proportion. Several anti-war groups were founded or expanded during the period.

Anti-war Senator Eugene McCarthy agreed to challenge President Johnson in October 1967, after several better-known candidates (including Robert Kennedy) declined to run.

Amid criticism of U.S. handling of the war from both parties, President Johnson's approval rating sank from a high above 70 percent to below 40 percent by the 1966 midterm elections. The Democratic Party had already begun to split between anti-war "doves" and pro-war "hawks," and the Republican Party gained dozens of seats in Congress.

As opposition grew in 1967, anti-war Democrats led by Allard Lowenstein and Curtis Gans formed the Dump Johnson movement, which sought to challenge the President's re-election. Their first choice was Robert Kennedy, who had sufficiently established himself as a critic of the war and an effective popular campaigner. He declined, as did a series of lesser-known candidates, including Senator George McGovern. Lowenstein finally found a candidate in October 1967, when Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy agreed to challenge the President. At first, McCarthy merely expressed his interest, telling Lowenstein, "Somebody has to raise the flag."[6][7] On November 30, 1967, McCarthy publicly announced his campaign for the nomination.

Kennedy continued to demur, despite pressure from his aides to enter the race and worry that anti-war allies, like George McGovern, would begin to make commitments to McCarthy.[8] On January 30, he again indicated to the press that he had no plans to campaign against Johnson.[9]

In early February 1968, after the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, Kennedy received an anguished letter from writer Pete Hamill, noting that poor people in the Watts area of Los Angeles had hung pictures of Kennedy's brother, President John F. Kennedy, in their homes. Hamill's letter reminded Robert Kennedy that he had an "obligation of staying true to whatever it was that put those pictures on those walls."[10] There were other factors that influenced Kennedy's decision to enter the presidential primary race. On February 29, 1968, the Kerner Commission issued a report on the racial unrest that had affected American cities during the previous summer. The Kerner Commission blamed "white racism" for the violence, but its findings were largely dismissed by the Johnson administration.[10]

However, by early March, he had made up his mind to enter the race, albeit too late to contest the upcoming New Hampshire primary.[11] He may have been influenced by the January Tet Offensive, a victorious Northern assault across South Vietnam, and the February 29 report of the Kerner Commission, which blamed "white racism" for the series of race riots in the summer of 1967 but was largely ignored by the Johnson administration.

On March 10, Kennedy told his aide, Peter Edelman, that he had decided to run and had to "figure out how to get McCarthy out of it."[11][12] However, Kennedy hesitated to enter the race with McCarthy still in and agreed to McCarthy's request to delay an announcement of his intentions until after the New Hampshire primary.[11]

The following candidates ran only in their home state or district's primary or caucuses for the purpose of controlling its delegate slate at the convention and did not appear to be considered national candidates by the media.

• Governor Roger D. Branigin of Indiana (endorsed Humphrey)
• Governor Richard J. Hughes of New Jersey (endorsed Humphrey)
• State Attorney General Thomas C. Lynch of California (endorsed Humphrey)
• Governor Robert Evander McNair of South Carolina
• Governor Dan Moore of North Carolina
• Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine
• Representative Joseph Resnick of Westchester County, New York
• Senator George Smathers of Florida (endorsed Humphrey)
• Senator Stephen M. Young of Ohio (endorsed Humphrey)

The following persons were listed in two or more major national polls or were the subject of media speculation surrounding their potential candidacy, but declined to actively seek the nomination.

• Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts
• Former Governor George Wallace of Alabama (ran third-party campaign)

Running as an antiwar candidate in the New Hampshire primary, McCarthy hoped to pressure the Democrats into publicly opposing the Vietnam War. Trailing badly in national polls and with little chance to influence delegate selection absent primary wins, McCarthy decided to pour most of his resources into New Hampshire, the first state to hold a primary election. He was boosted by thousands of young college students who volunteered throughout the state, who shaved their beards and cut their hair to "Get Clean for Gene."

On March 12, McCarthy was the only person on the ballot, as Johnson had not filed, and was only a write in candidate. McCarthy won 42% of the primary vote to Johnson's 50%, an extremely strong showing for such a challenger which gave McCarthy's campaign legitimacy and momentum.[14] In addition, McCarthy's superior coordination led to a near sweep of the state's twenty-four pledged delegates; since Johnson had no formal campaign organization in the state, a number of competing pro-Johnson delegate candidates split his vote, allowing McCarthy to take twenty delegates.

Despite his desire to oppose Johnson directly and the fear that McCarthy would split the anti-war vote, Kennedy pushed forward with his planned campaign. On March 16, Kennedy declared, "I am today announcing my candidacy for the presidency of the United States. I do not run for the presidency merely to oppose any man, but to propose new policies. I run because I am convinced that this country is on a perilous course and because I have such strong feelings about what must be done, and I feel that I'm obliged to do all I can."[15]

President Lyndon B. Johnson delivers a speech announcing he will not run for re-election on March 31.

Johnson now had two strong challengers, sitting members of the Senate with demonstrated popularity. To make matters worse, polling in Wisconsin showed McCarthy beating Johnson badly, with the latter getting only 12% of the vote.[16] Facing declining health and bleak political forecasts in the upcoming primaries,[17] Johnson concluded that he could not win the nomination without a major political and personal struggle. On March 31, 1968, at the end of a televised address on Vietnam, he shocked the nation by announcing that he would not seek re-election. By withdrawing, he could avoid the stigma of defeat and could keep control of the party machinery to support Hubert Humphrey, his loyal vice president. As the year developed, it also became clear that Johnson believed he could secure his place in the history books by ending the war before the election in November, which would give Humphrey the boost he would need to win.[18][19][20]

After Johnson's withdrawal, the Wisconsin primary on April 2 was effectively uncontested. McCarthy won 56–35%. Kennedy received 6%. Pennsylvania on April 23 was similarly a rout for McCarthy, who took 71% of the vote.

With Johnson's withdrawal, the New Deal Coalition effectively dissolved.

• Hubert Humphrey, who soon entered the race, gained the support of labor unions and big-city bosses, such as Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley.
• McCarthy rallied students and intellectuals, who had been the early activists against the war in Vietnam.
• Kennedy gained support from the poor, Catholics, African-Americans, and other racial and ethnic minorities.
• Conservative "Dixiecrats" tended to support either Humphrey or former Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, who was running in a third-party campaign for the general election.

After Johnson's withdrawal, Vice President Hubert Humphrey announced his candidacy on April 27.[21] Humphrey's campaign concentrated on winning the delegates in non-primary states, where party leaders controlled the delegate votes. Humphrey did not compete in the primaries, leaving favorite sons to win delegates as surrogates, notably United States Senator George A. Smathers from Florida, United States Senator Stephen M. Young from Ohio, and Governor Roger D. Branigin of Indiana.

In Massachusetts, the three candidates faced each other for the first time; however, neither Humphrey nor Kennedy were formally listed on the ballot. As a result, McCarthy won the popular vote easily, and by the rules in place at the time, all seventy-two of the commonwealth's delegates were pledged to him on the first ballot.

On March 27, 1968, Kennedy announced his intention to run against McCarthy in the Indiana primary, although aides told him that a race in Indiana would be extremely tight and advised him against it.[22] Despite their concerns, Kennedy traveled to Indianapolis the following day and filed to run in the Indiana primary. At the Indiana Statehouse, Kennedy told a cheering crowd that the state was important to his campaign: "If we can win in Indiana, we can win in every other state, and win when we go to the convention in August."[23] The Indiana primary thus marked the first open entry of Kennedy into the field and pitted him against McCarthy and Governor Roger Branigin, a favorite son who had backed Johnson and now impliedly supported Humphrey.

During his first campaign stop in Indiana, Kennedy delivered two of a trio notable speeches. First, on April 4, he spoke at Ball State University in Muncie. In this speech, Kennedy suggested the election would "determine the direction that the United States is going to move" and that the American people should "examine everything. Not take anything for granted. Kennedy expressed concerns about poverty and hunger, lawlessness and violence, jobs and economic development, and foreign policy. He emphasized that Americans had a "moral obligation" and should "make an honest effort to understand one another and move forward together." After leaving the stage at Ball State, Kennedy boarded a plane for Indianapolis. When he arrived, he was informed of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr..[24] Addressing a crowd gathered for a political rally on the black north side of the city, Kennedy made a brief extemporanous speech on the assassination to the crowd, calling for peace and compassion.[25] The next day in Cleveland, he delivered prepared remarks entitled "On the Mindless Menace of Violence," elaborating the themes he had addressed in Indianapolis. After attending King's funeral in Atlanta, Georgia, Kennedy resumed campaigning in Indiana on April 10.[26]

Branigan campaigned in nearly all of the state's 92 counties, while McCarthy's campaign strategy concentrated on Indiana's rural areas and small towns. According to Kennedy's campaign advisor, John Bartlow Martin, the campaign gained momentum with Kennedy's visits to central and southern Indiana on April 22 and 23, which included a memorable whistle-stop railroad trip aboard the Wabash Cannonball.[27] Martin urged the candidate to speak out against violence and rioting, emphasize his "law enforcement experience" as former U.S. Attorney General, and promote coordination between the government and private sector to solve domestic issues. Kennedy continued to speak out against the war and in support of the cessation of hostilities and reallocating war funds to domestic programs.[28] To appeal to conservative voters, Kennedy "toned down his rhetoric" as well.[29] He delivered a speech before the Indianapolis real estate board on May 2 advocating for reliance on private enterprise instead of the federal government and arguing that the national economy would be "restored" by the Vietnam War's conclusion. McCarthy, meanwhile, contrasted his approach to conflict of "call[ing] upon everyone ... to be as fully responsible as [they] can be" against Humphrey's ("run[ning] things together indiscriminately") and Kennedy's (a "combination of separate interests ... or groups").[30]

On May 7, Kennedy won with 42 percent of the vote; Branigan was second with 31 percent of the vote; and McCarthy, earning 27 percent, came in third.[31][32] With this victory in Indiana, Kennedy's campaign gained momentum entering the Nebraska primary. In response to the defeat, McCarthy remarked, "We've tested the enemy now, and we know his techniques ... we know his weaknesses."[33]

Campaigning vigorously in Nebraska, Kennedy hoped for a major win to give him momentum going into the crucial California primary. While McCarthy made only one visit to Nebraska, Kennedy made numerous appearances.[34] Though Kennedy's advisors had been worried about his chances in Nebraska, given his lack of credibility on ranching and agriculture policy and the short amount of time to campaign in the state after the Indiana primary,[35] Kennedy won on May 14 with 51.4 percent of the vote to McCarthy's 31 percent.[34][36] Kennedy won 24 of the 25 counties that he visited ahead of the vote; of those, the sole county he lost by two votes was home to the University of Nebraska, where a plurality of students favored McCarthy.[37] Kennedy declared that the results, where two anti-war candidates collectively earned over 80 percent of the vote, were "a smashing repudiation" of the Johnson-Humphrey administration.[38]

In contrast to Nebraska, the Oregon primary was an uphill battle for Kennedy, and McCarthy ultimately triumphed.

In Oregon, the Kennedy campaign circulated material on McCarthy's record; McCarthy had voted against a minimum wage law and repeal of the poll tax in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The McCarthy campaign responded with charges that Kennedy illegally taped Martin Luther King, Jr. as United States Attorney General.[39] Ten days ahead of the vote, Kennedy admitted his message did not appeal well to Oregonians: "This state is like one giant suburb. I appeal best to people who have problems."[40] During a speech he gave in California, Kennedy also admitted, "I think that if I get beaten in any primary, I am not a very viable candidate," further raising the stakes in Oregon.[39] Following that comment, Kennedy campaigned for sixteen hours a day; in the weeks before the election, his campaign canvased 50,000 homes.

On May 28, McCarthy won the Oregon primary with 44.7 percent; Kennedy received 38.8 percent of votes.[41] After Kennedy's loss was confirmed, he sent a terse congratulatory message to McCarthy but asserted that he would remain in the race.[42] According to Kennedy biographer Larry Tye, the defeat in Oregon proved to Kennedy that he needed to take risks and convinced voters that Kennedy was vulnerable to electoral defeat.[40][43] Observers remarked that McCarthy was "back in the race as a real contender."[44]

Meanwhile, in Florida, a slate of Humphrey delegates led by favorite son George A. Smathers easily swept aside McCarthy, who managed only four delegates from two Miami congressional districts.

Kennedy campaigning in Los Angeles (photo courtesy of John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum, Boston)

Kennedy began campaigning in California before the Oregon primary; after his loss in Oregon, California's winner-take-all primary became crucial to both his and McCarthy's campaigns. In South Dakota, he also hoped to simultaneously pull off an upset victory over McCarthy and Humphrey, both from neighboring Minnesota.[lower-alpha 1]

McCarthy stumped the state's many colleges and universities, where he was treated as a hero for being the first presidential candidate to oppose the war. Kennedy campaigned in the ghettos and barrios of the state's larger cities, where he was mobbed by enthusiastic supporters.

On June 1, Kennedy and McCarthy met in a televised debate, which observers generally considered a draw. Though Kennedy considered the debate "indecisive and disappointing," subsequent polling showed that undecided voters favored his performance by a margin of two-to-one.[45] On June 3, Kennedy made a final swing through the state's major urban centers, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego, along with suburban Long Beach, in a single day.

On primary day, Kennedy privately expressed his hope to Theodore H. White that victories in California and South Dakota could persuade party insiders that he was more electable than Humphrey and thus win him crucial support from unpledged delegates. As the results came in, it was clear that Kennedy had achieved his goal with popular victories in the two states. McCarthy, who won the popular vote in New Jersey, made it clear that he would contest the upcoming New York primary in Kennedy's adopted state.

After giving his victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California, Kennedy was assassinated in the kitchen service pantry in the early morning of June 5. A Palestinian immigrant with Jordanian citizenship, Sirhan Sirhan, was arrested. Kennedy died 26 hours later at Good Samaritan Hospital.

At the moment of Kennedy's death, the delegate totals were estimated to be:

• Hubert Humphrey 561
• Robert F. Kennedy 393
• Eugene McCarthy 258

Robert Kennedy's death threw the Democratic Party into disarray. While a large portion of his popular support transferred to McCarthy, his delegates, many of whom were party insiders obligated to Kennedy only by law, largely transferred to Humphrey. Even many of Kennedy's anti-war delegates, remembering their bitter primary battles with McCarthy, rallied around the late-starting candidacy of Senator George McGovern of South Dakota, a Kennedy supporter in the spring primaries. The struggle for Kennedy's delegates would remain a feature of the campaign through its final months, up to the convention vote itself, but Kennedy's assassination made Humphrey the prohibitive favorite for the nomination from that point forward.

Total popular vote:[94]

• Eugene McCarthy – 2,914,933 (38.73%)
• Robert F. Kennedy – 2,305,148 (30.63%)
• Lyndon B. Johnson – 383,590 (5.10%)
• Hubert Humphrey – 166,463 (2.21%)
• Unpledged – 161,143 (2.14%)

Johnson/Humphrey surrogates:

• Stephen M. Young – 549,140 (7.30%)
• Thomas C. Lynch – 380,286 (5.05%)
• Roger D. Branigin – 238,700 (3.17%)
• George Smathers – 236,242 (3.14%)
• Scott Kelly – 128,899 (1.71%)

Minor candidates and write-ins:

• George Wallace – 34,489 (0.46%)
• Richard Nixon – 13,610 (0.18%)
• Ronald Reagan – 5,309 (0.07%)
• Ted Kennedy – 4,052 (0.05%)
• Paul C. Fisher – 506 (0.01%)
• John G. Crommelin – 186 (0.00%)

Primary Map By County (Massachusetts not Included) Hubert Humphrey – Red Lyndon B. Johnson – Yellow (outside of Florida) Robert F. Kennedy – Purple Eugene McCarthy – Green George Wallace – Lime Green Roger D. Branigin – Orange George Smathers – Yellow (Florida Only) Stephen Young – Brown

Hubert Humphrey

• President Johnson
• Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago
• Former President Harry S. Truman of Missouri
• Entertainer Frank Sinatra

Robert F. Kennedy

• Senator Ralph Yarborough of Texas[94]
• Senator Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut[94]
• Senator George McGovern of South Dakota[98]
• Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, the candidate's brother
• Governor Harold E. Hughes of Iowa[99]
• Senator Vance Hartke of Indiana[94]
• Writer Norman Mailer[94]
• Labor Leader Cesar Chavez[94]
• Actress Shirley MacLaine
• Actress Angie Dickinson
• Actress Stefanie Powers
• Actor Peter Lawford, the candidate's brother-in-law
• Actor Bill Cosby
• Musician Sammy Davis Jr.
• Musician Andy Williams
• Musician and actress Claudine Longet
• Musicians Sonny & Cher
• Musicians The Byrds
• Musician Bobby Darin
• Artist Andy Warhol
• Astronaut John Glenn
• NFL football Lamar Lundy
• NFL football Rosey Grier
• NFL football Deacon Jones
• Film and television director John Frankenheimer
• Documentary film director Charles Guggenheim
• Actor Warren Beatty
• Actor Tony Curtis
• Actor Jack Lemmon
• Actor Gregory Peck
• Actor Robert Vaughn[100]

Eugene McCarthy

• Representative Don Edwards of California[94]
• Actor Paul Newman[100]
• Actor Gene Wilder
• Actor Dustin Hoffman
• Musicians Simon & Garfunkel

George McGovern (during convention)

• Senator Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut[95]
• Senator Joseph S. Clark of Pennsylvania[101]
• Governor Harold E. Hughes of Iowa[95]