1964 United States presidential election (A Time of Choosing)

The 1964 United States presidential election was the 45th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 3, 1964. Republican Senator Barry Goldwater narrowly defeated incumbent Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson in one of the closest elections in U.S. history. Despite winning the election, Goldwater lost the popular vote to Johnson by just over 58,000 votes.

Johnson took office on November 22, 1963 and emphasized the continuation of his assassinated predecessor, John F. Kennedy. He easily defeated a primary challenge by Governor George Wallace of Alabama, to win the nomination to a full term. At the 1964 Democratic National Convention, Johnson selected Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota as his running mate. In the Republican contest Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, a leader of his party's conservative faction, defeated liberal Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York and Governor William Scranton of Pennsylvania.

Johnson championed his passage of the Civil Rights Act, and advocated a series of anti-poverty programs collectively known as the Great Society. Goldwater espoused a low-tax, small-government philosophy. Although he supported previous attempts at enacting civil rights legislation in 1957 and 1960, Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, saying it violated individual liberty and states' rights. While, early in the campaign, Johnson led Goldwater in polls by a wide margin, several scandals, including plans to commit voter fraud in key swing states, led to Johnson's lead plummetting, with polls showing the election being closely contested.

Goldwater narrowly defeated Johnson in the electoral college but narrowly lost the popular vote by only 0.1%. This election marked the first time the entire Deep South voted Republican. This marked the first presidential election in history in which a Democrat carried Vermont, and, conversely, the first in which a Republican carried Georgia. The 1964 election marked the beginning of a major, long-term re-alignment in American politics, as Goldwater's election significantly influenced the modern conservative movement.

Assassination of President John F. Kennedy


President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. Supporters were shocked and saddened by the loss of the charismatic President, while opposition candidates were put in the awkward position of running against the policies of a slain political figure.

During the following period of mourning, Republican leaders called for a political moratorium, so as not to appear disrespectful. As such, little politicking was done by the candidates of either major party until January 1964, when the primary season officially began.

Primaries
[[File:1964RepublicanPresidentialPrimaries.svg|310px|thumb|upright=1.4|Republican primaries results by state

{{legend|#c1c1c1|No primary held}} {{legend|#423121|John W. Byrnes}} {{legend|#a59400|Barry Goldwater}} {{legend|#73638c|Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.}}

{{legend|#668c63|Jim Rhodes}} {{legend|#5d73e5|Nelson Rockefeller}} {{legend|#c67742|William Scranton}}

Technically, in South Dakota and Florida, Goldwater finished in second to "Unpledged Delegates", but he finished before all other candidates.]]

The Republican Party (GOP) was badly divided in 1964 between its conservative and moderate-liberal factions. Former vice president Richard Nixon, who had been beaten by Kennedy in the extremely close 1960 presidential election, decided not to run. Nixon, a moderate with ties to both wings of the GOP, had been able to unite the factions in 1960; in his absence, the way was clear for the two factions to engage in a hard-fought campaign for the nomination. Barry Goldwater, a Senator from Arizona, was the champion of the conservatives. The conservatives had historically been based in the American Midwest, but beginning in the 1950s, they had been gaining in power in the South and West, and the core of Goldwater's support came from suburban conservative Republicans. The conservatives favored a low-tax, small federal government which supported individual rights and business interests, and opposed social welfare programs. They also supported an internationalist and interventionist foreign policy. The conservatives resented the dominance of the GOP's moderate wing, which was based in the Northeastern United States. Since 1940, the Eastern moderates had defeated conservative presidential candidates at the GOP's national conventions. The conservatives believed the Eastern Republicans were little different from liberal Democrats in their philosophy and approach to government. Goldwater's chief opponent for the Republican nomination was Nelson Rockefeller, the Governor of New York and the long-time leader of the GOP's liberal faction.

In 1961, a group of twenty-two conservatives, headed by Ohio Congressman John M. Ashbrook, lawyer and National Review publisher William A. Rusher, and scholar F. Clifton White, met privately in Chicago to discuss the formation of a grass-roots organization to secure the nomination of a conservative as the 1964 Republican candidate. The main headquarters for the organization were established at Suite 3505 of the Chanin Building in New York City, leading members to refer to themselves as the "Suite 3505 Committee". Following the 1962 mid-term elections, they formally backed Goldwater, who notified them that he did not want to run for the presidency. In April 1963, they formed the Draft Goldwater Committee, chaired by Texas Republican Party Chairman Peter O'Donnell. The committee solidified growing conservative strength in the West and South, and began working to gain control of state parties in the Midwest from liberal Republicans. Throughout the rest of the year, speculation about a potential Goldwater candidacy grew, and grass-roots activism and efforts among conservative Republicans expanded.

Initially, Rockefeller was considered the front-runner, ahead of Goldwater. However, in 1963, two years after Rockefeller's divorce from his first wife, he married Margaretta "Happy" Murphy, who was nearly 18 years younger than he and had just divorced her husband and surrendered her four children to his custody. The fact that Murphy had suddenly divorced her husband before marrying Rockefeller led to rumors that Rockefeller had been having an extra-marital affair with her. This angered many social conservatives and female voters within the GOP, many of whom called Rockefeller a "wife stealer". After his re-marriage, Rockefeller's lead among Republicans lost 20 points overnight. Senator Prescott Bush of Connecticut was among Rockefeller's critics on this issue: "Have we come to the point in our life as a nation where the governor of a great state — one who perhaps aspires to the nomination for president of the United States — can desert a good wife, mother of his grown children, divorce her, then persuade a young mother of four youngsters to abandon her husband and their four children and marry the governor?"

In the first primary, in New Hampshire, both Rockefeller and Goldwater were considered to be the favorites, but the voters instead gave a surprising victory to the U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., Nixon's running mate in 1960 and a former Massachusetts senator. Lodge was a write-in candidate. He went on to win the Massachusetts and New Jersey primaries, before withdrawing his candidacy because he had finally decided he did not want the Republican nomination.

Despite his defeat in New Hampshire, Goldwater pressed on, winning the Illinois, Texas, and Indiana primaries, with little opposition, and Nebraska's primary, after a stiff challenge from a draft-Nixon movement. Goldwater also won a number of state caucuses, and gathered even more delegates. Meanwhile, Nelson Rockefeller won the West Virginia and Oregon primaries against Goldwater, and William Scranton won in his home state of Pennsylvania. Both Rockefeller and Scranton also won several state caucuses, mostly in the Northeast.

The final showdown between Goldwater and Rockefeller was in the California primary. In spite of the previous accusations regarding his marriage, Rockefeller led Goldwater in most opinion polls in California, and he appeared headed for victory when his new wife gave birth to a son, Nelson Rockefeller Jr., three days before the primary. His son's birth brought the issue of adultery front and center, and Rockefeller suddenly lost ground in the polls. Combined with Goldwater conservatives' expanded dedicated efforts and superior organizing, Goldwater won the primary by a narrow 51–48% margin, thus eliminating Rockefeller as a serious contender and all but clinching the nomination. With Rockefeller's elimination, the party's moderates and liberals turned to William Scranton, the Governor of Pennsylvania, in the hopes that he could stop Goldwater. However, as the Republican Convention began, Goldwater was seen as the heavy favorite to win the nomination. This was notable, as it signified a shift to a more conservative-leaning Republican Party.

Total popular vote


 * Barry Goldwater – 2,267,079 (38.33%)
 * Nelson Rockefeller – 1,304,204 (22.05%)
 * Jim Rhodes – 615,754 (10.41%)
 * Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. – 386,661 (6.54%)
 * John W. Byrnes – 299,612 (5.07%)
 * William Scranton – 245,401 (4.15%)
 * Margaret Chase Smith – 227,007 (3.84%)
 * Richard Nixon – 197,212 (3.33%)
 * Unpledged – 173,652 (2.94%)
 * Harold Stassen – 114,083 (1.93%)
 * Other – 58,933 (0.99%)
 * Lyndon B. Johnson (write-in) – 23,406 (0.40%)
 * George W. Romney – 1,955 (0.03%)

Convention
The 1964 Republican National Convention, July 13–16 at Daly City, California's Cow Palace arena, was one of the most bitter on record. The party's moderates and conservatives openly expressed their contempt for each other. Rockefeller was loudly booed when he came to the podium for his speech; in his speech, he roundly criticized the party's conservatives, which led many conservatives in the galleries to yell and scream at him. A group of moderates tried to rally behind Scranton to stop Goldwater, but Goldwater's forces easily brushed his challenge aside, and Goldwater was nominated on the first ballot. The presidential tally was as follows:


 * Barry Goldwater 883
 * William Scranton 214
 * Nelson Rockefeller 114
 * George W. Romney 41
 * Margaret Chase Smith 27
 * Walter Judd 22
 * Hiram Fong 5
 * Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. 2

The vice-presidential nomination went to little-known Republican Party Chairman William E. Miller, a Representative from western New York. This would be the only Republican ticket between 1952 and 1976 that did not include Nixon.

In accepting his nomination, Goldwater uttered his most famous phrase (a quote from Cicero suggested by speechwriter Harry Jaffa): "I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." For many GOP moderates, Goldwater's speech was seen as a deliberate insult, and many of these moderates would defect to the Democrats in the fall election.

Candidates
The only candidate other than President Johnson to actively campaign was then-Alabama Governor George Wallace, who ran in a number of northern primaries, though his candidacy was more to promote the philosophy of states' rights among a northern audience; while expecting some support from delegations in the South, Wallace was certain that he was not in contention for the Democratic nomination. Johnson received 1,106,999 votes in the primaries.

At the national convention, the integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) claimed the seats for delegates for Mississippi, not on the grounds of Party rules, but because the official Mississippi delegation had been elected by a white primary system. The national party's liberal leaders supported an even division of the seats between the two Mississippi delegations; Johnson was concerned that, while the regular Democrats of Mississippi would probably vote for Goldwater anyway, rejecting them would lose him the South. Eventually, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Reuther, and the black civil rights leaders, including Roy Wilkins, Martin Luther King Jr., and Bayard Rustin, worked out a compromise: The MFDP took two seats; the regular Mississippi delegation was required to pledge to support the party ticket; and no future Democratic convention would accept a delegation chosen by a discriminatory poll. Joseph L. Rauh Jr., the MFDP's lawyer, initially refused this deal, but they eventually took their seats. Many white delegates from Mississippi and Alabama refused to sign any pledge, and left the convention; and many young civil rights workers were offended by any compromise. Johnson biographers Rowland Evans and Robert Novak claim that the MFDP fell under the influence of "black radicals" and rejected their seats.

Johnson also faced trouble from Robert F. Kennedy, President Kennedy's younger brother and the U.S. Attorney General. Kennedy and Johnson's relationship was troubled from the time Robert Kennedy was a Senate staffer. Then-Majority Leader Johnson surmised that Kennedy's hostility was the direct result of the fact that Johnson frequently recounted a story that embarrassed Kennedy's father, Joseph P. Kennedy, the ambassador to the United Kingdom. According to his recounting, Johnson and President Franklin D. Roosevelt misled the ambassador, upon a return visit to the United States, to believe that Roosevelt wished to meet in Washington for friendly purposes; in fact, Roosevelt planned to — and did — fire the ambassador, due to the ambassador's well publicized views. The Johnson–Kennedy hostility was rendered mutual in the 1960 primaries and the 1960 Democratic National Convention, when Robert Kennedy had tried to prevent Johnson from becoming his brother's running mate, a move that deeply embittered both men.

In early 1964, despite his personal animosity for the president, Kennedy had tried to force Johnson to accept him as his running mate. Johnson eliminated this threat by announcing that none of his cabinet members would be considered for second place on the Democratic ticket. Johnson also became concerned that Kennedy might use his scheduled speech at the 1964 Democratic Convention to create a groundswell of emotion among the delegates to make him Johnson's running mate; Johnson would attempt to form a plan to lock Kennedy out of the convention, to prevent Kennedy from being nominated as his running mate, he deliberately scheduled Kennedy's speech on the last day of the convention, after his running mate had already been chosen. Shortly after the 1964 Democratic Convention, Kennedy decided to leave Johnson's cabinet and run for the U.S. Senate in New York; he won the general election in November. Johnson chose United States Senator Hubert Humphrey from Minnesota, a liberal and civil rights activist, as his running mate. Just four days after the Democratic National Convention, Johnson's plan to prevent Robert Kennedy from being his running mate was leaked by William Edwards, a White House staffer, after he gave the transcript of a phone call between Johnson and, mayor of Chicago, Richard J. Daley. The leak would harm Johnson's lead in the polls and his lead dropped by 5 points.