1968 - Nixon vs. Humphrey
Nixon campaigns in 1968; Courtesy of the Nixon Presidential Library
With the U.S. military mired in Vietnam, President Lyndon B. Johnson faces a challenge in the Democratic primaries from an antiwar candidate, Senator Eugene J. McCarthy of Minnesota. McCarthy’s candidacy is financially dependent on a few large donors, including industrialist-philanthropist Charles Stewart Mott, who gives $210,000, and Wall Street financier Jack Dreyfus, Jr., who gives $500,000. In the New Hampshire primary, LBJ bests McCarthy, but only by a surprisingly narrow 49 percent to 42 percent. When yet another anti-war candidate, New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy, jumps into the race, Johnson makes the surprise announcement on national television that he is giving up his reelection bid. That clears the way for Vice President Hubert Humphrey, a favorite of traditional party bosses.
Though he isn’t officially entered in most of the primaries, Humphrey plays a stealth role, using labor unions to funnel nearly $1 million to McCarthy’s campaign in the hope of neutralizing the charismatic Kennedy. That tactic doesn’t work, but after Kennedy defeats McCarthy in the crucial California primary, he is killed by an assassin, throwing the race into disarray. Despite his unpopularity with anti-war Democrats, Humphrey goes on to win the nomination at a tumultuous and violent convention in Chicago, where TV cameras capture the shocking sight of police beating anti-war protesters.
On the GOP side, former vice president and unsuccessful 1960 candidate Richard M. Nixon wins the nomination over Michigan Governor George W. Romney — who shoots himself in the foot with his remark that he had been “brainwashed” into supporting the Vietnam war — and California Governor Ronald Reagan.
The race also features a third-party candidate, Alabama Governor George C. Wallace, a segregationist Democrat. His aim is not to win but to force an election stalemate that would be decided in the House of Representatives, where southern states could use their clout to end federal support of desegregation.
Nixon’s campaign leads the way in fundraising, amassing more than $20 million. Some 150,000 small contributors give an average of $15 apiece, but most of Nixon’s money comes from the well-heeled. A single donor, W. Clement Stone, the chief executive of Combined Insurance Company of America, gives almost $3 million to cover Nixon’s pre-nomination expenses. Fifteen other wealthy donors, who give a combined total of more than $250,000 to Nixon’s campaign, will later be rewarded with ambassadorships.
Nixon’s campaign also takes the fundraising dinner, a tradition invented by FDR fundraiser Matthew McCloskey in the 1930s, to a new level. Nixon’s people set up separate $1,000-a-plate dinners in 22 locations across the nation and then connect them by closed-circuit television, enabling the GOP presidential candidate to rake in $4.5 million with a single speech.
To circumvent the $3 million federal limit on what national political committees can raise, Humphrey’s campaign sets up a network of 95 separate committees, enabling wealthy supporters to spread large sums around. Even so, there’s plenty of grumbling among Democrats about Humphrey’s disorganized, ineffectual fundraising efforts, as he struggles to compete with Nixon. At the end of a televised speech on foreign policy, Humphrey asks viewers to donate to his campaign, raising $300,000. The stodgy Minnesotan also makes an incongruous after-midnight visit to a trendy Manhattan discotheque, where he endures the psychedelic light show and shouts of “You’re beautiful, baby!” to come away with a badly needed $10,000. But in the end, labor union committees prove to be Humphrey’s biggest benefactors, contributing $7 million out of the $10 million that he ultimately raises.
Wallace raises an impressive — that is, for a third-party candidate — $6.2 million. Of that, $4.7 million comes from donors who give $100 or less. Of those who give $100 or more, 75 percent comes from the states of the former Confederacy. His handful of big donors includes L.H. Perez of New Orleans, who gives $5,000. (The New York Times presumes him to be Leander H. Perez, a Democratic politician who was excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church in 1962 for segregationist activities.)
The election turns out to be a squeaker, at least in terms of the popular vote, which Nixon wins by a razor-thin 43.4 percent to 42.7 percent over Humphrey, with Wallace getting 13.5 percent. (In the Electoral College, it’s nearly as close, with Nixon taking 301 votes to 191 for Humphrey and 46 for Wallace.)
After the election, Nixon has $1.6 million in leftover campaign funds, a fact he does not publicly reveal. Nevertheless, he immediately begins to raise more money. It is the start of a secret fund that he will maintain to underwrite spying on political opponents and other clandestine activities.
SOURCES: Bradley A. Smith, “Campaign Finance Regulation: Faulty Assumptions and Undemocratic Consequences,” in Political Money: Deregulating American Politics (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press), 2000; Jeff Jacoby, “Campaign ‘Reform’ Only Made It Worse,” The Boston Globe, October 14, 1997; “Problems of Dollars and Days,” Time, October 25, 1968; “Brief History of Chicago’s 1968 Democratic Convention,” All Politics, CNN, 1997; Bart Barnes, “George W. Romney Dies at Age 88,” The Washington Post, July 27, 1995; “George Wallace: Settin’ the Woods on Fire (1968 Campaign)” American Experience, PBS Online; Associated Press, “Politics: Nixon Aides Say His Campaign May Be the Costliest, Topping $20 Million” The New York Times, October 9, 1968; Mark Green, Selling Out: How Big Corporate Money Buys Election, Rams Through Legislation, and Betrays Our Democracy, (New York: William Morrow), 2002; Gil Troy, “Money and Politics: The Oldest Connection,” The Wilson Quarterly, Summer 1997; “Problems of Dollars and Days,” Time, October 25, 1968; “1968 Presidential Election Results,” David Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections; Fred Emery, Watergate: The Corruption of American Politics and the Fall of Richard Nixon (New York: Touchstone Books), 1995.
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