Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [111]
Another reality helping, spinwise, to offset Humphrey’s loss was his victory in the congressional district that included Madison, the state capital, where the University of Wisconsin campus was also located. It was the single district Humphrey carried that was not on the Minnesota border, and for that reason it was judged to be a clear and unexpected upset of Jack Kennedy. Madison was the center of liberalism in the state, and even though Kennedy lost the district only narrowly, it looked bad. Why couldn’t Jack persuade the liberals he so needed to win the nomination that he should be their candidate?
The election-night coverage harped on the religion issue. Kennedy had won in six of the state’s ten congressional districts, the commentators decreed, mainly because Wisconsin’s Republican Catholics, rallying to their own, had crossed over to vote for him on the Democratic ballot.
“Kennedy is, of course, Roman Catholic, Humphrey a Congregationalist, and Nixon a Quaker,” Walter Cronkite reminded listeners. “And some observers think that the election has resolved into a religious struggle.” Sitting on a couch and smoking a small cigar, Kennedy watched Cronkite make this assessment with simmering rage, furious at seeing his victory recast along the very lines that represented a truth about himself that he could never change.
“One of the most elaborate and intense campaigns in the state’s history will end up achieving nothing,” another broadcaster intoned. After all the trudging through the snow, the hand-shaking, and the speechmaking, Jack was being denied the proper credit for snatching Wisconsin out of Humphrey’s grasp. Now the only choice was heading to heavily Protestant West Virginia, where the Democratic primary was scheduled for one month and five days later.
Adversity had again presented Jack Kennedy with a truth and a test. Wisconsin reminded the country of the hazard posed by his religion. He had predicted this himself at the April strategy meeting the previous year. Now the press was rehashing the same old story. Kennedy resented it, and to his sister Eunice, he spelled out the consequences of Wisconsin: “It means that we’ve got to go to West Virginia in the morning and do it all over again. And then we’ve got to go on to Maryland and Indiana and Oregon and win all of them.” He had to keep coming up sevens.
In deciding to throw his hat in the West Virginia primary, Jack Kennedy again had to overrule his father. Ben Bradlee recalled the two of them knocking heads over it. “When the question of West Virginia came up for discussion, Joe Kennedy argued strenuously against JFK’s entering, saying, ‘It’s a nothing state and they’ll kill him over the Catholic thing.’ A few minutes later JFK spoke out. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we’ve heard from the ambassador, and we’re all very grateful, Dad. But I’ve got to run in West Virginia.’ “
Lem Billings saw it as his old school friend’s drive, his compulsion to rise to the occasion. “He knew that if he dropped West Virginia, particularly for a Catholic reason, it would be interpreted as meaning that a Catholic could never be president of the United States.”
Upon entering West Virginia, Kennedy must have felt his initial determination had bordered on bravado. The focus on his Catholicism was having an effect. Lou Harris’s numbers, which had been giving Kennedy a 70–30 lead in West Virginia, now showed Humphrey ahead 60–40. Pierre Salinger knew exactly what the turnabout boiled down to. “The reversal was, of course, produced by the addition of a single word to his poll. Harris had neglected to tell the people in West Virginia in his first one that John F. Kennedy was a Catholic. So we were right up against it there. But if we lost in West Virginia, we were