Jack Kennedy - Chris Matthews [88]
When the public balloting began, Kennedy mustered surprising strength, with the Southern bloc contributing to his numbers. “Texas proudly casts its fifty-six votes for the fighting sailor who wears the scars of battle,” Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson hollered when his state’s delegation was recognized. The first ballot count was John F. Kennedy, 304 delegates; Estes Kefauver, 483; Albert Gore, 178. A total of 686 was needed for the required two-thirds majority.
With the second balloting, momentum further shifted to Kennedy. Once again, he was drawing more support than expected from the Southern states. “I’m going to sing ‘Dixie’ for the rest of my life,” Jack promised aloud as the states reported their counts to the podium. With 646 delegates, victory seemed assured.
Kennedy and Kefauver were now the two main contenders. The other candidates were flagging. The next ballot would be the decider.
Ted Sorensen was watching the broadcast from campaign headquarters at the Stockyards Inn, as was his boss. “The second ballot was already under way, and a Kennedy trend had set in. The South was anxious to stop Kefauver, and Kennedy was picking up most of the Gore and Southern favorite-son votes. He was also getting the Wagner votes. Kefauver was gaining more slowly, but hardly a handful of delegates had left him. Bob Kennedy and his lieutenants were all over the floor shouting to delegations to come with Kennedy. Our television set showed wild confusion on the convention floor and a climbing Kennedy total. But the senator was as calm as ever. He bathed, then again reclined on the bed. The race was now neck and neck, and Kennedy knew that no lead was enough if it could not produce a majority.”
The religious issue was about to intervene. The governor of Oklahoma stayed with the also-ran Gore, his candidacy now dead in the water, rather than back a Catholic. “He’s not our kind of folks,” he told a Kennedy pleader. With South Carolina, Illinois, and Alabama all seeking recognition to shift their delegates to Kennedy, the convention chairman, Sam Rayburn, instead recognized Oklahoma, which switched its Gore votes to Kefauver. Rayburn then called on Senator Gore, who now threw his own dwindling number of delegates to his fellow Tennessean.
Kennedy, who’d been in the lead, could see that the trend had shifted. “Let’s go!” Kennedy said to Sorensen. Once inside the Amphitheatre, he began pushing his way through the crowded floor up to the podium. While some convention officials tried to stop him, urging him to wait for the balloting to be completed, Jack walked onto the rostrum, smiling. Speaking impromptu, he congratulated Kefauver, saluted Adlai Stevenson for allowing the delegates to choose his running mate, and called for making the nomination of Kefauver unanimous.
That moment up on the stage, before the national television cameras, was Jack Kennedy’s unforgettable debut as a national leader.
In a matter of hours Jack had learned a slew of lessons. He’d discovered the need for state-of-the-art communications on the convention floor; the need for an ongoing, accurate delegate count; for a perfect grasp of the minutiae of convention rules. Friendships were important, too. Celebrated senators mattered less. Estes Kefauver had beaten Jack because he knew delegates personally; after all, it had been his second time around and what he himself had learned in ’52 he’d put into action now. Wearing his trademark coonskin cap—a reference to his pioneer ancestors—Kefauver was a familiar figure who had shaken a lot of hands in a great many small towns. Unlike him, Jack Kennedy lacked the experience of traveling the length and breadth of the country itself and connecting with voters face-to-face.
These lessons, absorbed and put to use later, were nothing in contrast with his triumph. He had taken a near-miss for the vice-presidential nomination and converted it, at the moment he raced to the podium, into a career-changing event. He had gone to Chicago one of