Kennedy Cops Key States
Wednesday, Nov. 9, 1960 University Daily Kansan
President-elect John F. Kennedy won one of the closest elections in American history yesterday by capturing six of the seven key states—those with 20 or more electoral votes.
The candidates raced on through the dawn with less than one percentage point of the popular vote separating them. At 4:30 a.m., Kennedy had 28,155,386 to Nixon's 27,290,052—and the gap was narrowing.
But Kennedy stood on the brink of election with 264 of the 269 electoral votes needed already in his pocket. Most of them came from the seven key states.
The Kennedy campaign was geared to strike large industrial and urban areas with maximum impact. The Democratic nominee's concentration on labor issues, his constant hammering at unemployment, his almost saturation exposure to voters in the nation's big cities—these brought him victory in the cities and a total of 180 electoral votes.
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Kennedy took California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas. The only key state to stay with Nixon was Ohio.
Despite a strong effort by Nixon in Dallas, Houston and Fort Worth, and the "right" position taken by Nixon toward the oil depletion allowance, Kennedy was able to squeak through on the popularity of vice presidential candidate Lyndon B. Johnson. A last-minute truce between warring factions of the Democratic Party in Texas also helped strengthen Kennedy's hand.
Texas, considered a tossup by the pollsters and viewed optimistically by the Nixon camp, was the first of the big states to go to Kennedy.
The Kennedy appeal to labor and ventilation of employment issues was not as applicable here as in the more highly industrialized East.
New York, leaning to Kennedy before the election, fell into the Democratic nominee's column shortly after Texas. Loss of the
ELECTORAL VOTE BY STATES
state's 45 electoral votes was a harsh blow to Nixon's hopes.
Both candidates campaigned furiously in New York, but Kennedy won by exerting great efforts in the booming upstate cities. When he left New York City, he had a commanding lead; his campaigning in upstate New York weakened the Nixon counterattack in that traditionally Republican area.
The following tabulations were taken from the leased wires of United Press International at 4:30 a.m. At this time, many of the states were still in doubt.
| | Nixon | Kennedy | Montana | 4 |
| :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- |
| Alabama | | 5(A) | Nebraska | 6 |
| Alaska | | 3 | Nevada | 3 |
| Arizona | 4 | | New Hampshire | 4 |
| Arkansas | | 8 | New Jersey | 16 |
| California | | 32 | New Mexico | 4 |
| Colorado | 6 | | New York | 45 |
| Connecticut | | 8 | North Carolina | 14 |
| Delaware | | 3 | North Dakota | 4 |
| Florida | 10 | | Ohio | 25 |
| Georgia | | 12(B) | Oklahoma | 8 |
| Hawaii | 3 | | Oregon | 6 |
| Idaho | 4 | | Pennsylvania | 32 |
| Illinois | | 27 | Rhode Island | 4 |
| Indiana | 13 | | South Carolina | 8 |
| Iowa | 10 | | South Dakota | 4 |
| Kansas | 8 | | Tennessee | 11 |
| Kentucky | 10 | | Texas | 24 |
| Louisiana | | 10 | Utah | 4 |
| Maine | 5 | | Vermont | 3 |
| Maryland | | 9 | Virginia | 12 |
| Massachusetts | | 16 | Washington | 9 |
| Michigan | | 20 | West Virginia | 8 |
| Minnesota | | 11 | Wisconsin | 12 |
| Mississippi | | 8(C) | Wyoming | 3 |
| Missouri | | 13 | TOTALS: | 192 | 331 |
A—Under Alabama law the 6 remaining votes could be withheld from Kennedy.
B—Under Georgia law 12 votes could be withheld from Kennedy. C—Mississippi unpledged electors could be withheld from Kennedy.
Conn. Leads March to Jack
Despite strong support from President Eisenhower, Nixon lost the state. This loss can be attributed to Kennedy's vigorous campaign tactics, his appeal to the considerable numbers of New York liberals, and his recognition of unemployment problems in the state.
Connecticut, which hasn't gone Democratic since 1944, became the first state to fall to Sen. John F. Kennedy last night, eliciting a cry of "Fantastic!" from Democratic Gov. Abraham Ribicoff.
The candidate "jumped for joy" when the state was declared in his column at 7:31 EST, according to United Press International. His victory in Connecticut gave Kennedy eight electoral votes.
The victory in Connecticut touched
Kennedy had been favored in the state, even though President Eisenhower rolled up a Republican plurality of 129,363 in 1952 and topped that with a plurality of 306,758*in 1956.
Nixon backers then took heart as the vice president rallied, picking up Oklahoma, Vermont, Indiana and Kentucky. These states all went to the Republican nominee between 8:50 and 9:11.
off a wave of capitulations. Massachusetts, Kennedy's home state, was safely in the Democratic nominee's fold by 8:07. South Carolina, thought by many to be going to Nixon, followed at 8:44.
But Kennedy then started another surge, adding Maryland, West Virginia, Georgia and Missouri to his gains. Nixon then took Florida and Arizona, but lost Rhode Island, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, New Jersey, Arkansas, New York, and Delaware as Kennedy pulled away rapidly.
In Michigan, Kennedy, backed by the powerful Walter Reuther and his United Auto Workers, again struck hard at unemployment and captured the labor vote. He carried a fat plurality out of Wayne County (Detroit) and again outlasted Nixon in the rural areas.
Happier days
Kennedy Three Generations From East Boston Shanties
By United Press International
Franklin D. Roosevelt once addressed the Daughters of the American Revolution, with mischievous exaggeration, as "fellow immigrants."
But it is John Fitzgerald Kennedy who today has won the distinction of becoming the first United States president direc"; descended from immigrants who settled in city slums. He is just three generations, a little over 100 years, out of the East Boston shanties of potato farmine refugees.
JOHN KENNEDY has made it on a winning heritage. The two grand-fathers who scrambled from poverty to lace curtain respectability set up a momentum of success. It was put under a new head of steam by the father who never quit fighting to prove a Boston Irishman could be as good, and as rich, as any proper, or Protestant, Bostonian.
The substance and know-how of politics, and the ideal of public service was bred by both nature and design in his close and lively family. They learned politics in the cradle, talked it at the dinner table from childhood, and haven't stopped enjoying it. This is the family tree of Jack Kennedy's heritage:
Patrick J. Kennedy, born in Boston in 1862, 12 years after his father fled impoverished Ireland, was a saloon keeper and ward boss who prospered, became a political power in the city and sent his son Joe to Boston Latin School and Harvard.
John F. Fitzgerald, born in Boston in 1863, was the first native American of Irish descent to become mayor of Boston. His daughter, Rose, was sent to convent colleges in New York and Europe.
"HONEY FITZ," a bouncy, gregarious political natural, lived to sing "Sweet Adeline" the night his lanky, shy young grandson won his first election to Congress.
Joseph Patrick Kennedy, son of Patrick, courted Rose Fitzgerald daughter of Honey Fitz, for seven
That was the night John F. Kennedy trounced out of the U.S. Senate the grandson and namesake of Henry Cabot Lodge, who had beat Fitzgerald in the same contest in 1916.
After World War I, he tore through the galling familiar barrier "only protestants need apply" was a staple of Boston want ads—to win a high post in a Boston investment banking firm.
years and married her, in 1914, in a ceremony performed by William Cardinal O'Connell in his private chapel.
From there, Kennedy struck out on his own, for a profitable flyer in the motion picture industry and a career of stock market manipulation that was to see his millions safely through the 1929 crash, to make more money in whiskey and real estate. Fortune magazine estimated his wealth in 1957 at more than $200 million.
HE HAD MOVED his family to New York in 1926, partly because he needed a bigger base of operations, partly because he hoped to save his children from the discriminations and prejudices that chafed him for all his success in Boston.
JOE KENNEDY, two years out of Harvard, was well on his way to earning his first million before he became 35, which was how he'd planned it. Then 26, he had the year before become the youngest bank president in the country. In 1917 he took a top managerial job with Bethlehem Steel Company's Quincy shipbuilding yards.
Joe Kennedy had had little interest as a young man in following his father's political footsteps. He became, in 1932, a supporter and contributor to Franklin D. Roosevelt's pre-convention campaign. Roosevelt named him first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, an appointment some said was like naming Jimmy Walker to clean up New York. But he presided successfully over the outlawing of market practices that had helped make him rich, and went on to become, again with notable success, the organizing chairman of the
Kennedy demanded his children give the best to everything they undertook and compete to win with each other and the world, at work or play.
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Kennedy once told a reporter he had set up million dollar trust funds for each of his children so any of them "financially speaking, could look me in the eye and tell me to go to hell." It was in no sense an abrogation of parental responsibility for their upbringing.
The other children consider Jack the most intellectual of them all. One sister has suggested he became an omnivorous reader, particularly of history, "because he wasn't strong enough as a kid to go in for athletics as much as Joe and the other boys."
BUT HIS TWO years were full of controversy. He broke with Roosevelt during FDR's third term campaign, taking positions that were branded appeasement and isolationism in relation to the European war.
Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., who was to be killed in World War II, was born at Hull, Mass, in 1915. John F. Kennedy arrived a year and a half later, on May 29, 1917, at the family's Brookline home. Four girls, Rosemary, Kathleen, Eunice and Patricia, followed before the third son, Robert F. Kennedy, was born in 1925, followed by Jean and Edward F., last of the nine, in 1932.
Maritime Commission. In 1938, Roosevelt named him ambassador to the Court of St. James. London, which had snubbed John Adams' wife, took the phenomenal Kennedys to its heart.
Older friends remember that when things were quiet in Patrick Kennedy's saloon, the owner could usually be found with a book behind the bar, reading American history.
Kennedy was reported to have entertained some hope of becoming Roosevelt's successor. There is little doubt he intended that his oldest son would grow up to be president.
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