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  • John F. Kennedy Plays the “Religious Card”:Another Look at the 1960 West Virginia Primary
  • David A. Corbin

The 1960 Democratic Party presidential primary in West Virginia, May 10, 1960, is one of the most important as well as one of the most discussed and controversial presidential primaries in American history.1 The 1960 West Virginia primary is best known as the political contest that made John F. Kennedy the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. “Kennedy won the Democratic Presidential nomination in West Virginia, rather than at the national convention in Los Angeles,” wrote longtime Kennedy aides Kenneth O’Donnell and Dave Powers.2 West Virginia “is the state which sent me out into the world, and you are the people who made me the Democratic candidate for President of the United States,” President Kennedy told a gathering in West Virginia in 1962.3

And the 1960 Democratic Party presidential primary in West Virginia is known as the political contest that paved the way for America’s first Catholic president. With West Virginia being an overwhelmingly Protestant state, and with religion being the “burning issue” of the contest, if Kennedy, who was Catholic, defeated his only opponent, Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (D-MN), who was a Protestant, it would show that religion was no longer a defeating handicap in a presidential contest.4 The religious issue was “buried here in the soil of West Virginia,” Kennedy stated the day after winning the primary.5

Overlooked in the discussions of the significance of the West Virginia primary is that it was the Kennedy forces who made religion the “burning issue” of the campaign. By doing so, they transformed the primary from a simple political contest between Kennedy and Humphrey into a turning point in the life of a nation—a defining moment in the history of the America. And they turned a local “beauty contest” (the primary was nonbinding) into a struggle of national and international consequence. Also missed is why the Kennedy forces played the religious card. They did it in order to counter the combined opposition of JFK’s opponents who had targeted West Virginia as the state [End Page 1] where they could block the Kennedy nomination. Fearing that if Kennedy won the West Virginia primary “there would be no stopping him,” many of the power players in the Democratic Party rallied behind Humphrey in an effort to defeat Kennedy.6 Thus, the stage was set for the showdown that would lead to the other historic happenings of that contest.

Also overlooked is that the 1960 West Virginia primary can be argued to have been the first modern political campaign. Two months before announcing his candidacy for the Democratic nomination, Senator Kennedy wrote in TV Guide of how the “wonders of science and technology” had “revolutionized political campaigns.” Carefully conducted polls, jet planes, computers, and “automatic typewriters [that] prepare thousands of personally addressed letters individually signed by automatic pens” were the instruments of that revolution. Most importantly, was television; what Kennedy called “a force that has changed the political scene.” “[N]othing,” he wrote, “compares with the revolutionary impact of television,” which would make political contests vulnerable to “manipulation, exploitation, and gimmicks . . . and public relations experts.” “TV costs,” he explained, would turn elections into items of “financial costs” and make candidates even more beholden to the “big financial contributors.” Foremost, party leaders would be “less willing to run rough-shod over the voters’ wishes and hand pick an unknown, unappealing, or unpopular candidate in the traditional ‘smoke-filled room’ when millions of voters are watching, comparing, and remembering.”7

In the West Virginia primary Kennedy implemented these “wonders of science and technology” and, in effect, helped transform American politics by making that contest a pivotal political event and, in turn, making primary elections the focal point of presidential nominations. Furthermore, this political contest helped mark the emergence of political campaigns as we know them today, featuring extensive polling, political spin, big money, and television.

When Kennedy began his bid for the presidency in January 1960, many of the powerful members of the Democratic Party opposed his nomination. Some, like former Democratic president nominee Adlai Stevenson, were still...

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