JFK, LBJ, and the Democratic Party

CHAPTER THREE. The 1960 Election: Rivals and Allies

CHAPTER THREE The 1960 Election: Rivals and Allies The key policy issues, political actors, and results of the 1958 midterm elections were major influences on the initial competition and eventual cooperation between JFK and LBJ during the 1960 presidential campaign. Unlike LBJ, Kennedy proved his ability to adapt to and manipulate the political climate and forces of the late 1950s in his successful strategy to win the Democratic presidential nomination. But JFK later realized how essential LBJ was as a running mate to energize and unite the Democratic party enough to win the 1960 presidential election by a razor-thin margin. Labor reform, essentially amending the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, dominated the 1958 campaign season. There had been a steady growth in the number and percentage of working Americans belonging to labor unions, the AFL-CIO merged in 1955, and journalists conducted sensationalized investigations of local labor union corruption, especially collusion with gangsters.1 The impetus that Senator Estes Kefauver’s 1952 presidential candidacy had received from his televised committee hearings on organized crime and the public attention aroused by the highly acclaimed movie On the Waterfront made it likely that the Senate would conduct similar committee hearings on labor racketeering.2 Consequently, in February 1957, a Senate select committee on labor racketeering chaired by John McClellan of Arkansas, a conservative Democrat who had voted for the Taft-Hartley Act, was convened. It initially appeared that an active, televised role on such a committee would be detrimental to the presidential ambition of a pro-union, nonsouthern Democrat. The McClellan committee’s investigations would inevitably be embarrassing to labor unions and arouse the antagonism of the two most powerful labor leaders at Democratic national conventions , AFL-CIO president George Meany and UAW president Walter Reuther.3 JFK, however, recognized his membership on this select committee and chairmanship of a labor subcommittee as excellent opportunities for his presidential candidacy. Bolstered by a very favorable rating by the AFL-CIO’s Committee on Political Education (COPE) and a deferential, admiring constituency in Massachusetts as he ran for reelection, Kennedy had the freedom to develop and maneuver a moderate, reformist policy direction.4 In pursuing this objective, 39 JFK, LBJ, AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 40 JFK benefited from the fact that his policy position on the McClellan committee was midway between the tougher labor reforms proposed by Republicans Barry Goldwater and Karl Mundt and the blatantly pro-union criticism of this investigation by Democratic Senator Patrick McNamara of Michigan. McNamara was a former union official and staunch defender of the UAW who eventually resigned from the McClellan committee in protest.5 JFK’s brother Robert was the chief counsel of the McClellan committee and conducted the most outspoken, relentless televised questioning of union officials, especially James R. Hoffa, president of the Teamster’s Union. From the perspective of television viewers, JFK was calmer and more judicious than the crusading , impassioned RFK, but both projected the appealing image to suburban voters of independent-minded, reformist young Democrats who were not beholden to labor bosses. Actually, the Kennedys, unlike the committee’s chairman, John McClellan, were able to dominate the direction of the investigation so that it primarily focused on the Teamsters and avoided an equally extensive investigation of the UAW, which earned RFK and JFK the gratitude and trust of Walter Reuther.6 Considering JFK’s presidential ambition, the Teamsters were a safe target for the McClellan committee since Reuther, Meany, and national labor leaders had already perceived it as a disreputable, renegade union and expelled it from the AFL-CIO in 1957.7 This investigation also provided JFK with an opportunity to achieve an asset lacking so far in his Senate career and conducive to a serious presidential candidacy. He could now demonstrate legislative leadership by authoring and guiding a bill on a prominent policy issue from its inception to its enactment. JFK needed a bill that would be warily acceptable to the blue-collar Democratic electoral base in a presidential election, especially the AFL-CIO’s national leadership , and satisfying to middle-class, pro-Eisenhower split-ticket voters who wanted bipartisan centrism in labor reform. Consequently, JFK co-sponsored a labor reform bill with Senator Irving Ives of New York in 1958. Ives was a liberal Republican and vice chairman of the McClellan committee who chose not to run for reelection in 1958.8 The Kennedy-Ives bill’s content contained strict financial disclosure requirements for unions, and...