Democrats nominate JFK, July 13, 1960

[Bernice Moore]

Democrats nominate JFK, July 13, 1960
By: Andrew Glass
July 13, 2011 12:01 AM EDT
On this day in 1960, delegates to the Democratic National Convention, meeting in Los Angeles, nominated Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kennedy as the party's presidential candidate. Kennedy was the first senator since 1920 to be nominated by either party.
He won the nomination on the first ballot, with the support of just under 53 percent of the delegates. His main rival, Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, the majority leader, captured 27 percent, while former Illinois Gov. Adlai Stevenson, the 1952 and 1956 nominee, got 5 percent.
"The political connoisseurs here," wrote Russell Baker of The New York Times, "are talking in awe of the Kennedy machine's efficiency in coolly eliminating every element of the contest before the convention opened." Baker thought it was a dull gathering, "in which all the battles were sham and all the hullabaloo synthetic."
Genuine political excitement erupted, however, after Kennedy secured the nomination, when he chose Johnson as his running mate. Robert F. Kennedy, the senator's brother, opposed the selection, as did many party liberals.
On the day before the delegates voted, Massachusetts Rep. Tip O'Neill had told Kennedy that Johnson was interested in joining the ticket. "Of course, I want Lyndon," Kennedy responded. "But I'd never want to offer it and have him turn me down. Lyndon's the natural choice, and with him on the ticket, there's no way we could lose."
In November, the Kennedy-Johnson ticket won a closely fought contest. It won a popular vote plurality of about 110,000 votes over the Republican candidates, Vice President Richard Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., who had lost his Senate seat to Kennedy in 1952. At 43, Kennedy was the youngest person ever elected to the office; the second-youngest president, after Theodore Roosevelt, and the first president born in the 20th century.
SOURCE: "A QUESTION OF CHARACTER," BY THOMAS REEVES (1991)
© 2011 POLITICO LLC
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/58796.html

[Bernice Moore]

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-histo...presidency