Presidential Election of 1964

The Candidates

Johnson inherited the presidency, preserving Kennedy's legacy and the majority of his staff. The late president's brother, Bobby, remained as attorney general until resigning to challenge Kenneth Keating for his seat in the Senate. Though Bobby Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson had disagreed on many issues, each supported the other in their respective races, further shoring up their chances, their popularity, and the appearance of a unified front to carry on Jack Kennedy's political mission. The appearance was only that, though. Bobby wanted Johnson to make him his running mate, which Johnson adamantly refused to do (Bobby had tried to persuade him against running on Jack's ticket in 1960), and in order to make this refusal public without singling Kennedy out, he announced that none of his cabinet members were under consideration as running mate. Johnson further rescheduled Kennedy's planned speech at the Democratic National Convention, but it had no effect on the future senator's popularity: the speech and short tribute film to JFK are famous now for the 22 minutes of applause that followed.

Although Johnson faced no real competition for the Democratic nomination, Alabama Governor George Wallace, who loathed the president's position on civil rights as much as he had Kennedy's, opposed him. Wallace was unable to be an effective spoiler, though, as usual he performed better than most expected. Race and civil rights were a bigger issue in the matter of the [Page 641]Mississippi delegation than in the primary campaign: Mississippi's Democratic primary had excluded African Americans, and as the southern Democrats saw the national party moving further and further away from them, many refused to support Johnson and his platform, including the Mississippi delegates.

Meanwhile, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party had held an integrated primary open to registered voters of all races, and claimed the right to replace the delegates from the main body of the party, arguing that the whites-only primary should be rendered invalid. The convention was torn on how to handle the situation; it was largely left to the states to determine how to handle their primaries and delegates, especially in the days before the 1968 reorganization. Johnson was already worried about his chances of carrying the south in the November election, though it was not until 1968 that Richard Nixon's “Southern strategy” would specifically aimed at swaying southern Democrats to the Republican Party. The change in the air was unmistakable, and Johnson suspected many of those Democrats would vote Republican when the time came. Refusing the Mississippi delegation would not help his chances.

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