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The Spirit of '56Page 4 of 4 -- Kefauver had better luck with Humphrey. He caught the distraught senator, weeping over his impending defeat, off the convention floor and begged for his help. He got it. Minnesota gave all 30 of its votes, which had previously been Humphrey's, to Kefauver on the second ballot. But Kefauver's momentum was offset by an unusual stampede to Kennedy among the Southern delegations. Because both Kefauver and Gore were anathema, prominent segregationists such as Birmingham's Bull Connor (who would unleash police dogs on black demonstrators in 1963) Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina (who had led the Dixiecrat revolt in 1948 and would leave the Democratic Party in 1964) and Senator John Stennis of Mississippi joined JFK's ranks on the floor.
When Senator Lyndon Johnson announced that Texas, operating on the unit rule, would cast all 56 of its votes "for the fighting sailor who wears the scars of battle," Kennedy moved to within 35 votes of victory. He began dressing for a triumphant appearance. But turmoil struck inside the Tennessee delegation, which already had two candidates (Gore and Kefauver) and a governor, Frank Clement, who yearned for the vice-presidential nomination. Seeing Tennessee's chance to place a native son on the ticket imperiled by the Kennedy surge, Silliman Evans Jr., publisher of The (Nashville) Tennessean, took matters into his own hands. Literally. He cornered Gore in a bar set up by the railroad industry off the floor, grabbed the senator by his lapels, reminded him that he had been "made" by Silliman Evans Sr., and would be broken by Silliman Evans Jr. if he didn't get out of the race. "You'll never get The Tennessean's support for anything again, not even dogcatcher," he said to Gore. Gore decided to drop out. When Clement, who disliked Kefauver intensely, was told the news, he sighed, "Oh, no. Not Kefauver." But it was Clement's duty to announce that his rival had his state's votes. Tennessee switched its 32 votes from Gore to Kefauver and a mighty roar thundered through the hall. Because there was no official scoreboard operating to show the tally, delegates tried to keep count by scribbling figures on the backs of envelopes and scraps of paper. At one point, the Chicago Daily News reported, both Kennedy and Kefauver were tied with 666 votes each, just short of the magic number. But there was to be one more decisive turn, one which has never been fully explained. Representative John McCormack of Massachusetts, who would succeed Rayburn as House Speaker, was seen whispering with a leader of the Missouri delegation. Though nominally a Kennedy supporter, McCormack was still smarting from a defeat at Kennedy's hands at a state convention earlier in the summer. McCormack shouted at Rayburn, who held the gavel and was trying to decide which state to recognize. "Sam!" McCormack yelled. "Missouri!" Rayburn recognized Missouri, which switched 36 of its 38 votes to Kefauver. The move triggered a rush by other states to push Kefauver's total over the top. Suddenly, it was over. Kennedy came to the floor and asked for Kefauver to be put on the ticket by acclamation. Stevenson, watching on TV at a downtown hotel, was said to have slumped in disappointment. The Democratic ticket was doomed that year, but James MacGregor Burns wrote of the convention developments in his 1961 biography, "John Kennedy": "The dramatic race had glued millions to their television sets. Kennedy's near-victory and sudden loss . . . struck at people's hearts in living rooms across the nation. In this moment of triumphant defeat, his campaign for the presidency was born." It is a measure of how far conventions have fallen that the last suspenseful moment came at the 1980 Republican convention when Ronald Reagan briefly considered making Gerald Ford his running mate. And that the last memorable burst of spontaneous cheering erupted at the 1988 Democratic convention when a grown-up Bill Clinton declared that his interminable keynote address was nearing its conclusion.
Curtis Wilkie covered seven presidential campaigns for the Globe. He now holds the Kelly Cook chair in journalism at the University of Mississippi. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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