United States presidential election of 1972

The Democratic campaign

In January 1971 McGovern announced his candidacy for the 1972 presidential election. Initially, most political observers assumed that the party’s nominee would be Sen. Edmund Muskie of Maine. But McGovern’s team hoped to mount a serious challenge in New Hampshire, which on March 7, 1972, would hold the first primary. A victory there, they hoped, would provide the momentum necessary to capture the nomination.

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Early on, Muskie lined up leading Democratic politicians to endorse him, including Gov. John Gilligan of Ohio; Leonard Woodcock, president of the United Auto Workers; Iowa Sen. Harold Hughes; and Pennsylvania Gov. Milton Shapp. Muskie ran an exhausting campaign that stretched his energies and resources thin. Through January and February 1972, he shuttled between New Hampshire, Florida, Wisconsin and all the other necessary stops. On February 26, in New Hampshire, the pressure began to tell. Mounting the bed of a truck parked outside the offices of the conservative Manchester Union Leader, the state’s largest newspaper, Muskie launched an attack on the paper’s publisher, William Loeb. As he spoke of Loeb’s unflattering remarks about Mrs. Muskie, the senator’s voice cracked, and the crowd saw tears form in his eyes. The spectacle badly dented the image Muskie had tried all year to present—that of a calm, trustworthy, serene candidate. When New Hampshire voted on March 7, Muskie won the hollowest of victories, 46 percent of the vote, far below the predicted 65 percent. McGovern, reaping the benefit of his early start and vigorous organization, was close behind with 37 percent.

In Florida the Democratic battle turned over the issue of busing. In January 1972 a U.S. District Court judge merged school districts in Richmond, Va., and ordered that students be bused to achieve racial balance. Gov. George Wallace of Alabama, an opponent of federally ordered integration, entered the Florida primary and focused squarely on the issue. Florida Gov. Reubin Askew campaigned statewide against having an antibusing referendum placed on the presidential primary ballot by the Florida legislature. Lacking the votes in the legislature to keep the antibusing question off the ballot, Askew managed to have another question added: “Do you favor providing an equal opportunity for quality education for all children regardless of race, creed, color or place of residence, and oppose a return to a dual system of public schools?”

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Askew’s campaign focused the rage of many of his constituents on him, and the Democratic presidential candidates, of which there were 11, found themselves discussing busing much more often than they might otherwise have wished. Mayor John Lindsay of New York City, Rep. Shirley Chisholm of New York, former senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, and Senator McGovern, all liberal candidates, spoke in favour of busing when asked. Sen. Vance Hartke of Indiana, Rep. Wilbur D. Mills of Arkansas, and Mayor Sam Yorty of Los Angeles, although on the ballot, were not campaigning actively. Senator Muskie and Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota bobbed and weaved on the issue. Only Wallace and Sen. Henry M. Jackson of Washington spoke out squarely against busing.

As the race grew more intense, political observers began to doubt that, with 11 names on the Democratic ballot, anyone could win a clear victory. George Wallace proved them wrong by taking 42 percent of Florida’s statewide vote and nearly all of the 81 delegates to the Democratic national convention. Senator Humphrey was second, with 18 percent, and got the few remaining delegates. Senator Jackson received 13 percent, just enough to convince him not to withdraw from the race. Muskie, with 9 percent, lost his front-runner status. McGovern, who had written off Florida early, finished with 6 percent. The antibusing referendum passed by 75 percent, and the equal-opportunity ballot question passed with 79 percent approval.

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The Muskie campaign limped on to Wisconsin for its April 4 primary. With busing receding from importance, property tax became central, particularly for the Wallace and McGovern campaigns. McGovern’s year-old campaign organization paid off, as he finished first with 30 percent of the popular vote. Surprisingly, Wallace finished second with 22 percent, buttressed by the fact that some one-third of the state’s Republican voters crossed party lines to vote for him. Humphrey, who had worked 19-hour days in the state where he was supposed to be beloved as “our third senator,” finished third with 21 percent. Muskie finished a distant fourth with 10 percent. The Wisconsin vote finished the candidacy of Lindsay.

Humphrey decided to focus his attention and waning resources on Pennsylvania’s primary. Humphrey’s decision suited the McGovern forces. Their plan called next for intensive work in Massachusetts, considered the most liberal state in the country, where they could expect courtesy if not outright public support from Sen. Ted Kennedy. On April 25 the strategies of both Humphrey and McGovern paid off, and the hopes of Senator Muskie were crushed between them. He finished fourth in Pennsylvania, behind winner Humphrey, Wallace, and McGovern, and finished a distant second to McGovern in Massachusetts. Muskie then withdrew from the campaign.

On May 15, as Wallace campaigned in Maryland, a state he was expected to win, he was shot four times by 21-year-old Arthur Bremer. Wallace survived, but he was paralyzed from the waist down. Maryland’s voters surged out on election day to give Wallace a huge victory, his last of 1972. Wallace received many visits from Democratic and Republican politicians, and many wondered if he would endorse anyone else for the presidency. While he recuperated, many of his supporters began to move in overwhelming proportions behind Nixon’s candidacy.

In the primaries that followed, McGovern continued to build up a lead in convention delegates. He was even more successful in the nonprimary states, where his devoted followers made certain that delegate-selection caucuses voted his way. But that success overrode the much more basic process that was taking place: the Democratic Party was tearing itself apart. One reason lay in the work of the commission that carried McGovern’s name. Founded in the wake of the disastrous and violent Democratic National Convention in 1968, the McGovern Commission put forth guidelines for the selection of delegates. They were designed to open the party’s deliberations to more young people, to African Americans, and to women. The guidelines worked, but they also functioned to diminish the participation of many longtime Democratic Party workers. Prominent national Democrats found themselves in some cases unable to find a spot on their own states’ delegations.

McGovern’s rise made many Democrats nervous. Some were worried about his antiwar views, while others thought that he went against traditional Democratic principles. For many, unfairly or not, McGovern came to symbolize a candidacy of radical children, rioters, marijuana smokers, draft dodgers, and hippies. With the California primary approaching, Humphrey tried to bring all the objections to McGovern together in a last attempt to save the nomination for himself. He excoriated his old Senate friend for his expensive ideas on welfare and his desire to cut the defense budget. It almost worked. Humphrey closed fast in May and early June, but the McGovern organization held on. McGovern won all of California’s giant delegation, and he beat Humphrey 44.3 to 39.1 percent in the popular vote. The margin was not as large as McGovern had hoped for, and the bitterness of the fight, together with the effectiveness of the Humphrey charges, had not been lost on the silent watchers at the Committee to Re-elect the President (which later became widely known as CREEP).