Eugene McCarthy

In 1968, Allard K. Lowenstein and his anti-Vietnam War Dump Johnson movement recruited McCarthy to run against incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson. Reportedly, Lowenstein first attempted to recruit Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who declined to run, then Senator George McGovern, who also declined to run against Johnson (Kennedy would decide to run after the primary on March 16, 1968,[14] and McGovern also later briefly entered the race). McCarthy entered and almost defeated Johnson in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, with the intention of influencing the federal government — then controlled by Democrats — to curtail its involvement in the Vietnam War. A number of anti-war college students and other activists from around the country traveled to New Hampshire to support McCarthy's campaign. Some anti-war students who had the long-haired, counterculture appearance of hippies chose to cut their long hair and shave off their beards, in order to campaign for McCarthy door-to-door, a phenomenon that led to the informal slogan "Get clean for Gene".[15]

McCarthy's decision to run arose partly as an outcome of opposition to the war by Wayne Morse of Oregon, one of the two Senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of August 1964. Morse gave speeches denouncing the war before it had entered the consciousness of most Americans. Following that, several politically active Oregon Democrats asked Robert Kennedy to run as an anti-war candidate. McCarthy had also encouraged Kennedy to run as well.[16] Initially Kennedy refused, so the group asked McCarthy to run, and he responded favorably. After Kennedy entered the race and Johnson withdrew, however, McCarthy shifted his focus towards the New York Senator.[16]

McCarthy declared his candidacy on November 30, 1967, saying, "I am concerned that the Administration seems to have set no limit to the price it is willing to pay for a military victory." Political experts and the news media dismissed his candidacy, and he was given little chance of making any impact against Johnson in the primaries.[17] But public perception of him changed following the Tet Offensive (January 30 – February 23, 1968), the aftermath of which saw many Democrats grow disillusioned with the war, and quite a few interested in an alternative to LBJ. McCarthy said, "My decision to challenge the President's position and the administration's position has been strengthened by recent announcements out of the administration. The evident intention to escalate and to intensify the war in Vietnam, and on the other hand, the absence of any positive indication or suggestion for a compromise or for a negotiated political settlement."[18]

On December 3, 1967 Senator McCarthy addressed The Conference of Concerned Democrats in Chicago, accusing the current administration of ignoring and bungling opportunities for bring the war to a conclusion,.[19] Eight days later it was reported that he suggested abandonment of some areas of South Vietnam to the Viet Cong.[20] On February 17, 1968 it was reported that McCarthy's campaign had only raised one quarter of the funds it had hoped to raise nationally.[21] In May McCarthy's record on Civil Rights was attacked by Senator Robert Kennedy.[22] In late June, 1968 McCarthy was defeated by Hubert Humphrey as the latter secured significant delegates in their common home state of Minnesota.[23][24]

As his volunteers (led by youth coordinator Sam Brown) went door to door in New Hampshire, and as the media began paying more serious attention to the Senator, McCarthy began to rise in the opinion polls. When McCarthy scored 42% to Johnson's 49% in the New Hampshire popular vote (and 20 of the 24 N.H. delegates to the Democratic national nominating convention) on March 12 it became clear that deep division existed among Democrats on the war issue. By this time, Johnson had become inextricably defined by Vietnam, and this demonstration of divided support within his party meant his reelection (only four years after winning the highest percentage of the popular vote in modern history) seemed unlikely. The folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary released a record "Eugene McCarthy For President (If You Love Your Country)", endorsing McCarthy, who they said had stood alone against Johnson over "more timid men" now echoing him.[25]

On March 16, Kennedy announced that he would run; many Democrats saw Kennedy as a stronger candidate than McCarthy. On March 31, in a surprise move, Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection. Following that, McCarthy won in Wisconsin,[26] where the Kennedy campaign was still getting organized. McCarthy also won in Oregon against a well-organized Kennedy effort; it was even considered his first official victory over Kennedy as well.[16]

McCarthy styled himself the clean politician, but criticized his opponents. Known for his wit, when asked if Michigan governor George Romney's comment that Romney had been "brainwashed" about the Vietnam War had ended Romney's presidential hopes, McCarthy remarked, "Well... no, not really. Anyway, I think in that case a light rinse would have been sufficient."[27] He mocked Robert Kennedy and his supporters. A major gaffe occurred in Oregon, when McCarthy sniffed that Kennedy supporters were "less intelligent" than his own and belittled Indiana (which had by then gone for Kennedy) for lacking a poet of the stature of Robert Lowell—a friend of McCarthy's who often traveled with him.[28]

Some of those who joined McCarthy's effort early on were Kennedy loyalists. Now that Kennedy was in the race, many of them jumped ship to his campaign, urging McCarthy to drop out and support Kennedy for the nomination. McCarthy resented the fact that Bobby had let him do the "dirty work" of challenging Johnson, and then only entered the race once it became apparent that the President was vulnerable. As a result, while he initially entered the campaign with few illusions of winning, McCarthy now devoted himself to beating Kennedy (and Hubert Humphrey, who entered the race after LBJ removed himself), and gaining the nomination.[16]

Vice President Hubert Humphrey, long a champion of labor unions and of civil rights, entered the race with the support of the party "establishment", including most members of Congress, mayors, governors and labor unions. Humphrey entered the race too late to enter any primaries, but had the support of the president and of many Democratic insiders.

Kennedy, like his brother before him, planned to win the nomination through popular support in the primaries. McCarthy and Kennedy squared off in California, each knowing that the state would make or break them. They both campaigned vigorously up and down the state, with many polls showing them neck-and-neck, and a few even predicting a McCarthy victory.

A televised debate between them began to tilt undecided voters away from the Minnesota Senator. McCarthy made two ill-considered statements: That he would accept a coalition government including Communists in Saigon, and that only the relocation of inner-city blacks would solve the urban problem. Kennedy pounced, portraying the former idea as soft on communism, and the latter diagnosis as a scheme to bus tens of thousands of ghetto residents into white, conservative Orange County.[28] Kennedy took the crucial California primary on June 4, but was shot after his victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, and died soon afterwards. In response, McCarthy refrained from political action for several days, but did not remove himself from the race. One aide recalled him sneering about his fallen rival, "Demagoguing to the last". Another heard him say that Kennedy "brought it on himself"—implying that because Kennedy had promised military support to the state of Israel, he had somehow provoked Sirhan Sirhan, the Palestinian gunman convicted of killing him.[28]

Despite strong showings in several primaries — indeed, he won more votes than any other Democratic candidate — McCarthy garnered only 23 percent of the delegates at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, largely due to the control of state-party organizations over the delegate-selection process. After the Kennedy assassination, many delegates for Kennedy chose to support George McGovern rather than McCarthy. Moreover, although the eventual nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, was not clearly an anti-war candidate, some anti-war Democrats hoped that Humphrey as president might succeed where Johnson had failed — in extricating the United States from Vietnam. McCarthy eventually gave a lukewarm endorsement of Humphrey. Although McCarthy did not win the Democratic nomination, the anti-war "New Party", which ran several candidates for president that year, listed him as their nominee on the ballot in Arizona, where he received 2,751 votes. He also appeared on the ballot in Oregon as the New Party choice. He received 20,721 votes as a write-in candidate in California.

Despite McCarthy's anti Vietnam War stance the North Vietnamese government described McCarthy as "A second rate politician with little experience or money." in their analysis of the upcoming Presidential Election published in their Army Newspaper dated August 10, 1968.[29]

McCarthy returned to politics as a candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1972, but he fared poorly in New Hampshire and Wisconsin and soon dropped out.

Illinois was the only primary in which McCarthy actively participated. He got 38% of the vote against the, then, leading contender Edmund Muskie's 59% (3% of others). A better showing than McGovern got against Muskie two weeks earlier in New Hampshire. But McCarthy's Illinois campaign was ignored by the media.

After the 1972 campaign, he left the Democratic Party, and ran as an Independent candidate for president in the 1976 election. During that campaign, he took a libertarian stance on civil liberties, promised to create full employment by shortening the work week, came out in favor of nuclear disarmament, attacked the Internal Revenue Service,[30] and declared whom he would nominate to various Cabinet postings if elected. Mainly, however, he battled ballot access laws that he deemed too restrictive and encouraged voters to reject the two-party system.[31]

His numerous legal battles during the course of the election, along with a strong grassroots effort in friendly states, allowed him to appear on the ballot in 30 states and eased ballot access for later third party candidates. His party affiliation was listed on ballots, variously, as "Independent," "McCarthy '76," "Non-Partisan," "Nom. Petition," "Nomination," "Not Designated," and "Court Order". Although he was not listed on the ballot in California and Wyoming, he was recognized as a write-in candidate in those states. In many states, he did not run with a vice presidential nominee, but he came to have a total of 15 running mates in states where he was required to have one. At least eight of his running mates were women.[32]

Nationally, McCarthy received 740,460 votes for 0.91% of the total vote finishing third in the election.[32] His best showing came in Oregon where he received 40,207 votes for 3.90% of the vote.[32]

He opposed Watergate-era campaign finance laws, becoming a plaintiff in the landmark case of Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976), in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that certain provisions of federal campaign finance laws were unconstitutional.[33] McCarthy, along with the New York Civil Liberties Union, philanthropist Stewart Mott, the Conservative Party of New York State, the Mississippi Republican Party, and the Libertarian Party, were the plaintiffs in Buckley, becoming key players in killing campaign spending limits and public financing of political campaigns.

In 1980, dismayed by what he saw as the abject failure of the Jimmy Carter presidency (he would later say "he was the worst president we ever had"),[34] he appeared in a campaign ad for Libertarian candidate Ed Clark, and also wrote the introduction to Clark's campaign book.[35] He eventually endorsed Ronald Reagan for the presidency.[36]

In 1982, he ran for the U.S Senate but lost the Democratic primary to businessman Mark Dayton by 69% to 24%.

In the 1988 election, his name appeared on the ballot as the presidential candidate of a handful of left-wing state parties, specifically the Consumer Parties in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and the Minnesota Progressive Party in Minnesota. In his campaign he supported trade protectionism, Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative and the abolition of the two-party system.[37] He received 30,905 votes.[38]

In 1992, returning to the Democratic Party, he entered the New Hampshire primary and campaigned for the Democratic Presidential nomination, but was excluded from the first and therefore most important televised debate by its moderator, Tom Brokaw of NBC. McCarthy, along with other candidates who had been excluded from the 1992 Democratic debates (including two-time New Alliance Party Presidential candidate Lenora Fulani, former Irvine, California mayor Larry Agran, Billy Jack actor Tom Laughlin, and others) staged protests and unsuccessfully took legal action in an attempt to be included in the debates. Unlike the other excluded candidates mentioned, McCarthy was a longstanding national figure and had mounted credible campaigns for president in previous elections. McCarthy ended up winning 108,679 votes in the 1992 primaries.[39]