page_title: Hubert Humphrey
section_title: Presidential and vice-presidential ambitions (1952–1964)
hierarchical_section_title: Hubert Humphrey / Presidential and vice-presidential ambitions (1952–1964)
caption_attribution_description: English: Then Vice President-elect Hubert H. Humphrey (left), alongside Coretta Scott King (center), and Civil Rights Leader and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (right), at a rally at Harlem's 369th Regiment Armory on December 17, 1964.
context_page_description: Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr. was an American politician who served as the 38th vice president of the United States from 1965 to 1969. He twice served in the United States Senate, representing Minnesota from 1949 to 1964 and 1971 to 1978. He was the Democratic Party's nominee in the 1968 presidential election, losing to Republican nominee Richard Nixon.
  Born in Wallace, South Dakota, Humphrey attended the University of Minnesota. At one point he helped run his father's pharmacy. He earned a master's degree from Louisiana State University and worked for the Works Progress Administration, the Minnesota war service program, and the War Manpower Commission. In 1943, he became a professor of political science at Macalester College and ran a failed campaign for mayor of Minneapolis. He helped found the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party in 1944. In 1945, he won election as mayor of Minneapolis, serving until 1948 and co-founding the liberal anti-communist group Americans for Democratic Action in 1947. In 1948, he was elected to the U.S.
context_section_description: Humphrey ran for the Democratic presidential nomination twice before his election to the Vice Presidency in 1964. The first time was as Minnesota's favorite son in 1952; he received only 26 votes on the first ballot. The second time was in 1960. In between these two bids, Humphrey was part of the free-for-all for the vice-presidential nomination at the 1956 Democratic National Convention, where he received 134 votes on the first ballot and 74 on the second.
  In 1960, Humphrey ran for the nomination against fellow Senator John F. Kennedy in the primaries. Their first meeting was in the Wisconsin Primary, where Kennedy's well-organized and well-funded campaign overcame Humphrey's energetic but poorly funded effort. Humphrey believed defeating Kennedy in Wisconsin would weaken and slow the momentum of the latter's campaign. Kennedy's attractive brothers, sisters, and wife Jacqueline combed the state for votes. At one point Humphrey memorably complained that he "felt like an independent merchant competing against a chain store". Humphrey later wrote in his memoirs that "Muriel and I and our 'plain folks' entourage were no match for the glamour of Jackie Kennedy and the other Kennedy women, for Peter Lawford ... and Frank Sinatra singing their commercial 'High Hopes'. Jack Kennedy brought family and Hollywood to Wisconsin. The people loved it and the press ate it up." Kennedy won the Wisconsin primary, but by a smaller margin than anticipated. Some commentators argued that Kennedy's victory margin had come almost entirely from areas with large Roman Catholic populations, and that Protestants had supported Humphrey. As a result, Humphrey refused to quit the race and decided to run against Kennedy again in the West Virginia primary. According to one biographer "Humphrey thought his chances were good in West Virginia, one of the few states that had backed him in his losing race for vice-president four years earlier ... West Virginia was more rural than urban, [which] seemed to invite Humphrey's folksy stump style. The state, moreover, was a citadel of labor. It was depressed; unemployment had hit hard; and coal miners' families were hungry. Humphrey felt he could talk to such people, who were 95% Protestant (Humphrey was a Congregationalist) and deep-dyed Bible-belters besides."
  Kennedy chose to meet the religion issue head-on. In radio broadcasts, he carefully redefined the issue from Catholic versus Protestant to tolerance versus intolerance. Kennedy's appeal placed Humphrey, who had championed tolerance his entire career, on the defensive, and Kennedy attacked him with a vengeance. Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., the son of the former president, stumped for Kennedy in West Virginia and raised the issue of Humphrey's failure to serve in the armed forces in World War II. Roosevelt told audiences, "I don't know where he [Humphrey] was in World War Two," and handed out flyers charging that Humphrey was a draft dodger. Historian Robert Dallek has written that Robert F. Kennedy, who was serving as his brother's campaign manager, came into "possession of information that Humphrey may have sought military deferments during World War Two ... he pressed Roosevelt to use this." Humphrey believed Roosevelt's draft-dodger claim "had been approved by Bobby [Kennedy], if not Jack". The claims that Humphrey was a draft dodger were inaccurate, because during the war Humphrey had "tried and failed to get into the [military] service because of physical disabilities". After the West Virginia primary, Roosevelt sent Humphrey a written apology and retraction. According to historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Roosevelt "felt that he had been used, blaming [the draft-dodger charge] on Robert Kennedy's determination to win at any cost ... Roosevelt said later that it was the biggest political mistake of his career."
  Short on funds, Humphrey could not match the well-financed Kennedy operation. He traveled around the state in a rented bus while Kennedy and his staff flew in a large, family-owned airplane. According to his biographer Carl Solberg, Humphrey spen
caption: Vice President-elect Humphrey alongside Coretta Scott King and Civil Rights Leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
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