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On Wednesday, Republican Richard Nixon conceded to Democratic Gov. Pat Brown, putting an end to both this intense gubernatorial race and probably Nixon’s political career. While a few late polls showed Nixon trailing the incumbent, no one expected the 52-47 drubbing we just saw.
To say this has been a nasty contest would be an understatement. When Nixon declared his candidacy last year, he looked like a shoo-in in Republican-leaning California. Just two years ago, Nixon had narrowly defeated Kennedy in the Golden State, and an early poll gave him a 16-point edge over Brown. However, when Nixon posted an astonishingly weak 65-33 win over conservative Joe Shell in the primary, it became increasingly clear that things weren’t going to be so easy for the former vice president. Shell and his allies at the John Birch Society never came around to Nixon, whom Nixon had denounced as “nuts and kooks.”
Nixon dusted off his old playbook and portrayed Brown as “soft on communism.” But while the charges worked for him in past Golden State contests (most notably in the 1950 Senate race against Helen Gahagan Douglas), they didn’t stick this time. Meanwhile, Brown and his allies worked hard to argue that Nixon only wanted the governorship so he could set himself up for a rematch with Kennedy in 1964. Nixon forcefully denied that he had any interest in running for president again, but few believed him. Ultimately, it seems that California voters agreed that their old senator wasn’t genuinely interested in being their governor.
Needless to say, it’s very hard to see Nixon winning his party’s presidential nomination after Tuesday’s disaster—or perhaps anything ever again.
There was some speculation that Nixon could challenge Democratic Sen. Clair Engle in 1964 instead, but Nixon doesn’t seem particularly interested. Indeed, he seemed to recognize his political career is over in an utterly insane press conference on Wednesday that you just need to read to believe. Nixon blamed the recent crisis over Cuba for costing him momentum at a critical time, which is fair. But he went off the rails when he blasted newspapers.
Nixon told the assembled newsmen that “[f]or 16 years, ever since the [Alger] Hiss case, you've had a lot of—a lot of fun—that you've had an opportunity to attack me and I think I've given as good as I've taken. It was carried right up to the last day.” He went on to accuse the Los Angeles Times of ignoring a Brown flub, where the governor urged Californians to select the entire Democratic ticket, including Republican Sen. Thomas Kuchel. Things got even more insane when Nixon bitterly declared, “You won't have Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference and it will be one in which I have welcomed the opportunity to test wits with you.” Wow.
Nixon ended by advising the press to “recognize that they have a right and a responsibility, if they're against a candidate, give him the shaft, but also recognize if they give him the shaft, put one lonely reporter on the campaign who will report what the candidate says now and then.” We’ve never seen anything like this before from a major candidate, and we probably never will again. Suffice to say, if Nixon’s political career looked like it was on life support after his concession to Brown, it looks very dead now.
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