JFK Beats the System.

• Author: KELLEY, TIMOTHY
• Position: Brief Article

In 1960, John Kennedy used primaries to win over the bosses. Now primaries rule.

They crowded the floor, marching, snake-dancing, and shouting themselves hoarse. They had placards, banners, even a giant papier-mache ball. The only thing they didn't have was a chance.

A wild throng at the Democratic Convention of 1960 in Los Angeles yelled for former Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson to be chosen as the party's Presidential nominee for a third time. But they were too late. The nomination had already been wrapped up by Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts.

Kennedy's successful quest for his party's top prize that year is still studied by political pros, because it helped change the unwritten rules of how to get nominated. For more than a century, nominations weren't settled until delegates met at the parties' national conventions to vote on them. Often, multiple ballots were needed to pick a winner (in 1924, delegates voted 102 times!), and sometimes there was a stampede of votes from one candidate to another. Stevenson's supporters hoped for just such a stampede. But Kennedy had worked with single-minded dedication for years, lining up delegates in advance to assure a first-ballot victory. No convention has gone to a second ballot since.

The handsome Kennedy was a World War II hero, the son of a millionaire who had been the U.S. ambassador to Britain, and a Pulitzer Prize winner for his book Profiles in Courage. But he was just 43, and Americans had never elected someone so young as President. Nor had they chosen anyone who was a Catholic like Kennedy.

For these reasons, party leaders were in no hurry to support him. And in those days you couldn't get nominated without the support of big-city bosses and other leaders. Kennedy decided to run in state primary elections to show the bosses his power as a vote-getter.

Kennedy's rivals for the nomination were senators Lyndon Johnson of Texas, Stuart Symington of Missouri, and Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota. Stevenson wasn't in the race, but admirers were mounting a national campaign to draft him.

Only Humphrey joined Kennedy in the primaries. Their first test came in Wisconsin on April 5. Both candidates crisscrossed the state during the winter. But reaching out to voters in primaries could be a lonely business. Theodore White recalled a campaign day with Kennedy in the book The Making of the President 1960:

At noon he stood at the head of the street in the one-street village of Phillips and...