Presidential Candidates Goldwater, Humphrey Came Here 40 Years Ago
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Sen. Hubert Humphrey prepares to kiss a baby at Tri-City Airport in 1964 during his campaign visit.
Sen. Barry Goldwater waves the key to Bay City and schmoozes with Bay City's flamboyant Mayor M. Monte Wray and Congressman Elford A. Cederberg.
Forty years ago Presidential campaigns were a little different. At least for the press.
In 1964 two campaigns came here; that of Republican Presidential nominee Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona and Democratic vice-presidential hopeful Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota.
The first thing the campaigns did was set up a bar for the press. Then came typewriters. Then phones. And wire machines to transmit stories.
But the bar had priority. It really shocked me. Row after row of bottles of hard stuff. The bar was a necessity for the hard-drinking national press slogging around the country on what was mostly dreary travel, interspersed with parties and the same speech over and over. In Keokuk, DesMoines, Wilkes Barre, South Bend, Fairfield, Milwaukee, Stockton, Albuquerque, etc., etc. That year Bay City and Midland just happened to be on the list.
The Goldwater campaign was the most memorable. He was the honored guest at the annual Midland County Republican Committee ox roast. Slicing bloody ox, and urged on by hundreds of white-shirted Midlanders, the senator suddenly was inspired. He began to toss bloody chunks of ox into the front rows, causing the white shirts to turn red like the advance guard of the Paris revolution. It was another shock for a 27-year-old reporter from a provincial daily.
Goldwater manfully urged the local GOP to re-elect Gov. George Romney, even though the Michigan moderate refused to endorse the Arizona conservative. Romney spoke to the crowd of 15,000 at the Midland fairgrounds for 40 minutes before the Presidential candidate arrived. But the governor even drew the line at introducing Goldwater at the ox roast.
I found Goldwater witty, bemusedly referring to Humphrey's legendary proclivity for speaking fast. "He speaks at 275 words per minute with gusts to 340," quipped Goldwater.
The inimitable M. Monte Wray, Bay City's version of Mayor Jimmy Walker of New York, gave the key to the city to both Goldwater and Humphrey. The Democrat showed his humorous side, wisecracking: "That's the most luxurious key I've ever seen. The difference between this key and the opposition is that this is pure gold, not Gold water."
I covered the massive Democratic 8th and 10th Congressional Districts dinner at the Consistory Cathedral, attended by a reported 1,100. "It is possible that we could lose," said Humphrey. The senator was trying to pumpup party members perhaps suffering apathy because of polls showing he and Lyndon Johnson so far ahead of Goldwater and running mate William Miller.
"The fact is the polls can err," cautioned the ebullient HHH. "They can act as an opiate ... if you believe them."
Attack tactics were also in Hubert's repertoire; he scored the Arizona conservative for voting against an income tax cut, the anti-poverty program, manpower retraining, higher education, federal aid for medical facilities and rural electrification. Wow! No wonder Romney wouldn't endorse him.
Despite fears of apathy, Bay County came in big for the Johnson-Humphrey ticket, 29,754 to 11,896. Nationally, of course, it was a landslide for the Democrats.
The vote in favor of the Democratic ticket built immensely on the 2,000 vote margin that John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson had gained here just four years previously, winning 22,998 to 20,909 over Republicans Richard M. Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge.
Kennedy had not campaigned here, but did put in an appearance at the Bancroft Hotel in Saginaw. Nixon didn't show up here until 1974 when he was in trouble over Watergate and he wanted to help defeat J. Robert Traxler in an interim election for Congress. It didn't work.
Eisenhower and Truman had whistle-stopped here in 1952 and 1948 on the train at the New York Central station on First Street. I remember my grandfather, Godfrey J. LaFramboise, taking me to both events,so I don't know if he was a Democrat or Republican.
World War II hero Eisenhower blistered Adlai Stevenson twice, in 1952 and 1956, both locally and nationally. I remember covering his speech at the opening of the Michigan Constitutional Convention in 1961 where Bay County was ably represented by attorney Milton Higgs. I was in awe of the former President.
I don't think that Franklin Roosevelt or Thomas E. Dewey ever campaigned, here, but I would love to be proven wrong. Republican stalwart Wendell Wilkie was brought in by the great Bay City financier James E. Davidson in 1940 to dedicate the Consumers Power Co. Karn-Weadock electric generating plant and campaign a little at the same time. He lost to Roosevelt but was down less than 300 votes in Bay County.
Before, that, except for the fact that Teddy Roosevelt's troops launched his futile, bellowing Bull Moose bid here in 1912, we probably have to go back to 1896 to find news reports of William McKinley campaigning here. An article in the Bay City Tribune told of McKinley on the stump in Bay City, referring to Civil War Gen. Dan Sickles, who lost a leg at Gettysburg. Sickles was with the McKinley campaign but was unable to get off the train to greet the crowds.
Ironically, the officer who relieved Sickles when he was struck by a ball in the knee was our own Gen. David Bell Birney, son of famed abolitionist and Bay City pioneer James G. Birney.
Ah, the strange twists of fate, and history. And Bay City always seems to be at the center of it all, doesn't it?###
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