Bobby Kennedy had just won the California primary when he was assasinated.
At the Democratic Convention, who did the California delegates vote for? Did they go as a block to the runner-up in the California primary, or were they all free to vote their own way?
ETA: and, had Kennedy won any other primaries? if so, what happened to those blocks of votes?
I think back then, most states did not require delegates to vote for the primary winner (New Hampshire did, so they went for Eugene McCarthy, but that was unusual). The Kennedy delegate were free to vote for whomever they wished.
I don’t think any state has ever required delegates to vote for anyone other than the candidate who they were pledged to, and the rules used to allow for free choice (and it still applies after the first ballot).
From Wiki on the Democratic Primaries of 1968, Kennedy won Indiana, Nebraska, and South Dakota besides California. The article indicates that many Kennedy delegates voted for George McGovern because they disliked Eugene McCarthy.
One has to wonder about the negative name association with Joe McCarthy playing a role, even though it had been fourteen years.
I doubt it. There was no love lost between the Kennedy and McCarthy campaigns, on either side. I’m sure none of the delegates would have had that as a significant influence.
California voted 91 for McCarthy, 51 for McGovern, 17 for the Reverend Channing Phillips (a black minister from Washington DC), and 14 for Humphrey.
McGovern entered the campaign late (Agusut 1968), and with no hope of winning, primarily to provide an alternative for “orphaned” Kennedy delegates who disliked McCarthy. The results from California, of course, indicate that not all Kennedy delegates did so.
Joe McCarthy was very friendly with the Kennedys. He was the godfather of RFK’s oldest child, so Kennedy supporters would not have held the name against Eugene Mcarthy.
Agreed. Bobby had even worked for Joe McCarthy as a young Capitol Hill staffer, and JFK was very reluctant to vote for McCarthy’s censure. IIRC he was in the hospital when the censure vote actually took place, and was later teased about this at the Gridiron Club dinner, where some members of Congress sang (to the tune of “My Darling Clementine”), “Where were you, Jack, where were you, Jack, when the Senate censured Joe…?”
Yes. And you will note that only 13 states had primaries in 1968 anyway. The shift to binding primaries came after the riots at the 1968 Democratic convention. Both parties very quickly adopted rules favoring such primaries, which were not the rule in 1968. One of the factors in the riots was that McCarthy’s grass-roots supporters felt that they had been screwed by their own party - Humphrey won the nomination via a traditional route in spite of primary victories by McCarthy. After both parties shifted to binding primaries in most states, the conventions took on their present form, usually turning out to be giant pep rallies as the nominee has a lock long before the convention.
No everyone knew that it was a different McCarthy. McCarthy took early anti war stand.
Other than the same last name and having served in the U.S. Senate, the two McCarthys had very little in common.