Nixon's Secret (26 page)

Chotiner also launched a campaign to fight Communism in California. Bumper stickers saying “Is Brown Pink?” and “If it’s Brown, flush it!” popped up. In truth, the left wing of the Democratic Party was not that enamored of old-time Democrat Pat Brown, but they loathed Nixon. The Communist charge seemed dated and ineffective, although it was clearly designed to bring back Birchers and conservatives disenchanted with Nixon.

Nixon had good reason for red-baiting in the 1962 campaign. From his standpoint it was not merely a simple tactic to attack Governor Brown. A 1961 statewide poll showed a high percentage of California voters agreed with a statement that Communists threatened the United States from within. The public responded when Nixon spoke of domestic Communist subversion. His use of the issue probably helped in galvanizing a fractured Republican Party, but it was not useful in winning Independents and Democrats to whom it seemed dated.
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At the same time, Democrats so outnumbered Republicans in California that a Republican nominee for governor badly needed a united party solidly behind him. Attacking Brown for being soft on communism seemed a good way to woo these lagging Republicans, especially since Nixon had angered them when he publicly repudiated the support of the extreme right-wing John Birch Society.
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Nixon and Maurice Stans, his finance chairman, had trouble raising money. Donors back East eager to write checks for Nixon’s “sure thing” presidential campaign in 1960 were not particularly affected by the possibility of him being governor. Richard Jones, a man carrying $65,000 in cash for the Nixon campaign, died carrying the valise in an airplane crash.
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Aerosol valve king Robert Abplanalp and Leonard Firestone helped, but the campaign simply lacked the funds for the same kind of television saturation in the last two weeks that had aided Nixon in the last two weeks of the presidential race.

Nixon was forced to barnstorm as he had in his 1950 Senate campaign because of the lack of television funds. He deeply resented that a man of his stature would be reduced to hustling the back roads of California. When a supporter urged him to go and schmooze a local newspaper editor, he erupted, “I wouldn’t give him the sweat off my balls.” Word on the street was that Nixon had disdain for the common folk of his home state. “That’s what you have to expect from these local yokels,” he said when turnout at a Nixon campaign rally was light.

Nixon was also plagued about a restrictive covenant that was found in the deed to the home he had owned in Washington, which “forbids its sale to Negroes.” The covenant was quite standard for DC in the 1940s and 1950s. However, in 1960 the Kennedy-Johnson campaign had distributed a flyer throughout the South hitting Nixon membership in the NAACP. Nixon couldn’t catch a break.

Also hurting Nixon was the most substantial change in the coverage of the race by the
Los Angeles Times
. Prior, the
Los Angeles Times
had functioned as a Republican organ leading the charge for Nixon on his 1946 and 1950 races. Political Editor Kyle Palmer was dying of cancer and new publisher, Otis Chandler, was committed to more equitable coverage. One
Los Angeles Times
reporter, Richard Bergholz, demonstrated the hostility in the California press core. Early in 1962, on his first political swing through California, Nixon went to the reporter’s section of his campaign bus and announced that he would hold a background conference, a standard Washington technique that meant he could not be quoted by name. Bergholz fixed the former presidential candidate with a cold eye. “Nixon,” he said, “you’re a candidate for governor of California. Out here, candidates say it on the record or not at all.”
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The assertion was, of course, absurd. All California reporters spoke to sources on background and without attribution on a regular basis, even in 1962.

The campaign was dirty on both sides. Nixon and Haldeman were both sued by the Democratic State Party chairman over mailings designed to mislead Democrats. “Remember when that little jerk sued us,” he would ask Haldeman years later on a famous White House tape. The extent to which Nixon was running his own campaign was extraordinary. “He wanted to be horse and jockey,” said James Bassett.
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It was revealed in the litigation over Nixon’s campaign mailers that Nixon himself approved the copy and layout for the disputed mail pieces. Bob Haldeman admitted this in his deposition in the case. Having worked in several big state gubernatorial campaigns, I can tell you that no candidate is involved at the level of preparing voter mailings.

Brown would get permission from federal authorities to have a lawyer interview imprisoned gangster Mickey Cohen, who was serving time in a California penitentiary. Attorney General Robert Kennedy himself was said to have approved the interview. Cohen, seeking a reduction in his sentence, signed an affidavit outlining mob funding for Nixon’s early campaign, including the story about convening a group of gangsters at the Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel and locking the doors of the meeting room until everyone ponied up. Cohen signed a statement in which he admitted mob funding of Nixon’s 1946, 1950, and 1960 campaigns. The Brown camp would spread Cohen’s affidavit to reporters.

Brown would also hire a private detective to find dirt on Nixon and get more detail about the Hughes loan. What Brown’s camp did not know was that the private dick had just been engaged by the Nixon campaign for defensive operation on behalf of Nixon, which involved periodic sweeps for bugs in Nixon’s home in Bel Air and the Nixon headquarters on Wilshire Boulevard. The private detective, an electronics expert, found transmission equipment, including a bug on the phone of campaign manager H. R. Haldeman. Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Vice President John Davies confirmed the line had been illegally tapped. Nixon’s security team tracked the buggers, who were monitoring the transmission from an automobile, and followed them to their waiting plane. Having colleagues pick them up at Washington National Airport, they tailed them directly to Bobby Kennedy’s home in Hickory Hill in McLane, Virginia.
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“We were bugged in ‘62 running for governor,” Nixon would one day claim in a recorded Oval Office conversation. “Goddamndest thing you ever saw!” The wiretap expert confirmed Nixon’s claim for investigative journalist Anthony Summers.

In the end both Nixon and Brown would be knocked off the front page and out of the voters’ consciousness by the Cuban Missile crisis. As voters rallied behind their young president, Nixon knew immediately that his campaign would lose oxygen for a strong closing drive. Nixon concluded he would lose. Press Secretary Herb Klein noted Nixon’s condition. “Nixon was haggard, with the lack of sleep showing particularly in his eyes. He looked bad. But his spirits did not seem as low as I had anticipated. We talked for some time about the campaign; where it had gone well and where it had gone badly. He was philosophical about it. He felt—with some justification I thought—that he might have won if it had not been for the Cuban Missile crisis, which had taken attention away from the election at a time when he hoped a late sprint would influence undecided voters and allow him to catch up with, and perhaps pass, Brown.”

Nixon also spoke to campaign aide Stephen Hess. “Do you think you’re still going to lose?” Hess asked. “Yes,” Nixon answered. He had come to that conclusion when the missile crisis broke.

“You may be wrong,” Hess said.

“I’m not wrong,” replied Nixon, the realist.
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,
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While Nixon lost in 1962, Nelson Rockefeller, George Romney, and William Scranton became potential presidential candidates by scoring major victories, winning the governorship of the large states of New York, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, respectively. They, not Nixon, became the threats to the nomination of Barry Goldwater.

Nixon’s disdain for the press was total. When he learned that his press assistant Sandy Quinn was working to accommodate the reporters, he said, “He even sends fruit to their hotel room. Being nice doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.”
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Looking at Nixon’s press conference statement about TV, it should be noted that a candidate’s impressions of television come more from what he is told about it than from what he actually sees. Campaign schedules permit little time for television viewing.

Still, Nixon understood the rudimentary of television. He liked the medium when he could control it, as he would later do from the Oval Office. He understood the need to speak over the heads of reporters directly to the voters. Just as the Checkers speech had served him well in 1952, his election eve telethon in 1960 drew an enormous audience. The telethons he did in the California race were not as effective, but I believe that is because the Cuban Missile crisis had dominated all press coverage in the closing days of Nixon’s 1962 drive.

The centerpiece of the 1962 Nixon television advertising program was a series of eight telethons, each broadcast on a local regional basis in cities from Salinas to Los Angeles and San Diego. The telethons, produced theatrically by Jack Rourke, averaged about three hours in length and were patterned after the four-hour Nixon national telethon from Detroit that had such a dramatic influence on the voters in the waning hours of the 1960 presidential race. One estimate was that the 1960 telethon had changed up to 4 percent of the vote. Nixon’s press secretary remembered the format. “The California telethon formula, which was also adopted by Nelson Rockefeller in his race for governor of New York, basically had the candidate answering questions telephoned in by viewers. Pretty volunteers were seen answering telephones, and the staff screened the questions. The press was allowed to examine some of the questions to see if they thought the screening was fair. Interspersed with the questions were celebrity appearances, which inevitably led to on-the-air endorsements. It was ‘show biz’ with a town hall flavor.”

There were two other major Nixon television appearances in the final days of the lagging campaign, one regarding the Cuban Missile crisis, the other aimed at “campaign smears.” Nixon was at a motel in Oakland when he heard of the Cuban Missile crisis. The news came as a shock. Nixon’s prospects already looked doubtful. Now he was certain he would lose.

On his telethon Nixon said he was afraid that President Kennedy might give up some missile sites in Europe near the Communist-bloc nations in exchange for removal of the base in Cuba. Nixon’s prediction would be prescient. The American people would learn thirty years after the crisis that Jack and Robert Kennedy agreed to withdraw American missiles from Italy and Turkey, thus changing the balance of power in the European theater. While the American people were not told this, the Pentagon and CIA were well aware of the Kennedy moves, and I believe they were a factor in the plot both participated in to remove Kennedy in Dallas. Nixon, to his credit, urged Californians to support the president against the Soviet Union. Nixon’s appeal had little impact.

Kennedy would call Brown to the White House to chair a governor’s conference on civil defense in the wake of the Cuban Missile crisis. Kennedy campaigned in California for Brown, as did six of his cabinet members, plus Vice President Johnson. They ignored Nixon’s complaints about an “invasion of carpetbaggers.” Nixon responded by bringing in Eisenhower, who spoke on his behalf at a $100-a-plate dinner that was broadcast over closed-circuit television. “Everything he has done has increased my respect for him,” Eisenhower said of Nixon. “I can personally vouch for his ability, his sense of duty, his sharpness of mind, his wealth in wisdom.” Nixon replied, “All the work I’ve done has been worth it just to hear these words from the greatest living American.” But as one of his aides remarked about Eisenhower’s warm endorsement, “If he’d only given that speech two years ago, Dick Nixon would be president.”
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A week before the election, Nixon predicted that his opposition would “launch the most massive campaign of fear and smear in the history of California elections.” Nixon’s positioning was preemptive. Having been burned by dirty tricks by the Kennedys in the 1960 campaign, Nixon planned his own.

Nixon’s forces would launch a last-minute mail piece that Democrats felt crossed the line. The mailing features a questionnaire wherein they pretend to be taking a poll of public attitudes on issues. Questions were worded to lead to a preconceived conclusion. In this case, the questions were written by Leone Baxter, noted California publicist, and were sent out in a mailing to Democrats under a front name of nominal Democratic chairman. It was a thinly disguised pro-Nixon ploy. The purpose was to lead those who answered the questions into a thought process that would make the governor seem soft on Communism on the University of California campus. The Democrats would file a lawsuit. In 1972 a San Francisco judge settled the suit regarding the mailing and had reprimanded Nixon, Chotiner, and the 1962 campaign manager, Bob Haldeman.

One of Nixon’s few breaks came in a joint appearance with Brown before the press at a state convention of editors of newspapers subscribing to United Press International. It took place during the morning, not on prime time. Questions for the televised appearance were to come from editors and publishers in the audience.

The most sensitive questions were over the Hughes loan, an issue that first surfaced in the 1960 campaign and was being raised again in 1962. It involved a loan made by the Hughes Tool Company to the candidate’s brother, Don Nixon, against a collateral of Whittier family property that was developed as a lease site for a gasoline filling station. Don Nixon needed the money for financing the ill-fated restaurant location. Opponents claimed that the loan was made by Hughes in an effort to seek help with government contracts.

In an effort to avoid Nixon being questioned directly about the Hughes loan, Herb Klein negotiated conditions for the 1962 joint appearance with Brown. One of the conditions imposed was that the debate would be on issues and would include no questions of a personal nature.