Campaign Stories

Taylor Branch

So many memories, so faded.
The McGovern campaign was my last one working full time. Since then, I’ve been a journalist and historian.
I would love to reconnect just by seeing or hearing about Texas campaign workers like Nancy Williams, Betsy Wright, Ruth ?, and other young volunteers in the state office on 6th Street in Austin.
I’m terrible at IT. If I did actually upload a photo, I couldn’t figure out how to leave a caption. It’s me on the left with my wife Christy Macy and two dear friends having lunch last week in Mostar, Herzegovina.

wes pippert

I believe I am the first national reporter who covered McGovern. It was in 1955 or 1956 after he left the faculty at Dakota Wesleyan to go into politics and then run for the US House in 1956, defeating GOP Gov and World War II flying ace Joe Foss.
McGovern was unusual in that he had a PhD from Northwestern but where he had gone initially to study for the Methodist ministry. A pianist, years later he wrote about playing hymns for an ailing daughter. He and one-time nemesis and later close friend Bob Dole (and I) for a while attended the same Methodist church in Washington.

Mark Patt

The 18 months I worked in the campaign in 1971-72 was a very rewarding time in my life. I started In May 1971 in NYC, working with Dennis Ross and a few others, setting up tables on 5th Avenue talking to passerbys and passing out literature. The in March 72, I joined Terry Friedman in Racine Wisconsin and organized the get out the vote effort for primary night. This was followed by working in the California primary where I worked with both Dennis and Terry, along with Gail Darling, who I met in Wisconsin, under the direction of Arnie Miller who was in charge of the Westside of LA. Arnie and I clicked and and I went with him to DC for work relating to the credentials committee hearings and then to Miami for the convention. Thereafter I was lucky enough to be with Arnie in Michigan (where I was attending law school). I took off a semester, and worked as a paid staffer in the state headquarters being the coordinator of one section. of the state. I met so many wonderful people, including Oren Teichner, and despite the election result, it was a fabulous experience trying to get a wonderful person, with great policies, into the White House.

Charlie Cerf

As budget director, my desk adjoined that of Marty Katz, the Controller. We all got word that the candidate would visit HQ on a certain date, at 9 am. I arrived at 10 to miss the candidate and all the hoopla–and ran into Marty as I entered; his intention was identical. We immediately realized that we had mistimed our arrival, because at the entrance we could see McGovern, with media entourage, straight ahead of us and heading our way. Marty and I ducked into an alcove – near Teresa Petrovic’s desk – and began talking. McGovern saw us, veered in our direction, shook our hands and departed. That evening, probably because the TV cameras had not operated above the ground floor, Marty and I were featured on the national news.

Nance Shatzkin

I was a 17-year-old delegate from Wisconsin, where I was a student. The McGovern rules were my ticket, as the delegation needed to include new voters, and I would be 18 by the general election! Ended up leaving school to work for the campaign in New York (the Bronx), and Illinois. Made life-long friends and cemented my commitment to progressive and grassroots politics.

Audrey Sheppard

It’s fabulous you are doing this — thank you!
My participation as an advance person in the McGovern campaign was a formative experience, one I will
always cherish.

Marie and Stan Repko

I don’t know how you all have my email address but we are so happy that you do. We were absolutely devoted my governors, my husband Stan and I ran the South Trenton New Jersey McGovern for president office in 1972, and the people who I believe ran the New Jersey campaign were Woody Kaufman, who handled the finances and I wish I could remember the names of the others. In any event we do have a few photographs that we will be attaching here sometime in the next week or two. Again thank you so very very much for remembering us.

Ted Pulliam

To catch up: right after the campaign ended, Molly and I moved to my small hometown in North Carolina. There I joined a two-man firm, began the very general practice of law, and became involved in local politics. As Republicans began to take over the county, we moved back to the Washington area in 1980, to Alexandria, and I joined the General Counsel’s Office of the Department of Energy. My main work there was to draft legislation the Department was interested in pursuing. In 2006, I retired. Earlier I had become interested in local history, had done volunteer documentary research for the Alexandria Archaeology Office, and become a member of the Alexandria Archaeology Commission. I still am a member of the Commission, plus the Alexandria African American Heritage Trail Committee and past member of the Waterfront Commission and Board of the Alexandria Historical Society. In 2011 the city published a history of Alexandria I wrote (called, imaginatively, “Historic Alexandria”), and articles I wrote, mainly on historical subjects, have appeared in the Legal Times of Washington, WWII History magazine, American History magazine, The Washington Post, and other publications. It is great that you all have organized this Zoom reunion. It also seems that someone connected with the campaign reminded the Post of the Senator’s “Come Home, America” speech, the subject of an excellent editorial on the Fourth of July.

Jim Webster

I took several memorable pictures of Senator McGovern but have very few that show me with him, because I was typically on the other side of the camera. Here’s one with typical 1960s hair.
 

David Aylward

Look at those ‘burns!!

Dick Smith

Three things make climate change a unique social problem–unlike any other you’ve ever worked on or cared about.
1. It comes with a time limit for preserving a stable climate…and we are absolutely up against it.
2. It’s irreversible…at least on any human timescale. (CO2 is a “forever gas”. Too much of it stays up there for too long.)
3. if humans keep adding 40 billion tons of CO2 each year, civilization as we know it will be over by the end of the century.
No other social problem irreversibly threatens the end of human civilization as we know it within the estimated lifetime of a child born this morning at your local hospital.
Want to help? Join the citizen lobbyists at Citizens’ Climate Lobby. No dues or fees. 450 chapters organized by Congressional Districts.

Sally Nist

Looking forward to seeing everyone in Mitchell and urge people to register and reserve rooms while there is availability.

Mike Shatzkin

Worked for McGovern at the 1968 Democratic Convention; was a volunteer working for Pierre Salinger. He, Frank Mankiewicz, and Dick Wade were the Heavyweights of that effort. Then was at the Roger Smith Hotel office in NYC pretty much from the day it opened in March of 1971. Organized colleges in NY and then six upstate Congressional districts. Was an alternate delegate from a northern Westchester district (NY). Then worked in Maryland for the (late, sadly) Mike Levett after the Convention for the general election. Followed the advice of Professor Wade, who became a lifelong friend (he died in about 2008) and did all my political work after that as a volunteer, mostly at his direction. Am currently a member of the Four Freedoms Democratic Club, a virtual powerhouse on Manhattan’s East Side. I love the fact that our Congress Member (Maloney) and virtually all State Assembly, State Senate, City Council folks make a point of coming to see us from time to time. Discovering in my 70s how incredibly accessible public officials can be. But McGovern spoiled me. He was the most decent person in public life and really the first one I watched up close for a long time.

 

Jeff Brockelsby

The notorious — and beloved — George V. Cunningham, Sen. McGovern’s chief of staff, administrative assistant, and right hand man for his entire career. A man of keen intellect and sharp wit, his loyalty to the staff under him was exceeded only by his loyalty to Sen. McGovern. Despite his appearance in this photo, he was probably one of the funniest people you could ever know. Nonetheless, staff members all knew you definitely wanted to stay on GVC’s good side. Cunningham (everyone called him that) managed all of Sen. McGovern’s Senate campaigns as well as his presidential bids in 1968 and 1984. GVC ran for Senate himself in 1984 with the slogan “Not Just Another Pretty Face.” A Watertown, SD, native, he passed away in 2007.

Wally McGuire

Photos from Chicago (during general campaign) and California primary (Train trip)
The Chicago event was right before the general election. Crowd was 100,000. The train trip was the length of the San Joaquin Valley in California at the end of the California primary. Bill Lockyer, the Northern California primary campaign manager, campaign manager in Hawaii during the general election, and later California State Senator and Attorney General is obscured behind McGovern. I’m next to McGovern eating a sandwich.

 

Larry Windsor

The touching letter I received from Senator McGovern after the campaign

Ken Elstein

As one who advanced primary election nights, the Miami Convention, and booked the overnight hotels for both Sen. McGovern and Sargent Shriver (you can read about how Joe Grandmaison gave me the name “Larry Hotel” in my other post), my original plans were to advance the election night event either in South Dakota or in DC where Sargent Shriver would be having his election night activities.
Here, however, I want to share a touching letter that Sen. McGovern sent me dated November 22, 1972.
The election was November 5th, and I couldn’t do either event as my mother had been gravely ill, and I needed to fly back to Connecticut which I did on election day to see her in the hospital. She died on Sunday, the 12th, and shortly thereafter I received Sen. McGovern’s letter (see below) acknowledging my trying “personal responsibilities at home”. I will always cherish his thoughtfulness.

 

Ted Van Dyk

GEORGE McGOVERN: HAPPY BIRTHDAY
Veterans of Sen. George McGovern’s 1971-2 presidential campaign will convene electronically tomorrow to celebrate his birthday. Met a few years ago, in person, in D.C. while McGovern still was alive and able to preside at a several-day reunion. (My life partner, Jeri Smith-Fornara, and I attended together. She had been a McGovern donor and organizer).
I will miss tomorrow’s show—most of all interaction with a group of dedicated (then) young men and women who worked tirelessly, for little of no compensation, and never gave up although the outcome was clear days before election day in November.
I had worked with dedication for five years for Hubert Humphrey, through two national campaigns and his Vice Presidency. George and Eleanor McGovern were next-door neighbors to the Humphreys in suburban Chevy Chase, MD. Both were South Dakota natives. Humphrey had sponsored McGovern as Food for Peace director in the Kennedy administration. In 1968, after Robert Kennedy’s murder, McGovern had launched a candidacy mainly backed by RFK supporters. He was the first on the podium to embrace and endorse Humphrey after his nomination at the tumultuous 1968 Dem Chicago convention.
Later McGovern emerged as the single most avid opponent of the Vietnam War among capital Democrats. Sen. Ed Muskie, however, was the presumed 1972 presidential nominee. He had been Humphrey’s VP running mate four years earlier. I shared McGovern’s anti-VN War passion. In mid-1971 he announced his presidential candidacy—the earliest such declaration until that point in political history. Humphrey, in meantime, had returned to the Senate. I thought he should not be a 1972 candidate—mainly because I thought he had been scarred internally by his VP and 1968 campaign experience. I went to see him in his office, told him as much, and said I was going to help McGovern. He said he had really not thought yet about 1972 but was not surprised by my desire to help his friend’s anti-war campaign. At that point I was not sure that McGovern could be nominated but thought that, at a minimum, he could influence the Dem Party and platform decisively on the war issue.
Months later, before the FL Dem presidential primary, Humphrey decided to enter the race and sent me a letter asking me to come home. I told him that, if McGovern failed early in the process, I certainly would return to him. Otherwise, though, I remained committed to McGovern so long as he remained in the race.
I helped the early McGov campaign get organized, hired staff, trouble-shooted in key primary states. served as his platform manager at the convention and, after his nomination, became policy director of the general-election campaign. We had little money, got few establishment endorsements, and were fueled by the total commitment of the candidate and campaign staff.
Most ambitious young organizers in the party signed on with the Muskie campaign early. We got those not animated by ambition but by their mutual determination to end the war.
We lost in a landslide to Nixon, who should have been vulnerable because of Watergate and a chancy economy. We carried only Massachusetts (thus the Massachusetts Knew bumper stickers that emerged after Nixon’s resignation). The reasons for the loss were many. McGovern was not truly at home with some of the party’s traditional constituencies, including organized labor. The eventual fatal blow came at the national convention in Miami Beach, when he named Sen. Tom Eagleton as his running mate, then dropped him later in favor of Sarge Shriver after an attenuated replacement process.
McGovern had flown the maximum number of missions as a WWII bomber pilot in Europe and had shown great courage in opposing a sitting Dem president on the VN issue. But the Eagleton decision made him appear indecisive and weak. The campaign also suffered from the continuing trend begun in 1968 when middle-American Democrats began abandoning their party in favor of Nixon or George Wallace. I wrote scripts for TV commercials, which ran in the campaign’s closing days, by Sens. Humphrey and Ted Kennedy urging Democrats to return to their party.
After the campaign the McGoverns underwent some family tragedies. President Clinton, one of our1972 organizers, appointed him ambassador to the Food and Agricultural Organization in Rome. (He wrote my late wife and I a note suggesting we come over for a vacation, staying in the McGoverns’ ambassadorial digs). After his death, a few years ago, his children solicited money for a hunger project in his name in South Dakota.
George McGovern was a good and decent man committed to ending a mistaken war. His Senate colleague, William Fulbright, said he had hoped he might win in 1972 “because he is such an ordinary man—ordinary in the best American sense.” In January, 1972, my father died of an accidental fall in his D.C. apartment house. The first call I received, after the accident, was from McGovern. The kind of man he was.
 
Ken Elstein
I am sorry that I missed the July 12th event.
I met Senator McGovern at an Amherst, Massachusetts fundraiser for his friend, US Rep. Jim McGovern. The Senator signed a copy of my TIME Magazine cover (attached), which he said he remembered from 1972 (attached photo). He also signed a copy of a front page NY Times photo (also attached) at Trump Village (sic), Brooklyn. I am seen standing between the Senator and Liz Holtzman, who later served on the House Judiciary Committee that impeached Nixon.
Rep. Jim McGovern and Senator McGovern were close friends, though they were not related. (They spoke by phone every week, and were both St. Louis Cardinals fans.)
Jim McGovern said that the fundraiser was the Senator’s last public event. It was a privilege to participate in it.
In another note, a year ago a relative of Senator McGovern named Stan Courtney contacted me regarding their family’s genealogy. I could connect you if you wish.
Please keep me within the loop. Senator McGovern was a truly great American, and we should continue to honor him.

This Post Has One Comment

  1. Larry Windsor July 9, 2022 Reply

    “Larry Hotel” Origin from 1972 McGovern for President Campaign (thanks to Joe Grandmaison)

    Along with so many others, I was deeply saddened to learn of Joe Grandmaison’s passing. I do want to share how he created something in 1972 about me that has lasted through many campaigns and beyond.

    1970 was my first campaign as an advance person on Joe Duffey’s race for Senator in Connecticut and I worked under Anne Wexler, Tony Podesta, and Steve Robbins. Along with other events such as HQ openings, I advanced the primary and election nights specifically coordinating arrangements at the hotels.

    In ’72, Steve asked me to come to New Hampshire the weekend before the March 7th primary to advance Senator McGovern’s election night festivities which included setting up the hotel ballroom for the crowd including the stage and the press area for the TV “shot”.

    Seven weeks later, Steve had me come up to Boston to do the same for that primary’s election night. While walking in the lobby of the Colonnade Hotel, Gary Hart was walking toward me and said, “It’s Larry Hotel” which was the first time I ever heard that.

    I thought Gary made it up, but when I asked Robbins about it, Steve told me about his discussion with Grandmaison before the New Hampshire primary night. Joe had asked Steve what they were doing about special arrangements, and Steve told him he had someone (me) coming up to advance election night. Grandmaison, more than a bit astonished, said, “Steve, you have someone just to do the hotel?” and Joe named me “Larry Hotel”.

    Ultimately, I advanced the hotels for the convention in Miami and, from the 1910 K Street HQ, booked the McGovern-Shriver hotels and hired a team of “hotel advance people” to travel from city to city to set up the overnights.

    I thank Grandmaison as I have been called “Larry Hotel” for decades in other campaigns and by people who have no idea why or how I got the name. Thank you, Joe, and may you rest in peace.

    Larry Windsor

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