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IRONIC TWIST: DALEY’S DAD HELPED STEAL VOTE FOR JFK
By Deborah OrinNovember 10, 2000 | 5:00am
Bill Daley – the pugnacious Al Gore campaign chairman leading the battle to overturn Florida’s vote – is the son of Richard “Boss” Daley, who helped steal the 1960 election for John F. Kennedy.
Daley sent the stock market tumbling yesterday as he fumed that the 2000 vote is “an injustice unparalleled in our history” – but many historians say the 1960 vote could certainly be a contender.
The difference, historians say, is that, in the end, Richard Nixon decided to act like a statesman and did not challenge the 1960 results – although some Republicans tried, but didn’t get far.
But historians generally agree that Daley (dad) actually “stole” Illinois for Kennedy by stuffing ballot boxes and voting dead men, while Daley (son) is raging about a ballot that was confusing rather than deliberate fraud.
In another huge irony, Daley blasted the “butterfly ballot” used in Palm Beach County as unacceptable, even though Chicago – where Daley’s brother Richard is mayor – uses “butterfly ballots,” though not for presidential votes.
In 1960, Kennedy won Illinois by just 8,858 votes out of 4.8 million cast, amid loud charges that Boss Daley, Chicago’s mayor, had stolen the election.
Fraud wasn’t just a Chicago problem.
In Texas, JFK won by 46,257 out of 2.3 million after 100,000 Kennedy voters seemed to appear magically in future Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson’s state.
Nixon is reported to have said: “In our campaigns, no matter how hard-fought they may be, no matter how close the election may turn out to be, those who lose accept the verdict and support those who win.”
The man later known as “Tricky Dick” also reportedly convinced the now-defunct, Republican-leaning New York Herald Tribune to kill a planned 12-part series on election fraud.
Nixon is said to have told Tribune reporter Earl Mazo: “Our country can’t afford the agony of a constitutional crisis – and I damn well will not be a party to creating one, just to become president or anything else.”
Presidential scholar Stephen Hess, who was an aide to President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1960, said Nixon faced the same choice that Gore will soon face if he loses the Florida recount – how far he wants to press the fight.
“Nixon, by taking the stand he took, which was widely applauded, put himself in position to be elected president in the future. At some point Gore would probably lose the sort of national goodwill that would allow him to be president,” said Hess, who later served on Nixon’s staff when he became president.
“What Nixon faced was a lot worse than what we’re talking about here of confusing ballots. Nixon was faced with real fraud by the father of Al Gore’s campaign manager – they voted tombstones, they stuffed ballot boxes,” Hess added.
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