Walter Mondale campaigns for Hubert Humphrey and Pierre Salinger campaigns for Robert Kennedy at King County Democratic Convention on June 1, 1968.

  • By Alan J. Stein
  • Posted 7/05/1999
  • HistoryLink.org Essay 1460
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On June 1, 1968, at the King County Democratic Convention, Senator Walter Mondale (b. 1928) campaigns for Vice President Hubert Humphrey (1911-1978), and former Senator Pierre Salinger (b. 1925) campaigns for Senator Robert Kennedy (1925-1968) for the Democratic nomination for President. Competing for the nomination are Vice President Humphrey, Senator Kennedy, and Senator Eugene McCarthy (b. 1916). The race occurs after incumbent President Lyndon Johnson (1908-1973) declines to run for reelection. The principal issue in the campaign is U.S. foreign policy and the War in Vietnam. Salinger, former press secretary to President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) calls for a debate between Humphrey, who represents Johnson Administration policies, and Senator Kennedy who proposes a peaceful solution to the war.

The candidates themselves were busy campaigning in the California primary election. Debate at the King County convention focused on the war: Kennedy and McCarthy delegates combined to dominate the convention with a foreign affairs platform calling for an end to the war.


Sources:

Walt Crowley, Rites of Passage: A Memoir of the Sixties in Seattle (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995), 256; Seattle Post-Intelligencer, June 2, 1968, p. 1.


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