Eugene Joseph McCarthy (March 29, 1916December 10, 2005) was an American politician, writer, and academic who represented Minnesota in both houses of the United States Congress for over 22 years, first in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1949 to 1959, then in the U.S. Senate from 1959 until his resignation in 1971. A member of the Democratic Party, McCarthy sought the party's presidential nomination in the 1968 presidential election, challenging incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson on an anti–Vietnam War platform, and ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for president four more times.
Born in Watkins, Minnesota, McCarthy became an economics professor after earning a graduate degree from the University of Minnesota. He served as a code breaker for the United States Department of War during World War II. McCarthy became a member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (the state affiliate of the Democratic Party) and in 1948 was elected to the House of Representatives, where he served until being elected to the U.S. Senate in 1958. McCarthy was a prominent supporter of Adlai Stevenson II for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960, and was himself a candidate for the Democratic vice-presidential nomination in 1964. He co-sponsored the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, though he later expressed regret about its impact and became a member of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
As the 1960s progressed, McCarthy emerged as a prominent opponent of Johnson's handling of the Vietnam War. After Robert F. Kennedy declined the request of a group of antiwar Democrats to challenge Johnson in the 1968 Democratic primaries, McCarthy entered the race on an antiwar platform. Though he was initially given little chance of winning, the Tet Offensive galvanized opposition to the war, and McCarthy finished in a strong second place in the New Hampshire primary. After that, Kennedy entered the race, and Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection. McCarthy and Kennedy each won several primary contests. The race was upended in June 1968 when Kennedy was assassinated. McCarthy won a plurality of the popular vote and delegate count in the primaries, but the rules did not bind delegates to their primary results.
After Kennedy's assassination, his delegates became uncommitted, with most ultimately backing Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who had not actively campaigned in the primaries. He had entered the primaries in April 1968 and was the preferred candidate of President Johnson. This gave Humphrey the majority needed to secure the Democratic nomination at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. McCarthy did not seek reelection in the 1970 Senate election. He sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972 but fared poorly. He ran in more races after that but was never elected to another office. He ran as an Independent in the 1976 presidential election and won 0.9% of the popular vote. He was a plaintiff in the landmark campaign finance case Buckley v. Valeo and supported Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election. McCarthy died of complications from Parkinson's disease at age 89 on December 10, 2005, in a retirement home in Georgetown, Washington, D.C.
Early life and education
McCarthy was born in Watkins, Minnesota. He was the son of a deeply religious Catholic woman of German ancestry, Anna Baden McCarthy, and a strong-willed man of Irish descent, Michael John McCarthy Jr., a postmaster and cattle buyer.
McCarthy grew up in Watkins with his parents and three siblings. He attended St. Anthony's Catholic School in Watkins, and spent hours reading his aunt's Harvard Classics. He also went to college at Saint John's University, graduating in 1935. McCarthy earned his master's degree from the University of Minnesota in 1939. He taught in public schools in Minnesota and North Dakota from 1935 to 1940, when he became a professor of economics and education at St. John's, working there from 1940 to 1943.
While at St. John's, he coached the hockey team for one season.
In 1943, considering the contemplative life of a monk, he became a Benedictine novice at Saint John's Abbey. He enlisted in the Army, serving as a code breaker for the Military Intelligence Division of the War Department in Washington, D.C. in 1944. He was then an instructor in sociology and economics at the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, from 1946 to 1949. representing Minnesota's 4th congressional district until 1959. He became the leader of young liberals, predominately from the Midwest, called "McCarthy's Marauders".
In 1952 he engaged Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy (no relation) in a nationally televised debate in which he parodied the Senator's arguments to "prove" that General Douglas MacArthur had been a communist pawn.
McCarthy voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Medicare program. He did not vote on the Civil Rights Act of 1968 or on the confirmation of Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Along with Ted Kennedy, McCarthy was one of the original co-sponsors of the Immigration Act of 1965. He later regretted this, noting that "unrecognized by virtually all of the bill's supporters were provisions which would eventually lead to unprecedented growth in numbers and the transfer of policy control from the elected representatives of the American people to individuals wishing to bring relatives to this country". He became a member of the Federation for American Immigration Reform's board of advisors.
McCarthy met with Marxist-Leninist revolutionary Che Guevara in New York City in 1964 to discuss repairing relations between the US and Cuba. They met in journalist Lisa Howard's apartment on Park Avenue in Manhattan. The 2008 film Che: Part One depicts this event.
1968 presidential campaign
thumb|Campaign poster
McCarthy challenges Johnson
In 1968, Allard K. Lowenstein and his anti-Vietnam War Dump Johnson movement recruited McCarthy to run against incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson. Reportedly, Lowenstein first attempted to recruit Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who declined to run, then Senator George McGovern, who also declined (Kennedy eventually decided to run after the primary on March 16, 1968, and McGovern also later briefly entered the race). McCarthy entered and almost defeated Johnson in the New Hampshire primary, with the intention of influencing the federal government—then controlled by Democrats—to curtail its involvement in the Vietnam War. A number of antiwar college students and other activists from around the country traveled to New Hampshire to support McCarthy's campaign. Some antiwar students who had the long-haired, counterculture appearance of hippies chose to cut their long hair and shave off their beards in order to campaign for McCarthy door-to-door, a phenomenon that led to the informal slogan "Get clean for Gene".
McCarthy's decision to run arose partly as an outcome of Oregon Senator Wayne Morse's opposition to the war. Morse was one of two senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of August 1964. He gave speeches denouncing the war before it had entered most Americans' awareness. Thereafter, several politically active Oregon Democrats asked Kennedy to run as an antiwar candidate. McCarthy also encouraged Kennedy to run. After Kennedy refused, the group asked McCarthy to run, and he responded favorably. After Kennedy entered the race and Johnson withdrew, however, McCarthy shifted his focus toward Kennedy. But public perception of him changed following the Tet Offensive (January 30 – February 23, 1968), the aftermath of which saw many Democrats grow disillusioned with the war, and quite a few interested in an alternative to Johnson. McCarthy said, "My decision to challenge the President's position and the administration's position has been strengthened by recent announcements out of the administration. The evident intention to escalate and to intensify the war in Vietnam, and on the other hand, the absence of any positive indication or suggestion for a compromise or for a negotiated political settlement."
On December 3, 1967, McCarthy addressed the Conference of Concerned Democrats in Chicago, accusing the Johnson administration of ignoring and bungling opportunities for bringing the war to a conclusion. Eight days later it was reported that he had suggested abandoning some areas of South Vietnam to the Viet Cong. On February 17, 1968, it was reported that McCarthy's campaign had raised only a quarter of the funds it had hoped to raise nationally.
As his volunteers (led by youth coordinator Sam Brown) went door to door in New Hampshire, and as the media began paying more serious attention to the senator, McCarthy began to rise in the polls. When he received 42% of the vote to Johnson's 49% in the March 12 New Hampshire primary (and 20 of New Hampshire's 24 delegates to the Democratic convention), it became clear that there was deep division among Democrats about the war. Johnson had become inextricably defined by Vietnam, and this demonstration of divided support within his party meant his reelection (only four years after winning the highest percentage of the popular vote in modern history) seemed unlikely. The folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary released a record "Eugene McCarthy For President (If You Love Your Country)", endorsing McCarthy, who they said had stood alone against Johnson over "more timid men" now echoing him.
Kennedy enters the race
thumb|right|McCarthy speaks at a campaign rally at [[Madison Square Garden, May 19, 1968]]
On March 16, Robert F. Kennedy announced that he would run; many Democrats saw Kennedy as a stronger candidate than McCarthy. On March 31, Johnson surprised the world by announcing that he would not seek reelection. After that, McCarthy won in Wisconsin, where the Kennedy campaign was still getting organized. McCarthy also won in Oregon against a well-organized Kennedy effort; it was considered his first official victory over Kennedy. He mocked Kennedy and his supporters. A major gaffe occurred in Oregon, when McCarthy called Kennedy supporters "less intelligent" than his own and belittled Indiana (which had by then gone for Kennedy) for lacking a poet of the stature of Robert Lowell—a friend of McCarthy's who often traveled with him. In May, Kennedy attacked McCarthy's civil rights record.
thumb|left|McCarthy (below) with supporter [[Paul O'Dwyer at campaign headquarters, 64 West 56th Street, New York City, April 23, 1968]]
Some of those who joined McCarthy's effort early on were Kennedy loyalists. Now that Kennedy was in the race, many of them jumped ship, urging McCarthy to drop out and support Kennedy. McCarthy resented that Kennedy had let him do the "dirty work" of challenging Johnson and entered the race only when it became apparent that Johnson was vulnerable. As a result, while he initially entered the campaign with few illusions of winning, McCarthy now devoted himself to beating Kennedy (and Humphrey, who entered the race after Johnson withdrew) and gaining the nomination. Before election day, McCarthy confirmed that he would personally vote for Humphrey, but said that he would go no further than that, stopping short of endorsing him. Although McCarthy did not win the Democratic nomination, the antiwar "New Party", which ran several candidates for president that year, listed him as its nominee on the ballot in Arizona, where he received 2,751 votes, and in Vermont, gaining 579 votes. He appeared on the Oregon ballot as the New Party choice. He received 20,721 votes as a write-in candidate in California.
In The Real Majority, Richard M. Scammon and Ben Wattenberg propose that up to three-fifths of McCarthy's backers supported him because they felt President Johnson had not escalated the war quickly enough, alleging that his victory was not due to "peaceniks" so much as "fed-up-niks".
Despite McCarthy's antiwar stance, North Vietnam's Communist government had a cynical attitude toward him, largely because his campaign's lack of money made it highly skeptical of what he could achieve, calling him "a second-rate politician with little experience or money" in its analysis of the presidential election published in its Army Newspaper on August 10, 1968.
Post-Senate career
1972 presidential campaign
McCarthy returned to politics as a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972, but he fared poorly in New Hampshire and Wisconsin and soon dropped out.
Illinois was the only primary in which McCarthy actively participated. He got 38% of the vote to the then leading contender Edmund Muskie's 59%, but the media ignored McCarthy's Illinois campaign.
1976 presidential campaign
After his 1972 campaign, McCarthy left the Democratic Party, and ran as an Independent candidate for president in 1976. During that campaign, he took a libertarian stance on civil liberties, promised to create full employment by shortening the work week, came out in favor of nuclear disarmament, attacked the Internal Revenue Service, and said whom he would nominate to various Cabinet posts if elected. Mainly, however, he battled ballot access laws he deemed too restrictive and encouraged voters to reject the two-party system.
His numerous legal battles during the election, along with a strong grassroots effort in friendly states, allowed him to appear on the ballot in 30 states and eased ballot access for later third-party candidates. His party affiliation was variously listed on ballots as "Independent," "McCarthy '76," "Non-Partisan," "Nom. Petition," "Nomination," "Not Designated," and "Court Order". Although he was not on the California and Wyoming ballots, he was recognized as a write-in candidate in those states. In many states, he did not run with a vice-presidential nominee, but he came to have a total of 15 running mates in states where he was required to have one. At least eight of his running mates were women.
Nationally, McCarthy received 740,460 votes, 0.91% of the total, finishing third in the election. McCarthy, the New York Civil Liberties Union, philanthropist Stewart Mott, the Conservative Party of New York State, the Mississippi Republican Party, and the Libertarian Party were the plaintiffs in Buckley, becoming key players in killing campaign spending limits and public financing of political campaigns.
In 1980, dismayed by what he saw as the abject failure of Jimmy Carter's presidency (he later said that "he was the worst president we ever had"), he appeared in a campaign ad for Libertarian candidate Ed Clark and wrote the introduction to Clark's campaign book. He eventually endorsed Ronald Reagan for president.
Final campaigns
In 1982, McCarthy ran for his old Senate seat but lost the Democratic primary to businessman Mark Dayton, 69% to 24%.
In the 1988 election, McCarthy appeared on the ballot as the presidential candidate of a handful of left-wing state parties, specifically the Consumer parties in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and the Minnesota Progressive Party in Minnesota. In his campaign, he supported trade protectionism, Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative and the abolition of the two-party system. He received 30,905 votes.
In 1992, returning to the Democratic Party, he entered the New Hampshire presidential primary and campaigned for the Democratic nomination, but was excluded from the first televised debate. Along with other candidates who had been excluded from the 1992 Democratic debates (including two-time New Alliance Party presidential candidate Lenora Fulani, Irvine, California mayor Larry Agran, Billy Jack actor Tom Laughlin, and others), McCarthy staged protests and took unsuccessful legal action in an attempt to be included in the debates. Unlike the other excluded candidates, McCarthy was a longstanding national figure and had mounted credible campaigns for president in previous elections. He won 108,679 votes in the 1992 primaries. In his campaign for the Democratic nomination, McCarthy proposed the use of import fees to help Japan and Western Europe pay for military security and raise taxes on the wealthy in order to eliminate the national debt.
Personal life
McCarthy and his wife, Abigail Quigley McCarthy, had five children.
In 1969, McCarthy separated from his wife after 24 years of marriage, but they never divorced. The children stayed with their mother after the separation. According to McCarthy biographer Dominic Sandbrook, McCarthy had a romantic relationship with CBS News correspondent Marya McLaughlin that lasted until McLaughlin's death in 1998.
McCarthy's niece Mary Beth was married to folk singer Peter Yarrow.
Death and legacy
McCarthy died of complications from Parkinson's disease at age 89 on December 10, 2005, in a retirement home in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., where he had lived for the previous few years. The Democratic party memorialized his death during the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado, on August 28, 2008. The memorial included pictures of several prominent Democrats who had died during the four-year period since the 2004 Convention displayed on a large screen. During McCarthy's tribute, the screen displaying his photograph mistakenly left off his first name but included his middle name, calling him "Senator Joseph McCarthy"; Joseph McCarthy was a notable Republican Senator from Wisconsin famous for his anti-Communist campaigning and sparring with journalist Edward R. Murrow.
In 2009, his alma mater, St. John's University, honored McCarthy by establishing the Eugene McCarthy Distinguished Public Service Award.
McCarthy's files as U.S. congressman (Democratic Farmer-Labor) from Minnesota's 4th district (1949–1959) and as U.S. senator from Minnesota (1959–1971) are available at the Minnesota History Center for research. They include executive files, general files, legislative files, personal files, political and campaign (including senatorial, vice presidential, and presidential) files, public relations files, sound and visual materials (with photographs), and speeches.
Electoral history
{|class="wikitable"
|-
|colspan=4|McCarthy's presidential campaign results
|-
!Election
!Party
!votes
!%
|-
|1968 (primary)
|Democratic Party
|align=right| 2,914,933
|align=right|38.7%
|-
|1972 (primary)
|Democratic Party
|align=right| 553,352
|align=right|1.7%
|-
|1976
|Independent
|align=right|740,460
|align=right|0.91%
|-
|1988
|Consumer
|align=right|30,905
|align=right|0.03%
|}
Bibliography
Publishing
After leaving the Senate in 1971, McCarthy became a senior editor at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishing and a syndicated newspaper columnist. In the 1960s he began writing poetry, and his increased political prominence led to increased interest in his work. "If any of you are secret poets, the best way to break into print is to run for the presidency", he wrote in 1968.