Oct. 26, 1964 - Senator Barry Goldwater received a deafening 28‐minute ovation at Madison Square Garden tonight and then went on to predict he would win the Presidency next week in “the major political upset of the century.”
More than 18,000 persons jammed the arena, and 5,000 others who were unable to get in listened as loudspeakers brought the program out to 49th Street west of Eighth Avenue.
The Republican Presidential nominee was interrupted with applause at almost every phrase of a speech that took him 35 minutes. Some of his points appeared to be directed at his New York City audience as he made his only appearance here in the general election campaign.
He set the crowd to roaring when he declared: “If you ever hear me quoted as promising to make you free by forcibly busing your children from your chosen neighborhood school to some other one just to meet an arbitrary racial quota — look again because somebody is kidding you!
“I believe in our system of neighborhood schools, and I want to see them preserved and improved. I don’t want to see them destroyed or sacrificed by a futile exercise in sociology which will accomplish nothing but lose much.”
He added, “My friends, these are not matters of civil rights — they are matters of common sense, common concern, and common decency.”
On another tack, he asserted: “The Nazi and Fascist types — the bigots —
are not going to vote for me because my grandfather was a Polish Jew.”
Hurrahs broke out, and he went on: “But do we want these votes?”
“No!” roared the crowd.
The rally was organized by New Yorkers for Goldwater and Miller, a citizen group, rather than by the regular Republican state organization, and in enthusiasm it far surpassed the Liberal party rally addressed by President Johnson in the same arena Oct. 15.
Once again, Goldwater struck at expanding Federal power, this time charging President Johnson with “political daddyism” — seeking votes by promising the Federal Government will take care of everything without cost.
That, he argued, is what is wild and irresponsible in this campaign. This, he said, is “basic dishonesty” and “transparent vote‐grabbing demagoguery.”
The Johnson Administration, he asserted, is in “a state of moratorium until after the election,” although Americans were dying in Vietnam. Its policies, he said, are those “of drift, deception, and defeat.”
Earlier, anti‐Goldwater pickets from the Congress of Racial Equality, about 300 at the peak, paraded opposite the Garden, Where red, heart‐shaped signs inside proclaimed, “In your heart, you know he’s right,” the CORE pickets chanted, “In your guts you know he’s nuts.”
Three hundred uniformed policemen, including 25 mounted men, were on hand, but rumors of projected disturbances proved unfounded.
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