Jan. 4, 1964 - Senator Barry Goldwater (right) said today that Governor Nelson Rockefeller was more a Democrat than a Republican. The conservative Arizona Senator, stopping in Los Angeles on his way back to Washington from Phoenix, said he saw no sense in face-to-face debates proposed by the New York Governor, the only other announced candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination. “I’d rather take on President Johnson on the weaknesses of his Administration,” Mr. Goldwater said. The Senator, who entered the race yesterday, said the nation should have a clear choice of philosophies. But he said of Governor Rockefeller: “Debating him would be more like debating a member of the New Frontier than like debating another Republican.”
Mr. Goldwater said that if he won the nomination, he wanted to debate with President Johnson. He said he thought Mr. Johnson would debate in the Presidential campaign. “I see no sense in Republican berating other Republicans,” Mr. Goldwater said. The Senator said he thought President Kennedy would have been a more formidable opponent for the Republicans than Mr. Johnson. “He had a lot of things that President Johnson doesn’t have,” Mr. Goldwater. Governor Rockefeller said today he recognized that Mr. Goldwater appeared unwilling to debate him but that he was “still hopeful because of public pressure here in New Hampshire that he will change his mind.”
