May 12, 1964 - Nearly 19,000 New Yorkers overflowed Madison Square Garden tonight to hail the conservative GOP leader, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona.
They paid from $2 to $1,000 for their seats and thus contributed an estimated $100,000 to the Goldwater Presidential campaign coffers.
The confident candidate, in a half-hour speech that took nearly an hour to deliver because of cheering and applause, called for party unity and offered the olive branch to the Republican liberals who were opposing him.
He told his roaring partisans that they had to put party above faction if they expected to win in 1964.
And he took a public pledge that he would not insist on having everything his own way if he is chosen as the party’s standard-bearer in San Francisco in July.
“I want to find ways that we can work together, as a team,” he said. “I’m not interested in tearing down other Republicans. I am interested in building up my party and restoring this republic. I do not say that the Republican party must do it my way or I won’t play. I want to pledge to you, as I have to people across the country, that my candidacy is committed to the defeat of Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1964.”
The latter remark was aimed at New York’s two Republican Senators, Kenneth Keating and Jacob Javits, who have stated publicly they might not support the ticket if Goldwater is the nominee.
The mention of Keating’s name by one of the preliminary speakers drew a deafening storm of boos.
On the domestic front, Goldwater made it clear that he flatly opposes the way the Johnson Administration is handling the campaign for civil rights.
“Until we have an Administration that will cool the fires and tempers of violence, we simply cannot solve the rest of the problems in any lasting sense. And I say to you with the deepest possible sense of tragedy and regret — unless we do get such an Administration, we are going to see more violence in our streets before we see less.”
The Republicans, Goldwater asserted, “want to see Government helping the cause of equal opportunity. They do not want to see Government as the cheerleader for a frightful game of violence, destruction, and disobedience.”
Goldwater said that integration was not something that could be legislated — it was “a problem of the heart and of the mind.” “You cannot pass a law that will make me like you — or you like me,” he added.
Tonight’s affair — on the home grounds of his chief opponent, Governor Nelson Rockefeller — was easily the biggest, noisiest, and friendliest meeting of the primary campaign to date. There was a brass band, and clouds of balloons were released from the ceiling while spotlights played on the crowd. Legions of “Goldwater Girls” in Texas-style hats ushered the audience to its seats. The scent of victory was in the air, and everybody was happy.
Hostile demonstrations outside the famous arena had been predicted, and several hundred policemen were on hand to prevent trouble. But no hostilities materialized.
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