Sept. 22, 1964 - Robert F. Kennedy said with bitterness today that his Republican opponent, Kenneth Keating, had “hit a sorry low” in the Senatorial campaign.
Keating charged on Sunday that Kennedy, as Attorney General, had made a deal with a “huge Nazi cartel” in the settlement of the General Aniline and Film Corporation case 18 months ago.
This kind of charge is bound to hurt, Kennedy said. “It’s just about as low as you can get,” he told a press conference.
For even though Keating later disclaimed intention of imputing any “heinous crime” or “improper motive” to his opponent, Kennedy said, such disclaimers never have the same impact as the original charge.
His aides, however, said they were sure the Nazi-deal accusation would backfire on the Republicans. They said they felt that Jewish voters would be repelled by such a “transparently false” accusation.
In Syracuse yesterday, a reporter asked Keating if he thought the Nazi-deal accusation would affect the Jewish vote, and the Senator replied: “I haven’t any idea.”
Kennedy, asked today if he thought Keating’s answer was sincere, snapped: “No.”
He added, after a pause: “He is not, in my judgment, being truthful.”
“I don’t think there’s a person of the Jewish faith in New York who hasn’t had a relative killed by the Nazis,” Kennedy continued. “The charge that I made a deal with the Nazis can’t help but have an adverse effect on how Jewish people feel about me. It will have an adverse effect on every voter not just Jews.
“If this kind of charge were true, I wouldn’t deserve to be elected to any public office. The charge isn’t true. My family, too, suffered from the Nazis. I lost my brother and my brother-in-law to the Germans. The idea that I would turn over money to the Nazis is ridiculous.”
Kennedy’s street-corner tour of the city took him today into the Inwood section of upper Manhattan, where he was besieged chiefly by schoolchildren. Tomorrow, he will try an early morning subway stop meeting in the Bronx, a Brooklyn Navy Yard noonday rally, and a walking tour of Broadway between 72nd and 75th Sts. in the afternoon.
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