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RFK Teams with Humphrey in NYC

TV: Tonight on “Dr. Kildare”


Sept. 24, 1964 - On tonight’s season premiere of “Dr. Kildare,” hard-living executive Franklin Gaer (Walter Matthau) seems likely to develop a serious heart condition if he does not moderate his excessive lifestyle. 8:30 p.m. on NBC.


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6:30


RFK Teams with Humphrey in NYC

 

Sept. 24, 1964 - Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee Hubert Humphrey teamed up today with Robert F. Kennedy, the party’s Senate candidate, to give New York City a political razzle-dazzle such as it hasn’t seen in years. At one point, they had the heart of Manhattan tied up in a massive traffic tangle for nearly an hour.

Crowds swarmed over the streets as the motorcade went uptown via 34th Street and Fifth Avenue. The throng, though considerably smaller than the masses that greeted President Kennedy in the 1960 campaign, was considered a phenomenal turnout for a Vice-Presidential candidate and a Senatorial candidate.

Outside the Goldwater headquarters, at Fifth Avenue and 43rd St., there was a covey of Republican youths flaunting Goldwater-Miller placards. And at 47th St., a shirt-sleeved office worker hooted from a window: “Go back to Boston, you bum!” But the reception was generally friendly. Kennedy spoke to crowds at Alexander’s department store, Queens Boulevard, Elmhurst, and at Borough Hall, Brooklyn.

Both Humphrey and Kennedy belittled reports of squabbles between the Johnson-Humphrey staff and the Kennedy organization.

“There’s no friction that I know of,” said Humphrey. “I’m for Kennedy, and he’s for Johnson and Humphrey — you can’t get a better working arrangement than that.”

Humphrey’s enthusiasm extended to a spirited defense of Kennedy from the charge of being a carpetbagger.

Humphrey said he could not imagine anyone from New York, a world gateway, questioning Kennedy’s bid for a Senate seat from New York just because he happened to have been born in Massachusetts.

Carrying their “Beat Goldwater” cry through three of the city’s five boroughs, the pair wound up tonight at an Americana Hotel dinner to accept the nominations of the Liberal Party.

“It was liberals who established the point once and for all that totalitarianism — extremism — of any stripe is alien to traditions of American democracy,” Humphrey said in his acceptance speech. “You founded your party in 1944 because you would not tolerate Communist extremism in the liberal movement.”

Kennedy, accepting his Liberal nomination, was lavish in praise of Humphrey, the man he fought so bitterly on behalf of his brother, the late President Kennedy, in the 1960 West Virginia primary.

“Most Republicans and most Democrats would have given up after what happened four years ago in West Virginia — but not Sen. Humphrey,” Kennedy said.

No one had given more to the Liberal cause than Humphrey and “no one had fought this fight with more spirit and gallantry and humor,” he added.

Humphrey-Kennedy day on the sidewalks of New York started with an appearance before the New York City Labor Council breakfast at the Hotel Manhattan. There, Humphrey said he was stunned by a recent Goldwater statement that he believed in the inevitability of nuclear war.

“How can any man successfully work for peace if he is resigned to the inevitability of war?” Humphrey asked.


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