Jan. 17, 1963 - Theodore C. Sorenson (pictured in 1960), President Kennedy’s special counsel, told Democratic state officials today that passage of the Administration’s tax bill this year was vital to Democratic prospects in the 1964 Presidential campaign. At a luncheon of the National Democratic Committee, Mr. Sorenson said the party could not go to the people in 1964 “at the same high level” of unemployment or in “an atmosphere of business hostility.” The tax bill, he said, would help eliminate these problems, if passed in time. Speaker after speaker at the conference had proclaimed the 1964 campaign already underway, and President Kennedy a sure winner. Senator Hubert H. Humphrey said that President Kennedy “is going to give the Republicans a thumping and a whipping the likes of which they haven’t had for many a year.” But Mr. Sorenson sounded a note of caution. He warned that if only two states, Michigan and Pennsylvania, could be added in 1964 to the Republican totals of the 1960 campaign, Mr. Kennedy would be defeated. Both these states elected Republican governors in 1962.
