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In some metropolitan areas, e.g., New York and Los Angeles, the existing machinery was dismayingly rundown. There were complaints of communication failure with GHQ. Supplies of campaign literature, buttons, bumper stickers were short. In Los Angeles Democrats complained that they had not received enough of the official campaign manuals to distribute to even the top officials—and in Madison, Wis. playgrounds Kennedy buttons were rare enough to net ten Nixon buttons in return. The ironic truth: Multimillionaire Kennedy and his family could legally contribute no more campaign funds.
Fearless & Merciless. Bobby has had far better luck in his crash program to register new voters. "The Democrats are there," he says, "and if we are going to win this election, we just have to reach them." As director of the program, Jack Kennedy selected his friend, Representative Frank ("Fearless") Thompson Jr., a handsome, hard-driving New Jersey Congressman who matches Bobby's own energy and relentless single-mindedness. Working around the clock and country, Frank Thompson has spent $100,000 on the program, recruiting 200,000 door-to-door canvassers to goad laggard voters into the registration centers. He stalks his workers mercilessly, personally spot-checking their screenings of the election districts and frequently uncovering bypassed Democrats.
In the big cities Thompson has encountered stiff, if subtle, resistance from the organization bosses, who fear that they may lose control of their districts if thousands of rediscovered Democrats suddenly outnumber faithful machine supporters. In New York, the reformers complain that Tammany workers will not walk up more than one flight of stairs to seek out new voters. But despite the bosses' roadblocks, Thompson's raiders have done a good job. Some 140,000 new Spanish-speaking Democrats have been registered in California through the Viva Kennedy Clubs. In Baltimore, Thompson's pilot city, 7,000 "unsuspected Democrats" have been uncovered. In Pennsylvania, registered Democrats exceed Republicans, 2,851,000 to 2,812,000, for the first time in recent years. Tabulating the national returns last week, Bobby Kennedy gleefully noted that 8.500,000 new voters (65% Democratic) had registered already, and the hoped-for goal of 10 million may be reached by mid-October, when the last of the state registrations will be completed.
Pablum Politics. For all his boyish enthusiasm, Bob Kennedy at 34 has had a lifetime of political experience. He managed his first political campaign—Jack's first run for the Senate in 1952—before his 27th birthday. And, like all the rest of Clan Kennedy, Bobby learned about politics under the influence of his grandfather, John ("Honey Fitz") Fitzgerald, as soon as he learned to spoon up his Pablum by himself. The seventh of Joe and Rose Kennedy's nine children, he was born in his mother's bedroom in Brookline, Mass., was still in diapers when the family migrated to New York and Joe Kennedy set out to conquer Wall Street.