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"We in the Goldwater camp felt this. We had trouble getting businessmen to allow their names to be used in ads. They wouldn't come out openly for Goldwater. Many of them wouldn't even contribute money because then their names would be on record. If anyone asked them how they felt, they were undecided. But they voted for Goldwater."
The Press. Part of this tendency to be counted in the polling booth rather than in the polls could be attributed to the attitude of the press. Most major California newspapers opposed Goldwater, including the staunchly Republican Los Angeles Times, which campaigned against him on Page One. Nearly all of the scores of reporters visiting California for the campaign thought that Rockefeller would win, wrote endlessly of the élan in his camp and of the pall of gloom hanging over the Goldwater forces. Some of this stemmed from the personal political predilections of many of the newsmen. But it was more than that—for, to the reporter who did nothing more than travel around with the candidates, the atmosphere was indeed deceptive.
To these newsmen, Rockefeller's organization seemed a marvel of efficiency. Nothing was left to chance. At every stop on Rocky's itinerary, accommodations for the press were waiting: typewriters, pencils, paper, telegraph facilities, telephones, press releases. Transportation was there when it was needed. So were the hotel rooms. And so was Rockefeller himself, nearly always available to any reporter who wanted to talk to him. Wherever Rocky went, his smooth public relations firm of Spencer-Roberts saw to it that the crowds were there to greet him; in San Jose, for example, Spencer-Roberts rounded up more than 8,000 people who waited six hours just to shake the Governor's hand. Rocky himself seemed to enjoy every smiling, finger-crunching minute of it. He breathed confidence—for the simple reason that he really thought he was going to win.
By contrast, Goldwater's contingent seemed a shambles. The campaign management, directed by onetime Senator William Knowland, was at best unsteady. The schedule underwent constant change. The candidate rarely indulged in more than the most perfunctory chitchat with reporters. Barry shrouded himself in an impenetrable diffidence, acting for all the world like a reluctant dragon slayer. In his public appearances he hardly ever exhibited that electric quality which, for example, helped him hold the 1960 Republican National Convention in thrall. He seemed to stay on the defensive, endlessly trying to answer his enemies' charges that he wanted to sell TVA for a dollar, that he would take the U.S. out of the United Nations, that he would abolish social security, that he had an itchy finger on the nuclear trigger.