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The Unfigurables. In his campaigning travels, Larry O'Brien had come to know many Congressmen—but he had never dealt with them in their legislative capacity. Now it was time for just such dealing. First O'Brien huddled with a select group of Capitol Hill veterans, sought to make a knowledgeable estimate of the political shape of the 87th Congress. It was decided that the Senate, with a minimum amount of attention, would back most of the Kennedy program. But the House of Representatives was a different matter. The presession analysis showed that there were about 180 certain House votes for most New Frontier Programs, about 180 votes that were almost equally sure to go against the Administration. That left between 75 and 80 votes that were more or less unfigurable.
Next, O'Brien met early in February in his Mayflower Hotel suite with three of the canniest young Democratic members of the House: Missouri's Richard Boiling, New Jersey's Frank Thompson and Alabama's Carl Elliott. Boiling had already gone over the list of New Frontier legislative proposals, estimated as things stood that only one—the housing bill—was a sure shot for House passage. The conferees ran through the entire roster of 437 Representatives—name by name, back-home problem by back-home problem, interest by interest and prejudice by prejudice. "We decided," recalls one of the men who sat in on the Mayflower session, "that we had two target areas, the Eastern industrial Republicans and the moderate-to-conservative Southerners. We figured there were 40 Southerners we couldn't touch—but we've modified that since, because we have touched some of them."
As his staff contact man with Southern Representatives, O'Brien wisely selected Henry Hall Wilson Jr., 39, a North Carolinian who had done yeoman service for Candidate Kennedy in Wilson's native state during the 1960 campaign. Wilson knew little about legislative dealing with members of Congress. "But we figured he could learn," says Dick Donahue. "The most important thing was to get our own man, so that if he had any ties he had 'em to Larry instead of to a bunch of people he's known and become obliged to on the Hill."
The Absolute Key. In their studies of the House balances of power, O'Brien and his congressional advisers decided that there was a key man: Georgia's Carl Vinson, chairman of the Armed Services Committee and one of the two or three most influential Southerners in the House. They decided that it was vital to lure Vinson away from the conservative camp; he could, among other things, bring at least a score of Southern votes along with him. Says Boiling: "Vinson was absolutely the key to the whole session." O'Brien concentrated his own efforts on Vinson. The old gentleman won O'Brien's genuine admiration—and O'Brien won his. As it has happened since that time, Carl Vinson and his house followers have voted down the line for the New Frontier's programs.