How much does Chappaquiddick hurt Ted Kennedy were he to run in 1972?

Let's say that, despite the fallout of the Chappaquiddick incident, Ted Kennedy had still decided to run for President in 1972. Polls at the time suggested that he would have been competitive in the general election, but how would things have gone in reality?

Had Kennedy run, would he still have likely gotten the Democratic nomination, or would Chappaquiddick have made him too toxic for much of the Democratic base? How would things have played out in the general election, presuming he got that far?
 
Kennedy's can't drive,fly or play football on ski slopes,but they could drown a campaign aide,lobotomize a family member,molest many White House aides and suck up to a homicidal tinhorn dictator. He was toxic,maybe the sheep would have given him their vote but not conservative working class in the primaries
 
Uphill battle at best even for the nomination. Drunk driving wasn't anywhere near as stigmatized back then, but he was still more worried about the political fallout than he was about Mary Jo Kopechne's life. Also shows he's not capable of making good decisions in a crisis. Not good, especially during the Cold War.

If he somehow gets the nomination, he's running against an incumbent who signed liberal domestic legislation - OSHA, EPA, and Title IX had occurred during Nixon's first term. The draft ended in 1972. There was a significant increase in Social Security benefits one month before the election. So TK can't outflank Nixon on the left without going full McGovern and if he does that the general election results are similar.

Nixon wasn't a proven crook yet - you always have to try to remove post 1972 knowledge from your thinking. Being a Kennedy might help in a few states but Nixon wins big.
 
Any campaign by Kennedy is DOA. Too many people thought something was up at Chappaquiddick. There was a lot of speculation about a cover up, likely true. IMO Teddy was trying to cover up an affair but did it so clumsily it came off as covering up cowardice at best, murder at worst.
 

kernals12

Banned
He definitely would've lost. Nixon was popular and Kennedy was too left wing. 1976 was probably his best chance.
 
Teddy's ONLY chance at the Presidency was 1976, and even then he'd struggle and Ford or Reagan would have a decent shot. Against Nixon in 1972, he'd lose almost as bad as McGovern.
 

kernals12

Banned
Any campaign by Kennedy is DOA. Too many people thought something was up at Chappaquiddick. There was a lot of speculation about a cover up, likely true. IMO Teddy was trying to cover up an affair but did it so clumsily it came off as covering up cowardice at best, murder at worst.
I think the problem wasn't any cover up, it was not reporting an accident in which a young woman died.
 
I think the problem wasn't any cover up, it was not reporting an accident in which a young woman died.

It was compounded by how she died. She wasn't killed instantly and he his long enough to sober up. She suffocated in an air pocket, which was a direct result of his failure to report the action. There was a window of about six hours where she could have been saved.
 
I think the problem wasn't any cover up, it was not reporting an accident in which a young woman died.
The accident itself wasn't covered up but he was trying to cover up the affair. I like Usertron's scenario
OK, here goes by memory without references:eek::

At 11:15 PM Ted and Mary Jo leave "The Boiler Room", the notorious cottage known for liaisons between the Kennedy Men and their girls. They are both heavily intoxicated, and are seen by all there as leaving at that time.

At 12:30 AM, a sheriff's deputy notices a car (matching the color and general shape and size of Kennedy's car, though he doesn't know that) sitting in a local lovers lane on the island. As he approaches the car, its engine suddenly roars to life and the vehicle tears off, leaving the deputy in a cloud of dirt and dust.

At This Moment, Ted & Mary Jo do not know the following facts:

1] The deputy saw no faces
2] The deputy did not get the license plate #, state of origin, make, or model of Ted's car
3] The deputy has no access to any form of transportation
4] The deputy has no access to any form of communication
5] The deputy is completely alone
6] Ted and Mary Jo have just made a clean getaway

At This Moment, the heavily intoxicated Ted & Mary Jo have to assume the worst:

1] The deputy recognized Ted
2] The deputy saw him in a compromising situation with a woman not his wife
3] The deputy got the license plate #, make, and model of Ted's car
4] The deputy is already racing to his vehicle
5] The deputy is already calling in for police backup
6] The deputy is now in Hot Pursuit:eek:
7] Police backup are even now crossing Chappaquiddick Bridge cutting off escape
8] The police are all Nixon Republicans:p

So, what to do? Cook up a scenario!

Ted tells Mary Jo to take the car and travel by herself to go home. If she's stopped, she can just say she was driving home by herself. The people back at the cottage will back them up, and the report by the deputy can be dismissed on the grounds that he was merely mistaken in the darkness of the night.

Mary Jo, with a blood alcohol level that's probably past .3, driving at night in an unfamiliar vehicle on a bridge with no lights or guardrails slips off the bridge as the drivers' side forward wheel going first. The car tips over at a 90 degree angle, causing a "bellyflop" impact on the drivers side of the car, transferring the shock of said impact to the un-seatbelted driver (nobody wore seatbelts in those days:(). Knocked unconscious, Mary Jo wakes up as the cold water floods in, and she instinctively goes to the air pocket forming at the rear seat window. This air quickly fouls with CO2, and its not certain whether it is this or exposure from the water that causes her to lose consciousness again, and drown. There's no indiction that she tried to open the windows or the doors, but its not uncommon in these circumstances for the force of impact to jam both windows and doors.

Ted has been walking about the island, thinking to let the police speak to Mary Jo while he is on his "late night constitutional". By the time he crosses the bridge himself, Mary Jo is already dead, and the car is almost completely submerged, and invisible at night.

He then goes to the motel right at the end of the bridge and checks in. He then proceeds to get chatty with the night clerk, who is flattered that the famous Senator Ted Kennedy would choose to spend so much time with him. Ted spends much of the night traveling back and forth from his motel room and the front desk (establishing his whereabouts) until finally by 3AM (figuring Mary Jo is home and in bed herself by this time) he goes to bed for the night.

At 7:30 AM he gets up and goes outside. Pandemonium! Emergency vehicles everywhere! And who is the first person to see him? His Chief-of-Staff! NOW What!? Simple: Cook up Scenario 2.0:rolleyes:

Problem: Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive:p

That is why he limited his fairy tale press conference to local media

That is why he had to cook up a ridiculous tale that FIT HIS KNOWN MOVEMENTS FOR THAT NIGHT:mad:

The press would NOT question his dry clothes. They would NOT question his movements at the motel. His only unanswerable problem was the sheriff's deputy, whose recorded timing in his notebook of the event at the lovers lane could not in these circumstances be elided. So...the deputy was a liar.

The deputy is quoted as saying: "Look, you can either believe him, or you can believe me." Apparently, the voters believed him. They elected him Sheriff.:cool::D:p

After the 10th anniversary of Chappaquiddick, the local Coroner who had "lost" much of the files on Mary Jo Kopechne's autopsy asked Ted's CoS to secure a political patronage job for the coroner's son. When Ted's CoS refused, the coroner is reported to have said: "Oh really? Then I think I just remembered where I left some old files of mine!":mad: So at the time that Ted was getting ready to challenge Carter for the nomination, "leaks" came out showing that Mary Jo was still alive and conscious for some time after the car went into the water, putting the complete lie to Kennedy's fairy tale about "swimming to the car but not being able to save her".

It probably didn't happen exactly like that but something similar is likely IMO.
 
Remember that a lot of people in 1979 thought EMK had put Chappaquiddick behind him--and then came that Roger Mudd interview. It would have been worse in 1972.

FWIW, a Gallup poll in April 1971 showed Nixon leading Kennedy by eight points (compared to a four point lead over Muskie and a ten-point lead over Humphrey). https://www.nytimes.com/1971/04/04/...-3-rivals-has-him-leading-muskie-kennedy.html And remember that this was at a relatively low point in Nixon's popularity (which would later be boosted by wage-price controls, the expansionary policy of the Fed in 1972, and the China initiative) and without reminding the respondents about Chappaquiddick (as the Nixon campaign surely would have done, "officially" or not). My own guess is that Kennedy would lose by at least eight points in 1972, more likely by double digits, though not nearly as bad as McGovern's 23-point loss.
 
Remember that a lot of people in 1979 thought EMK had put Chappaquiddick behind him--and then came that Roger Mudd interview. It would have been worse in 1972.

FWIW, a Gallup poll in April 1971 showed Nixon leading Kennedy by eight points (compared to a four point lead over Muskie and a ten-point lead over Humphrey). https://www.nytimes.com/1971/04/04/...-3-rivals-has-him-leading-muskie-kennedy.html And remember that this was at a relatively low point in Nixon's popularity (which would later be boosted by wage-price controls, the expansionary policy of the Fed in 1972, and the China initiative) and without reminding the respondents about Chappaquiddick (as the Nixon campaign surely would have done, "officially" or not). My own guess is that Kennedy would lose by at least eight points in 1972, more likely by double digits, though not nearly as bad as McGovern's 23-point loss.

Good analysis. In truth, Nixon got the candidate he wanted to face in 1972. The Nixon White House was hit with euphoria after Chappaquiddick, but such was the nature of that White House that such feelings didn't last long. Instead, they turned to the paranoia and hatred against their enemies, real and imagined, that they became so infamous for. In fact, ironically, this was indeed when Nixon's people started to go off the rails (mid-1969). Starting with John Mitchell.
 
You know the kind of scandals you get better from.... he didnt have any of those

Yep. He was getting into drunken episodes at ages long past where most people would have grown up. Even US Grant stayed sober when his wife was around. Which was all the time after he left the White House.
 
My own guess is that Kennedy would lose by at least eight points in 1972, more likely by double digits, though not nearly as bad as McGovern's 23-point loss.

Kennedy would have done modestly better than McGovern: I suggest He would have won Massachusetts, Rhode Island, DC, Hawaii, and perhaps Minnesota--and maybe Maryland, but that one would be a stretch. That's a best-case total of 45 electoral votes to Nixon's 492. Still a rather thorough curb-stomp.
 
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