The Howell Administration had to play defense the entire campaign year. The Democrats had occupied the Presidency since Kennedy was elected, they had controlled the Senate for most of the time since 1961, and they had controlled the House for the entirety of the 60's. Every success that the Democrats could bring up had two controversies or failures related to it. An inconsistent foreign policy across four Presidencies had left them bewildered on the world stage when Israel was defeated, when Chile erupted into a Civil War, or when the People's Republic of China gathered enough allies to try and remove the Republic of China from the Security Council. While the US, the UK, and France were able to stop the slowly unraveling China-on-the-mainland (now ruled by the Gang of Four after Mao's death) from replacing Taiwan, it was a blow to the integrity of the UN.
While race riots hadn't been as prevalent or violent as in the 60's, and open segregation had been mostly crushed by legal fiat, there was still many controversies regarding busing, affirmative action, and housing. The President agreed that a certain amount of busing and affirmative action was needed to correct "
artificial historical imbalances", in the words of one memo. Secretary Jackson was the most vocal opponent of that policy, arguing it was counterproductive and it was the worst possible option. The Cabinet was one of Howell's major problems, filled with enough strong minded personalities that there was always someone arguing with another member. One faction was lead by Secretary of State Richard Helms was in favor of
detente with the Soviet Union, while the hawk faction was lead by Secretary of Defense Henry Jackson. Originally Howell sided with Helms and pursued peace with the Soviets, but as time wore on, and leadership changed in Moscow, the President realigned with Jackson. What exactly happened in the intervening months between Howell's change in policy and Helms leaving in 1977 is unknown. All that is known is more then once the President was heard screaming at Helms for something he did.
Much like Howell a few years ago, MacBride was an untested entity. He beat an incumbent Senator, and a crowd of better known candidates for the Presidential nomination, so he had experience in fighting bigger and more qualified opponents. But what else did America know about him? He considered his primary political education to have come from his adopted "
granny", really a friend of his father, author Rose Wilder Lane. They worked as business partners in later years, and she named him heir after she died, one of the things he inherited was the famous
Little House on the Prairie franchise.
MacBride described his politics as "
pre-New Deal conservatism" and completely "
individualist in nature[...]
something that denies the need of an overarching bureaucracy to maximize the people's welfare." As a libertarian, he declared that the government had no right in interfering with business and labor disputes, but recognized the need for it to combat issues like overt racism and sexism. "
There is no liberty to deprive others of liberty" became the de facto slogan of the MacBride campaign.
At first this was immensely popular with Americans. War-weariness whether they were directly involved (like Vietnam) or not (like Israel), exhaustion with the racism and racial issues, and aggravation with large and labyrinthine federal bureaucracies. But, like with a new car, the glean quickly wore off as Americans noticed other stances that didn't appeal to him. MacBride's refusal to say whether the government had a place in fighting the drug epidemic, or rather if it was the governments place
at all to outlaw drugs, earned him the slur of 'hippie' from many law and order conservatives. His similar refusal to say if he'd back a continued ban on abortion earned him praise from feminists, but conservative women tore him to pieces over it.
A single Presidential debate happened, for the first time since Kennedy and Nixon debated in 1960. Both candidates came off as affable and intelligent, neither saying anything interesting or making a notorious gaffe. The closest thing to that was when Howell claimed MacBride's politics wouldn't work as, "
America has grown to be more then just a few little houses on the prairie," something that earned him a roaring crowd. MacBride countered how things like segregation and disenfranchisement happened because of run-amuck governments that enforced such laws against the wills of business owners and people.
The weakest link of the Republican ticket was Cohn. Brought on to absorb right-wing voters who felt the Republicans, and MacBride especially, were too liberal. At first he played well to the media, with his reputation as an fierce crusader against communism and crime. But he made several statements that hurt their campaign. Mostly infamously, after Robert Kennedy was involved in a traffic accident, was the line "
Those Kennedy's sure do have bad luck with cars huh? Good thing he wasn't in the front seat." Almost immediately was the rush to apologize for the rather callous tone, but the damage was done.
Near the end of the campaign, almost an October surprise (it was in fact the end of September when it happened), the New York Times published an article entitled "
ROY COHN, PROFESSIONAL PERJURER AND PIXIE!" The article claimed that not only did Cohn present false evidence during the Rosenberg trial, but he convinced Judge Irving Kaufman outside of the courtroom (something very improper) to grant them the death penalty. It also went further in claiming that during the McCarthy-Army hearings, he was involved in a homosexual relationship with Gerard David Schine, and that his marriage to Barbara Walters was a sham to hide his homosexuality.
Cohn reacted as many expected, furiously. He went on national television to denounce the article as "
malicious", "
libelous" and "
completely untrue" allegations. "
I love my wife, and I am not, and have never been a homosexual." He publicly demanded an apology by the entire staff of the New York Times or he would sue. Roger MacBride weighed in on the issue, fully backing his choice for Vice-President by saying that,
If I'm going to throw him under the bus because of some slander, then by God I don't deserve to be President!"
And to further damage the Republican campaign was the last minute announcement of one more Independent Republican challenge. California Representative Pete McCloskey and Connecticut Senator Lowell Weicker. McCloskey and Weicker were known to be among the more liberal of the Congressional Republicans, and both were emphatically against the "
new brand of Goldwaterism" that MacBride espoused. The biggest controversy of their run was not regarding their politics, but over Weicker's eligibility, being born in Paris to American parents.
Ultimately, in spite of the liberal Republican split, in spite of the many problems that plagued MacBride and Cohn, in spite of several closely called states, the Republicans won that year with a majority of the popular and electoral vote. In hindsight, the question of how becomes obvious:
Sixteen years of Democratic Presidents, spread over four men, of which two died while in office, had run its course. Howell also had the distraction of not only running for President, but working to elect his own man as Senator in Virginia, something that took up valuable time and effort. Segregation was mostly beaten but in its place came new problems: busing, quotas, and push back by middle class and working class whites in the North. In the South however, the Democrats did surprisingly well. Part of it was the efficient ground game run by the Democrats, and especially Vice-President Brewer, and part of it was the successful demonization of the Republican ticket. The Democrats were able to paint MacBride as a drugs-and-abortion supporting Yankee, with his politics coming from untested theories and 1920's economics, while Cohn as an aggressively closeted homosexual whose marriage was a sham, and whose sex life was unspeakably deviant.
Meanwhile, Howell and Brewer were made out to be working class men who fought for the New Deal, the nuclear family, and for law and order. Brewer had no problem telling voters, in every state he stopped by, the kind of things he heard from some Senators about Cohn's "
fanciful New York night life", and even showed prospective voters the infamous NYT article. While eventually the New York Times retracted the article, alleging some of the sources were wrong or flat out lied, it didn't receive as much attention as when the story was initially broken.
McCloskey and Weicker qualified too late to get on most state ballots, and received very few votes even where they were on the ballot. They won Massachusetts by a close margin over Howell and MacBride, with most of the states normal Republican voters abandoning the Republican ticket after the Kennedy comments. Some even charged high ranking state Republicans, like Senator Lodge, with encouraging defections to prevent the "radical" MacBride from winning.
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After two terms in the Senate, Paul Fannin decided to retire home. The two who ran to succeed him as the Republican nominee were Representatives Conlan and Steiger. Both ran a very close and tight race for the nomination, and at the end victory separated the two by only a few hundred votes. Over the next few days it flipped who had the small lead. Both already ran viscous ads against each other during the primary, and now they accused the other of wrongdoing, including falsifying ballots while they were being counted. Supporters of each man called the other "
John Conman" and "
Sammy Stealer".
After a recount Conlan was barely ahead, only 67 votes after thousands had been found and discarded for each man. Instead of just rolling over and accepting defeat, Steiger announced he was running a write-in campaign, and asked the voters of the state not to "
vote for the thief," and to back the real winner of the primary. Conlan denounced Steiger, castigating him as a libeler, a crook, and arrogant beyond belief for waging this "
illegitimate, sore-loser campaign" after he had lost.
Meanwhile, the third US representative running for the Senate seat, Morris Udall, was slowly built up his profile with voters of the state. Elected to the House in a special election for Arizona's 2nd district in 1961 (after his brother was appointed Secretary of the Interior by President Kennedy), he was known for his championing of liberal and environmentalist causes. In a normal year he likely wouldn't have won against a single Republican candidate, even a weak one, because of the nature of Arizona's electorate. But this year he faced a divided field, benefited from name-recognition, and an energized state party ready to take win the seat for the first time since 1946.
Governor Milton H. Graham predicted a Udall sweep, based on the "
childish" and "
immature" way both Republicans conducted themselves. Even as the Republican Party won the states electoral votes, and a majority of the House districts (including the 2nd), Udall was still able to win a majority of the vote. A large amount of Republicans chose either to abstain or vote for Udall, seeing neither Conlan nor Steiger as Senate-worthy given how they acted.
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Dubbed as "
The Rematch" by Texas press, George Bush and Lloyd Bentsen faced off once more after six years. Two term House Representative George Bush's campaign in 1970 gave him a narrow majority of voters and enabled him to become the fourth Republican Senator from the Lone Star State. For the first time since Reconstruction both seats were occupied by the Grand Old Party. Part of it was 1970 being Humphrey's midterm, and part of it was liberal resentment of Bentsen primarying of Ralph Yarborough. Regardless of why he lost, Bentsen was the first Democrat to lose that Senate seat and spent some time in the wilderness.
Texas Democrats were split between letting Bentsen another chance and giving Yarborough another chance. Eventually Yarborough, who lost a 1972 election against John Tower, ruled out a third run in six years. Afterward, Texan liberals failed to find a strong enough candidate to oppose Bentsen, who won the nomination. Immediately Bentsen had the advantage: he was a moderate Democrat in, in Texas, and a year where a popular Southern Democrat President was running for re-election. To further add to his advantages, the Bush campaign was facing a controversy as his son, George Walker Bush, was arrested for a DUI near Houston.
Unfortunately the Bentsen campaign got a little too personal. Less was made on George H.W. Bush being a Carpetbagging Yankee as in 1970, and more was put on his son. "
George Junior" was damned as a drunk, a draft dodger, and an example of "
Bush Senior's moral failings", in the words of one infamous ad. Senator Bush made his famous reply during a debate, telling Bentsen that "
[y]ou can insult me and attack me, but don't you dare attack my family you goddamn coward."
While polls put Bentsen in a lead for most of a campaign, possibly even a landslide after the DUI was made public, the negative response to the ad and Bush's response to Bentsen put the incumbent Senator just barely over the top. However, Senator Bush's second term would be cut short as he was appointed Secretary of State by President MacBride.
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While Howell's popularity out of the South was slowly eroding, it only kept going up, aside from a few hiccups, since he took office. Poverty, illiteracy, and sickness had been going down since the Johnson administration, and Howell was able to benefit from that by association and by keeping in touch with the voters. One of the largest opponents Howell personally had was Senator Harry Byrd, Jr.
The son of the Byrd Organisation's namesake, Junior was denounced by the President in an ad as "
The son of Virginia's long time feudal baron" and a "
wholly illegitimate candidate [...] who is Senator because of his pappy, not because of his services to the state." Henry Howell recruited a sufficiently liberal candidate, former state rep and and then-state senator, Clive Livingston DuVal II, and worked tiredly to get him elected over Byrd in the primary. It worked, and DuVal would appear as the Democratic candidate against Republican Lieutenant Governor John Dalton.
However, in a surprising move, Byrd announced he would be running as the Conservative Party candidate that election cycle. Originally they weren't going to contest the election, content in unofficially backing Byrd. After noticing how hard the President was campaigning against the senior Senator, the party leaders quietly assembled a caucus after the big two had their primaries. When looking at the Democratic and Republican nominees, they went ahead and nominated the incumbent Senator.
The big loser of the race, something that was known even before the ballots were cast, was Dalton. DuVal had the President's backing, Byrd had the incumbency advantage and a devoted base. While Dalton didn't even have his party's support anymore, as big name Republicans moved to endorse Byrd or DuVal. Near the end of the campaign even Governor Holton moved to back DuVal, instead of his Lieutenant Governor, which was something the Conservatives made a big fuss over. Claiming that Howell's charges of Byrd being an "
illegitimate candidate" were ridiculous when the President worked to hand-pick DuVal, and that the "
Howell-Holton" machine were colluding to make him Senator.
While he didn't quit his candidacy, Dalton announced he was prepared to accept defeat and told voters to vote who they thought would win rather then cast a wasted vote. Not an official surrender, but close enough to one in most people's eyes.
As President Howell swept his home state, DuVal beat Byrd by over 7 points. Dalton would make a comeback next year as the Republican candidate for Governor, but would lose to one of the most surprising gubernatorial nominees in the past 150 years.
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Overall the '76 election was a bust for the Democrats. They gained some seats here and there, but they lost the Presidency, failed to take the House, and narrowed their majority in the Senate. Weicker, despite getting less then a percent of the vote as a write-in candidate in Connecticut, won re-election to his Senate seat despite an attempt (ironically enough) by an Independent Republican to unseat him. Roy Cohn was succeeded by Republican David Rockefeller, brother of the long time New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller (who in fact encouraged him to run).
Notable re-election winners were Democrat Albert Gore, and Republican George Murphy, notable new comers were Democrat Morris Udall, and Republicans David Rockefeller of New York and William F. Quinn of Hawaii (who succeeded Hiram Fong).
