Republican National Convention, 1964
In a clash of Republican conservatives vs. moderates, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, the former, had managed to fend off New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, the latter, during primary season. But the senator was still shy of the total delegates needed to clearly clinch the party’s nomination at the San Francisco-held convention on the first ballot.
With support from former President Dwight Eisenhower, as well as failed candidate Rockefeller, a last-minute bid from Pennsylvania Gov. William Scranton threw a wrench in Goldwater’s plan to secure the nomination.
Just a month before the convention, Goldwater was one of six Republicans to vote against the Civil Rights Act. A “Stop Goldwater” movement ensued, with moderates throwing their support to Scranton and massive anti-Goldwater protests taking place outside the convention hall.
“The 40,000-person demonstration in San Francisco was the largest protest since the March on Washington,” author and political correspondent John Dickerson writes in Slate. “Signs read, ‘Goldwater for Fuhrer, Freedom Is Dead, Hitler Was Sincere, Too. ‘Goldwater in ’64: Bread and water in ’65; hot water in ’66,’ ‘Vote for Barry, stamp out peace,’ ‘I’d rather have scurvy than Barry–Barry.’ ”
But while he may not have held the popular vote, he held the delegates’ votes and Goldwater ended up wresting the nomination from Scranton with a vote of 883 to 214. He went on to lose the national election to Lyndon Johnson in one of the largest defeats in presidential history.
Democratic National Convention, 1968
Facing a strong challenger in Robert F. Kennedy and continuing Vietnam War protests, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced he would drop out of the presidential race and not seek reelection. Combined with a year filled with civil unrest and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Kennedy soon after, the stage was set for a contentious Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Following Kennedy’s death, anti-war candidate Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota faced Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, who had entered the race following Johnson’s withdrawal, and followed Johnson’s platform on the war. Humphrey, who didn’t participate in any primary races, was given Johnson’s pledged delegates, while Kennedy’s delegates were divided between McCarthy and Senator George McGovern of South Dakota.
Humphrey clinched the nomination on the first ballot, more than doubling the vote over second-place contender McCarthy, but “... the delegates and spectators paid less attention to the proceedings than to television and radio reports of widespread violence in the streets of Chicago, and to stringent security measures within the International Amphitheatre,” according to an Aug. 30, 1968, report in the .New York Times
Outside the convention hall, an estimated 10,000 protesters took to the streets, and a national TV audience watched as anti-war demonstrators clashed with 12,000 Chicago police officers, plus Army forces, members of the Illinois National Guard and Secret Service agents.