1962 United States Senate special election in Massachusetts
The United States Senatespecial election of 1962 in Massachusetts was held on November 6, 1962. The election was won by Ted Kennedy, the youngest brother of then-President John F. Kennedy, who would remain Senator until his death in 2009.
Background
Senator John F. Kennedy resigned the seat to become President of the United States after winning the presidential election in 1960. Benjamin A. Smith II, a Kennedy family friend, was appointed to succeed Kennedy, serving as a placeholder for Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy, who at the time was too young to be constitutionally eligible for the seat.
Ted Kennedy first faced a Democratic Party primary challenge from Edward J. "Eddie" McCormack Jr., the state Attorney General. Kennedy's slogan was "He can do more for Massachusetts", the same one John had used in his first campaign for the seat ten years earlier. McCormack had the support of many liberals and intellectuals, who thought Kennedy inexperienced and knew of his suspension from Harvard, a fact which subsequently became public during the race. Kennedy also faced the notion that with one brother the President and another the United States Attorney General, "Don't you think that Teddy is one Kennedy too many?" But Kennedy proved to be an effective street-level campaigner with great personal appeal. A delegate at the state Democratic convention said, "He's completely unqualified and inexperienced. And I'm going to be with him". Kennedy won on the first ballot at the convention. In a televised debate, McCormack said "The office of United States senator should be merited, and not inherited", and that if his opponent's name was Edward Moore rather than Edward Moore Kennedy, his candidacy "would be a joke". A Kennedy supporter said that "McCormack was able to make a millionaire an underdog". With the public's sympathy and the family political machine, Kennedy won 69% of the vote in the September 1962 primary.
In the November special election, Kennedy defeated Lodge, whose father had lost this seat to then-Representative John F. Kennedy in 1952. In winning, Kennedy gained 55 percent of the vote. Murray Levin stated that Kennedy's youth and political inexperience made him an innocent outsider, and his wealth made him incorruptible. The prosecutor had become a Senator, Levin said, "with one year of frantic campaigning and 30 years of experience as a Kennedy". For most of the campaign, independent candidate Hughes was taken seriously, even engaging in two televised debates with Lodge. Any chance that Hughes might have had of winning the election or even receiving widespread support was destroyed in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile crisis, only weeks before the election, in which the President and his brother Robert F. Kennedy took the nation "to the brink" of nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union. A candidate favoring nuclear disarmament suddenly seemed unrealistic and out of touch; Hughes received less than two per cent of the vote and far fewer votes than he previously had signatures.
