How Many Cups #38: How A Sex Scandal Almost Cost JFK The Democratic Primary
nothing good happens in West Virginia
“…but the rest are Protestants.”
- JFK, notes during 1960 primary
Jack Kennedy’s popularity often belies just how close both the 1960 primary and general election were. Future Vice President Hubert Humphrey threw his hat in the ring, believing his folksy Minnesotan politics would contrast well against the Kennedy’s cosmopolitan brand. Indeed, Jack was so scared that he sent his glamorous family to the first primary state, Wisconsin, to drum up support. He even enlisted Frank Sinatra to sing a “High Hopes” ad as well.
Still, Humphrey performed well in Wisconsin, making the West Virginia primary perhaps the most critical contest. There, Kennedy was struggling.
He trailed Humphrey’s by 20 points, especially because only five percent of the state identified as Catholic. Even today, there is a section of the Kennedy Archives dedicated to his election battle there, often referring to it as the battleground win which proved that America was ready for an Irish Catholic to lead the nation. But earning this win would be difficult. Not only was Jack battling against folks harboring harsh anti-Catholic sentiments, a sex scandal was stalking the Kennedy campaign.
'“…she would file an affidavit that she had an affair with me.”
- Jack Kennedy, April 8th, 1960, notes during the primary
On April 8th, 1960, Newark attorney Mickey Wiener, called Bobby Baker, an aid to Lyndon Johnson. Wiener proclaimed that if then senator Johnson gave $150,000 to the wife of a “well known movie actor” then the wife would issue a legally-sworn statement declaring her tryst with Kennedy.
At the time, Johnson had eyes on the presidency, not the second in command post he would assume after JFK won the primary. He had an incentive to accept the deal and boost his odds of winning the primary by pushing Kennedy down the pecking order.
Who was the actor? Frenchman Edmund Purdom, who starred in The Egyptian, before settling down as one of Europe’s finest stars of the era. As detailed by FBI reports, his wife, Alicia Darr, once ran a “house of prostitution” in the Boston area. She moved her operation to New York City with the intent of catering to a higher class of clientele, such as the Kennedys.
Who was Darr, truly? According to another FBI report filed by J. Edgar Hoover, she was once engaged to be wed to Kennedy, only for the family patriarch to nix the proposal over Darr’s Polish heritage. I’m unsure of what legal action would have been taken at the time, however, the FBI noted that the Kennedy clan indeed did arrange “a settlement… for $500,000 and the documents were ultimately “sealed by the court.”
“So I am glad I came to West Virginia – to meet its people – to learn its needs – to hear its hopes.”
- John F. Kennedy, May 4, 1960, Charleston, West Virginia
With Darr silenced, Kennedy would go on to win the West Virginia primary and from there, the general election fell into place. To do so, however, he needed the help of Johnson. Eventually, Bobby Kennedy would fly down to meet Johnson, dangling the Vice Presidential nomination in front of him but only in hopes that LBJ would consider the potential of such a role and hold back the harangues on Kennedy himself.
Johnson, however, took the bait and accepted the nomination, something RFK did not think would happen. In actuality, JFK never thought Johnson would accept, leading to one of his advisors to tell Kennedy that in his “first move after the nomination” he so stupidly went “against all the people that supported you.”
This prompted Robert to visit once more with Johnson in an attempt to talk him into bowing out from the position he had already accepted. Indeed, Jack had told Johnson to his face that he was “a monster up here” in the northeast and would need to show the coastal states that he was not the bigot many perceived him to be.
Nonetheless, Johnson helped get Kennedy elected, a man he once called a “scrawny, sickly mite.” Johnson carried Texas for Kennedy, refused to accept Darr’s blackmail opportunity and even proved to be one of Jack’s biggest allies during his tenure. And all of this could have ended if just one of Kennedy’s scandals became public during the primary.