Kennedy Enters Senate Race

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30536, 3 September 1964, Page 17

Kennedy Enters Senate Race

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter — Copyright)

NEW YORK, September 1. Mr Robert Kennedy, the U.S. Attorney-General, was nominated today as the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate from New York State.

Mr Kennedy, a brother of the late President Kennedy, quickly won more than the 564 votes required for nomination at the State party’s nominating convention. He had been opposed by Mr Samuel S. Stratton, a member of the House of ReoresentaHves, who had opposed him on the ground that he was not a usual resident of New York State. In the Senate elections in November, Mr Kennedy will face Senator Kenneth Keating, who has held the seat for the Republicans since 1958. Senator Keating, a liberal Republican who has refused to declare his support for the Republican Party’s national ticket headed by Senator Barry Goldwater, was 12 years in the House of Representatives. Political commentators have predicted that with Mr Robert Kennedy in the race, the New York Senate election would command almost as much attention this autumn as that for the Presidency. Earlier this year, Mr Kennedy denied that he planned to seek the New York Senate nomination. After President Johnson announced at the end of July that Mr Kennedy and other members of the Cabinet would not be considered for the Vice-Presidential nomination, moves were started to put his name in nomination. Mayor Robert Wagner, of New York City, who is the

State’s leading Democratic official, nominated the Attor-ney-General before a cheering crowd at a large armoury (drill hall) on Park avenue. He described him as “a man whose name will add lustre to the Democratic ticket of New York, who can and will be elected, and whose voice will be heard throughout this land when he raises it in the Senate to speak on behalf of the State of New York.”

Mr Kennedy, In a prepared statement accepting the nomination, said New York had given President Kennedy the largest vote of any State in 1960. “Now you have asked me to carry bn the work in the Senate. The convention gave Mr Kennedy 968 votes to 153 for Representative Stratton, who later promised to support the Attorney-General. Mr Kennedy’s wife and seven of. their eight children, flew to New York for the convention. Senator Keating, who gained national attention in 1960 by drawing attention to the influx of Soviet missiles to Cuba, was nominated yesterday by the Republicans.