The Kennedy campaign as a whole was scoring on the race issue at the expense of Henry Cabot Lodge, Nixon’s running mate. Lodge, caught up in the spirit of a Harlem rally just after Kennedy’s, had either promised or predicted that a Nixon Administration would appoint a Negro to the cabinet. Senator Kennedy pounced on this statement as “racism at its worst.” He and Lyndon Johnson each pledged that a Kennedy Administration would not consider race or religion at all in cabinet appointments—they would consider only “qualifications.”
