Unfortunate Son

[Assistant to the Regional Manager Cathcon]

General Election, 1976

     The Republicans believed they had the general election almost sewn up due to discontent over Kennedy’s presidency. However, Connally was nowhere near as clean a nominee as they’d hoped. While throughout the election cycle leading up to the debates Connally had been gaining and a Republican victory was predicted. Nevertheless, the President was confident. Despite Connally’s debating skills that Kennedy’s coaches were worried about, Kennedy left the debates with what looked like a solid win come election night.

   The way in which the landscape changed was surprising. It would be on the economy—the rockiest part of the last four years—that the GOP met their downfall. While Connally charged that “The current President has come into office and has failed utterly to sustain the economy that Nixon left us with”, the President responded that “It was thanks to the policies you pursued as Nixon’s Treasury Secretary—wage and price controls, a raised debt ceiling to stimulate the economy, reduced federal reserve loan rates—that the American economy is still struggling as it is today. The Republicans have come forward saying that they would fix the very situation they created and have provided no answers as to how to do so.” While lines like that alone would fail to sway the electorate, Kennedy’s continued hammering of Connally on his tenure under Nixon would change a significant amount of the electorate’s minds to “undecided” only weeks before the election. On foreign policy, meanwhile, Kennedy managed to successfully fend off Republican attacks and call Connally’s proposals “needless war-mongering to a nation that, only four years ago, ended one of its most bloody and disastrous conflicts on the books.”

   In the final stretch of the campaign, Kennedy began climbing up in the polls. With a media blitzkrieg in fiscally conservative parts of the country explaining Connally’s record as Treasury Secretary, his conservative base was in danger. Come election day, with a large amount of votes up in the air, the undecided eventually broke for their President. Historians and political commentators would largely attribute the victory to Kennedy’s status as an incumbent, doubt regarding Connally’s record, a foreign policy perceived as successful, and overtures to economic moderates. Behind the scenes, hard work by the Kennedy team to bring as many African-Americans to the polls and of course the sabotage of Evan's campaign played a part. The former would have a significant effect in Florida, Ohio, Alabama, Kentucky, California, and Missouri.


President Robert F. Kennedy (Democrat-New York)/Vice President Albert P. Brewer (Democrat-Alabama) 341 electoral votes, 51.8% of the popular vote
Former Secretary of the Treasury John B. Connally (Republican-Texas)/Senator Robert S. Dole (Republican-Kansas) 197 electoral votes, 46.8% of the popular vote
Former Senator Eugene McCarthy (Independent-Minnesota)/[Various] 0 electoral votes, .87% of the popular vote
Others: 0 electoral votes, .53% of the popular vote

While President Kennedy celebrated his successful re-election, Connally was left to grieve his defeat.

[Assistant to the Regional Manager Cathcon]

1976, Continued

   In the summer of 1976, Mattingly was forced to move into Detroit in order to attend Wayne State University, choosing to make the leap from community college early, having completed some credits faster than expected and hoping to have a better chance of getting in. Using savings of his, he was able to find a small apartment, one of the cheapest he’d been able to locate. In order to maintain an income, his makeshift operation as a “neighborhood mechanic” was closed down in a sense and he became an employee at a local garage, working early in the morning and late at night under a Greek man named Theofanis Constantine (originally “Constantinou”). “When I think back to Teddy Constantine, I remember thinking I’d known a thing or two about cars. He taught me more than I thought was even left to know on the subject. And I also know, I also know that if it hadn’t been for his kindness in hiring me—a guy who didn’t have the advantage of being free for normal work hours—I wouldn’t be where I am today. When I finally graduated in 1979, after several years and countless dollars spent for that degree, it wouldn’t by Ford that I turned to. Constantine’s garage needed some business sense. Even in the midst of what, at least in my lifetime, was the single lowest point for the American economy, Constantine was looking to expand, and in many ways it made sense. With fewer people buying new cars, they needed the ones they had repaired, and repaired well. We—the business as a whole—had a good record of quality and consistency and when in the middle of the recession ‘Constantine Repair’ opened a second shop, I was made manager. With the seventies coming to a close and ‘Morning in America’ approaching, things were bound to change.” His ascendancy in the small company is rather understated, given that by 1979 he’d already been managing the garage in the late afternoons and had begun to handle accounting. In terms of Mattingly’s personal life, the tall half-Sicilian with a permanent beard stubble and a cigarette clutched in his teeth seemed have developed a certain underlying confidence by the late 70’s that allowed him to “hit his stride” with the ladies in time to meet his wife in December of ’79.

While things might have been looking up for Christian Mattingly as 1979, for the Democratic party, the picture right before the 1980 election would not be so rosey. Three years earlier, they were riding high, having ensured a “New Democratic Majority” existed in the country. The only election in which the Democrats had gained a majority since FDR’s last run in 1944 was the 1964 landslide against what they all saw as an extremist. 1976, to many in the party, had ensure that the Democrats would retain national political dominance, regardless of what 1968 had done, and they proceeded to act on that belief, arrogantly.

Nevertheless, the 1976 Senate elections were essentially a draw. With Democrats maintaining their slim majority (though not one particularly threatened by the opposition), the balance of power would remain intact. While James Buckley had been defeated by Bella Abzug in an upset due to the unpopularity of Connally in the Northeast and the strength of RFK in the Empire State, Republicans would see luck in other races. In Texas, George Bush would be re-elected by a healthy margin against a no-name opponent. Meanwhile in California, a state the President had won, former Governor Ronald Reagan, physically not up to the rigor of a presidential campaign since ’75, was nevertheless able to pull off a Senate victory again John Tunney. Montana probably had one of the most significant results that night. Freshman Congressman Scott Westman, a self-styled radical liberal who was, in actuality, to the right of much of his party on economic issues, had been able to win an upset in the primary and then proceed to a victory in the general. Westman had been forced to battle the Democratic reputation in regards to gun rights and the like. However, his personal popularity and ability to appeal to the people of Montana would pave his way to a win. All around, a shift in Democratic strength in the North was quite evident, with gains in Vermont, New York, and Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, the GOP made gains in the West and Mid-West with the exception of Rhode Island where liberal Republican former Governor (and Nixon Navy Secretary) John Chafee was elected.

1976 Senate Results
Democrats: 52 (+2)
Republicans: 47 (-1)
Independents: 1

In Wyoming, both Congressman Humphrey Wilkinson and Senator Beauregard Disraeli were elected by hefty margins. The two, both known for their rather questionable personal lives, strange ideological and even religious views, and egoes, had not sat well with each other since they were both elected in 1970. With Disraeli running for President earlier that year, Wilkinson had considered primarying him but had decided against it at the last second. The Representative would nevertheless be caught "joking" about having to find a way to "bump Disraeli off".