Kennedy vs Lodge 70 Years On: A Look Back At Massachusetts’ Most Significant Senate Race

By Will Barber Taylor

It is perhaps, some might suggest, presumptuous to suggest that the 1952 senate race between Henry Cabot Lodge and John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the most significant race to occur in the long history of Massachusetts — some might argue that such an honour goes to the 1994 race between Ted Kennedy and Mitt Romney given it introduced Romney to the public as a political figure in his own right, paving the way for his eventual term as Governor of the state and later the Republican Presidential Nominee in 2012. Others might say the shock 2010 win of Republican Scott Brown in the election to replace Ted Kennedy might be more significant as it proved an early electoral shock to the Obama administration.

Yet the 1952 race is more significant than those other examples and any other race fought in the state because it fundamentally changed American politics, played a vital role in the lives of three important political figures and changed the fortunes of two political dynasties.

Henry Cabot Lodge was in 1952 a man with high aspirations. Descended from one of the most extraordinary political dynasties America had seen, Lodge could count five Senators among his ancestors. The earliest, George Cabot whose surname he proudly bore as his middle name, had been only the second Senator for the state and was in office when Washington had been President. His grandfather, also Henry Cabot Lodge was not only a Senator for Massachusetts but also a close friend of Teddy Roosevelt, President pro tempero of the Senate, Senate Majority Leader, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the man who had sunk Woodrow Wilson’s plan to take the US into the League of Nations, changing the course of world history forever. To say that Lodge saw himself not only as a consequential figure but one who was destined for even higher office than he already held would be an understatement.

Yet in 1952 Lodge was not thinking of his own ambitions but the ambitions of another — the former Allied Supreme Commander in Europe during the Second World War, Dwight D Eisenhower. Eisenhower was a decorated war hero and he was also interested in politics or at least holding political power. He was seen as the answer to the cavalcade of problems that seemed to beset the country. From uncertainty over China and Russia to internal panic over “Reds Under the Bed”, the Truman Administration seemed to have become listless and lacking in vision. It was here that the Republican Party saw their chance to get back into power — who better than a decorated war hero, a man who was seen as representing America’s finest hour, to led them back into office? With a downbeat Truman set to sit out the 1952 Presidential election, the field looked open for a Republican resurgence.

The issue for those who saw Eisenhower as the future was that the Republican Party was not united behind him. In the darkest corners of the conservative elite, there was an anxiety that Eisenhower would be too liberal, that he lacked the necessary experience to lead the nation in the 1950s.

The right of the party instead favoured seasoned Senator Robert Taft. Taft, so much of a staunch conservative that he was known by the moniker of Mr Republican and he also came from a political dynasty like Lodge. Taft’s father, William Howard Taft had been the 27th President of the United States and is now generally best remembered for having once got stuck in a bath and becoming a member of the Supreme Court after leaving office. However, William Howard Taft was more than that. Initially Teddy Roosevelt’s chosen successor, Taft’s policies in office and mismanagement of the government eventually led to Roosevelt taking a final tilt at the White House, only to split the Republican vote and allow Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson to snatch the Presidency from both of them. His son’s stances on a range of issues from the hot button topic of communism to trade unionism and the closed shop meant that for many hard-line Republicans, Robert Taft was the answer to a weakened and seemingly impotent Democratic Presidency. The 1952 election would likely be Taft’s last and best opportunity to seek the White House; his failure to be more supportive of American intervention during World War II lost him the Republican nomination in 1940 and his attempt to gain it in 1948 was thwarted when the party chose moderate Thomas Edmund Dewey, then Governor of New York, to be the party’s candidate.

The threat of a Taft candidacy was one of the reasons that Henry Cabot Lodge decided to use as much of his political skill to stump for Eisenhower in the run up to the 1952 election. He was, he felt, safe from any potential Democratic challenger; his seat had only ever had two Democrats representing it — David Walsh who Lodge had beaten in 1946 to win the seat and had died a year later and Robert Rantoul who had briefly served during the 1850s. Lodge felt secure enough in his re election bid to put as much energy and effort as he could into stumping for Eisenhower and running his campaign. He was, for his sake, sadly wrong about how safe he was.

In 1952 John Fitzgerald Kennedy was coming towards the end of his first term as Representative of Massachusetts 11th District. He had won the seat in a well fought campaign the same year that Lodge had been elected to the Senate. He was, however, impatient with the lower chamber. Kennedy wanted real power and for that he had to become a Senator. His ambitious and quixotic father, former Ambassador Kennedy wanted Jack to run for Governorship of the state which was also up for election in 1952. Paul Dever, then Governor, was toying with the idea of running for the Senate himself and Joe thought that being Governor would give the young JFK the standing he needed to go further in his political career. Jack disagreed and eventually decided he would run for the Democratic Party’s nomination to become the state’s next Senator.

Kennedy had a realization — he wasn’t going to get to the heart of government by being stuck in the state house for four years. Only by being on the floor of the Senate would Kennedy be able to make a real difference to the politics of the country and to make a national name for himself.

Whilst Lodge had also won decisively in 1947, he had only won once. Prior to that, David Walsh the former Democratic Senator for Massachusetts who Lodge had beat had been in office since the 1920s. Kennedy was also well aware that Lodge’s role as Eisenhower’s campaign manager would take him away from his own campaign.

There was, for John F Kennedy, something personal about his fight against Lodge. His maternal grandfather, Boston’s exuberant John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald had lost to Lodge’s grandfather Henry Cabot Lodge senior in the 1916 senate election. His grandfather’s political career had effectively ended that night and there was certainly a sense that the Kennedys wanted to even the score with the Lodges.

Kennedy’s campaign would turn ultimately on his ability to attack Lodge’s record on two issues — his devotion to his home state and his stance on communism. Lodge was, as one might imagine, continually away from the state in the weeks and months leading up to the election. His role supporting Eisenhower necessitated it, and it was of course ultimately successful — for Eisenhower more than himself.

On the question of communism, the early 1950s were not a time for nuance on the subject. Lodge was not pro communist by any means, but he desired to not stoke the flames that were already lapping around American society and threatening to consume the country into paranoia. The problem was that, for the public, communism interfering in the heart of government did not seem like a fantasy. The case of Alger Hiss seemed to be evidence enough that the government was riddled with communist spies; similarly, the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg seemed to fuel the belief that communism was everywhere in the United States.

Unlike Lodge, Kennedy was not reluctant to be vocal about his distaste for communism. Although not a rabid Cold War warrior like Joe McCarthy, Kennedy understood that to win as a Democrat he had to make clear his distaste for communism and the need to find and root it out wherever it may be. Given how often some considered the link between supposed communism and the Democratic Party to be inextricable, Kennedy needed to make clear his diversion and hatred of Stalinism or any other form of extreme left thought in order to win in Massachusetts.

His association with McCarthy would become distinctly chilly as time went on and indeed it was less of a public one and always more private and social. Kennedy was all too aware of extremism representing the nasty side of politics. He was not the kind of politician who judged anything remotely to the left to be communists — after all he wouldn’t have been a Democrat or an ardent supporter of union rights if he had been. Whilst both Jack and Bobby would play their own roles in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation into the corruption that swirled around Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters union, neither were anti-union or rabid anti-communists.

Kennedy’s stance on communism was however much more public and vocal than Lodge’s — a fact that would help him sway support from some of Massachusetts’ most important figures. Perhaps one of the most influential was the owner of the Boston Post, John J Fox. Fox, one of the many newly minted American millionaires of the first half of the twentieth century, Fox had a fanatical hatred of communism and Lodge’s seemingly weak stance (or at least in comparison to Kennedy) on the issue saw him swing his support behind his fellow Irish American Catholic. Fox’s support for Kennedy, alongside that of the arch anti Lodge media figure Basil Brewer, publisher of the New Bedford Standard Times, whose conservatism made him loathe Lodge and decide that Kennedy’s anti-communist stance made him a better representative for Massachusetts gave the young congressman an unrivalled edge of his opponent.

Kennedy wouldn’t just use media endorsements to his advantage — he used TV and radio as a campaign tool like no American politician before him had ever used them before. Like Eisenhower would use in the same 52 cycle for his Presidential campaign with the iconic “I like Ike”, Kennedy used a catchy jingle for his Senate campaign that not only highlighted Kennedy’s youth but also, perhaps quixotically, his experience and dedication to his state.

Whilst the song wasn’t as slick as the TV material used during the 1960 Presidential campaign, it demonstrated that unlike Lodge, Kennedy knew how to integrate traditional and new methods into his campaign effortlessly. Lodge was aware of the media and used it well but especially during the Senate race he neglected it to the extent that his campaign lacked the same fizz as Kennedy’s. He also, thanks to his failure to court Brewer and Fox, lost the backing of the most important media outlets in the country.

Perhaps the truly lethal aspect for Lodge’s campaign was that Kennedy knew how to campaign as only the scion of an old Boston political family would. Whilst it is fair to say that Kennedy was not a great fan of the glad handing and back slapping of the Irish establishment of Boston and certainly saw himself as a more urbane and sophisticated political figure, both he and his family were well aware of the importance of the personal touch. Whilst Lodge was crisscrossing the nation on behalf of Eisenhower, Kennedy was putting in as much time as possible to carouse the inhabitants of the state to back him. His most effective method for doing this was with the Kennedy tea parties. Hosted by his mother and sisters, they were aimed at the women of Massachusetts. The glamour that accompanied the Kennedy clan and the bragging rights of being able to say you’d been personally invited to tea to mingle alongside the candidate and his family was a highly attractive prospect. Word soon spread and the popularity of the tea parties can certainly be said to have contributed to Kennedy’s victory, particularly among women voters.

Lodge’s defeat was not inevitable nor expected but it was planned like a military operation. By doing his best to ensure Eisenhower became President, Lodge’s campaign withered and faltered whilst Kennedy’s ran like a locomotive through the state. The 1952 campaign would lay the groundwork for Kennedy’s 1960 Presidential bid eight years later. The combination of inventive and exciting campaign techniques, like the use of the media as a powerful bat to hit the Kennedy message into the stratosphere for all to see, with more traditional methods of campaigning gave Kennedy the edge he needed to win the Senate seat his grandfather had long desired. When the election result was announced and her son’s startling victory was confirmed, Rose Kennedy remembered her late father and declared that the family had gotten even with the Lodges.

The reason that JFK’s election to the senate 70 years ago was so important was not simply because it ensured the continuing trajectory that would one day see him in the oval office but that because of it, Henry Cabot Lodge was denied any great role in the Eisenhower administration. It thwarted the ambitions of him and his family -whilst Lodge would later have diplomatic positions under every President from Eisenhower to Carter (Kennedy’s appointment of him as Ambassador to South Vietnam in 1963 must have especially stung after he had lost another election to Kennedy when serving as Nixon’s running mate in the 1960 Presidential Election) it is hard not to see his career as ultimately unfulfilled. The same can be said of his family — his son George attempted to reclaim the Senate seat following Kennedy’s resignation upon his assumption of the Presidency, but George was soundly beaten in that election by Ted Kennedy.

The election also ensured that Dwight Eisenhower became President — a presidency significant in representing a then moderate Republican position and one that made constructive decisions on infrastructure and some limited movement forward on civil rights. Had Lodge spent more of his time concentrating on his own re-election than Eisenhower’s campaign, history might be very different.

Yet there is another more widespread reason that this senate election was one of the most crucial in America and Massachusetts’ history. The techniques that Kennedy used, the Kennedy playbook that was formed during this campaign and used later in the 1960 election proved to be one of the most effective in modern politics and would serve as the method for many future Presidents to become elected. Kennedy’s willingness in Massachusetts to go to places his opponents wouldn’t, to not see any area as totally lost, and to use the media in a way few other politicians understood how to meant that his blueprint for how to win elections would be replicated across the world. It is for this reason that 70 years on from the 1952 Massachusetts Senate Election it is worth looking back on it and appreciating how it helped to make our world what it is today.