February 26, 1972: Two Saturdays before the New Hampshire Primary, the frontrunner for the Democratic Party's nomination for President, Senator Edmund S. Muskie of neighboring Maine, delivers a speech in front of the offices of the State's largest newspaper, the Manchester-based Union Leader.
A U.S. Navy Lieutenant in World War II, Muskie had led the building of the Democratic Party in his State. Maine and Vermont were the only States that refused to vote for Franklin D. Roosevelt in all 4 of his runs for President. In 1954, after serving in the State House of Representatives, Muskie became the 1st Democrat elected Governor of Maine in 22 years. In 1958, he became the 1st Democrat that the State sent to the U.S. Senate in 48 years.
In 1968, having won the Democratic nomination for President, the outgoing Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, asked Muskie to be his Vice Presidential nominee. Comparisons between Muskie and the Republican nominee, the bumbling, bigoted, and eventually revealed to be crooked Governor Spiro Agnew of Maryland, were among the factors that nearly swung the election to Humphrey, but former Vice President Richard Nixon won in a squeaker, anyway.
On the eve of the 1970 Congressional elections, Muskie delivered a speech that served as a nationally-televised half-hour campaign commercial. It was widely seen as helpful, as the Democrats gained 12 seats in the House of Representatives and, despite a heavy effort by Nixon to get more Republicans in the Senate, the Democrats held them to a net gain of only 2.
Muskie's tall, lean physical appearance and plain speaking began to gain him comparisons to Abraham Lincoln. While Humphrey returned to the Senate (from Minnesota) in 1970, it wasn't clear that he was going to make another run for the Presidency, and so Muskie was widely seen as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for it for 1972.
But the Union Leader was run by William Loeb III, a man ahead of his time as far as the conservative movement was concerned. The son of William Loeb Jr., an adviser to Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, Loeb III was a hardline anti-Communist, the godfather of the anti-tax activism of New Hampshire Republicans, and a self-appointed moral arbiter.
William Loeb
Never mind that he was a draft dodger, claiming ulcers to avoid serving in World War II; that he always carried a gun, and once shot the family cat; and that he was married 3 times, and in 1949 was caught cheating on his 2nd wife with his eventual 3rd wife, Elizabeth "Nackey" Scripps-Gallowhur, granddaughter of E.W. Scripps, founder of the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain and what eventually became United Press International (UPI).
(UPDATE: In 2022, his stepdaughter, known in adult life as Nackey Scagliotti, accused him of molesting her when she was 7, and also doing so with the daughter he and the elder Nackey had together, known as an adult as Edie Tomasko, who died in 2014. Edie's son subsequently backed this up, saying that his mother told her the same thing.)
Loeb had a habit of referring to politicians he didn't like by nasty names, well before the country at large ever heard of Donald Trump. He went after both Democrats and Republicans he considered insufficiently conservative, and it didn't stop with 1972:
* President Dwight D. Eisenhower, after a 1955 treaty with the Soviet Union: "Dopey Dwight" and "The Prince of Appeasement."
* President John F. Kennedy: "The No. 1 liar in the United States." JFK responded: "I believe there is probably a more irresponsible newspaper than that one right over there. But I've been through 40 States, and I have not found it yet. I believe that there is a publisher who has less regard for the truth than William Loeb, but I can't think of his name."
* Governor Nelson Rockefeller of New York, whose move from his 1st wife to his 2nd mirrored that of Loeb from his 2nd to his 3rd: "A wife-swapper."
* Senator Eugene McCarthy of Oregon, a Presidential candidate in 1968, later switching from Democratic to Independent: "A skunk's skunk's skunk."
* Muskie: "Moscow Muskie."
* Later, in 1976, President Gerald Ford: "Jerry the Jerk."
* President Jimmy Carter: "An out-and-out leftist coated over and disguised with peanut oil."
* And, in 1980, in what turned out to be the last Presidential campaign of his lifetime, he wrote an editorial telling Democratic Primary voters that their choice of Carter, Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, and Governor Jerry Brown of California was, respectively, between "the stupid, the coward and the flake."
Loeb's critics in New Hampshire called him "Mr. Low Ebb." But he loved Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. His biggest mistake may have been firing a young reporter from a paper The Union Leader absorbed, The New Hampshire Sunday News. His name was Ben Bradlee, and he went on to run The Washington Post, which led to Nixon's downfall.
On February 24, 1972, with Muskie still the front-runner in the Democratic field, The Union Leader -- on its front page, mind you -- published a letter, under the headline, "Senator Muskie Insults Franco-Americans."
The alleged author's name was Paul Morrison, of Deerfield Beach, Florida. He claimed to have met Muskie and his staff in Florida, where he asked Muskie how he could understand the problems of black people when his home State of Maine had such a small black population. (Black people make up only a little over 1 percent of Maine's population, slightly more than Asians, and a little more than Native Americans.)
According to the author, Muskie said, "We don't have blacks but we have Cannocks," and laughed about it, and said, "Come to New England and see."
The letter had several misspellings, including the key word itself, which is "Canucks." While an NHL team that began play in 1970 was proudly named the Vancouver Canucks, people of French descent in New England, nearly all of them having ancestors who came down from Quebec, then considered "Canuck" to be a slur.
New England in general has a large French-Canadian population: They made up about 17 percent of New Hampshirites, and 40 percent of Democratic Primary voters. They make up about 20 percent of Vermonters, 10 percent of Massachusetts residents and Rhode Islanders, 8 percent of Mainers, and 6 percent of Connecticut residents.
The letter was written by Ken Clawson, White House Deputy Director of Communications. (If you're a fan of the TV show The West Wing, this was Sam Seaborn's role, then Will Bailey's.) The letter was planted by Nixon campaign operative Donald Segretti.
Donald Segretti
The next day, February 25, The Union Leader reprinted an accusation made a few weeks earlier in Newsweek, claiming that Jane Muskie, the candidate's wife, was an alcoholic. This was also a lie. Attacking the candidate was one thing. Attacking his wife was another. Even Nixon hadn't done that until now, and hadn't authorized it himself this time.
The Senator decided that enough was enough. He had a flatbed truck driven up to the newspaper's headquarters in Manchester, stood on the bed to allow himself to be seen by a crowd of about 200, including one holding up a sign reading, "NOUS AIMONS MUSKIE" (French for "We Like Muskie").
Among those on hand to support Muskie were 3 Maine politicians of French descent, including Louis Jalbert, a State Representative from Lewiston. He said, "I got up at 4 AM to get here. I would go to Latrobe, Pennsylvania in my bare feet if I could be with this man."
Muskie said, "That letter is a lie," adding, "I remember as a boy being called a Polack. I hated it. I'd never use that kind of term with respect to another ethnic group."
Loeb was not on hand, and Muskie noted it: "This man doesn't walk, he crawls." He added, "By attacking me, by attacking my wife, he has proved himself to be a gutless coward!"
Then he lowered his voice, and lowered his head, and said, "Maybe I've said all I should." He paused, and said, "It's fortunate for him he's not on this platform beside me." The words look defiant, but, in sound, they seemed like a man who, rather than wanting to hurt someone, had been, himself, deeply hurt.
Muskie maintained that if his voice cracked, it cracked from anger. Some witnesses thought he'd started crying. Others suggested it was just the light snow melting on his face.
But between the letter and the editorials, Muskie was successfully sabotaged by conservative dirty tricks: He won the New Hampshire Primary, but with just 46 percent of the vote, winning 14 of the available Delegates. Senator George McGovern of South Dakota, the most openly antiwar candidate in the field, won 37 percent, and was awarded the other 6 Delegates. No other candidate took more than 7 percent.
Muskie came to be regarded as weak and emotional. Two weeks later, he won the Illinois Primary. But the only other Primary he won was in another New England State, Rhode Island.
Not content with getting Muskie out of the way, Segretti, having had some paper with Muskie's letterhead stolen, faked accusations (which were then wrongly attributed to Muskie) that Humphrey was guilty of sexual misconduct, and that another contender for the nomination, Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson of Washington State, had an affair and an illegitimate child with a 17-year-old girl. Both stories were quickly proven false.
McGovern ended up winning the nomination. Aside from serving as Secretary of State in the last 8 months of the Carter Administration, Muskie never got so close to the Presidency again.
Loeb died in 1981. Nackey Loeb continued to run The Union Leader in her husband's archconservative fashion until 1999, when she sold it due to failing health. She died the next year.
For most of 1974, including the transition from Nixon to Ford, Ken Clawson served as White House Director of Communications. He died in 1999.
After Nixon's resignation, Segretti was arrested, and pleaded guilty to 3 misdemeanor counts of distributing illegal campaign literature. He was sentenced to 6 months in prison, and served 4. He returned to his native Orange County, California, and briefly ran for a local judgeship, before local outrage forced him to drop out. In 2000, he was co-chair of John McCain's Presidential campaign in Orange County. As of February 26, 2022, he is still alive, one of the last surviving Nixon insiders.
Muskie died in 1998. That night, on The MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour on PBS, George Mitchell, appointed to the Senate seat Muskie gave up to become Secretary of State, said that if a politician cried while defending his wife from unfair attacks in a speech today, he'd be cheered.
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March 4, 1972 was a Saturday. Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was in the off-season. There were 5 games played in the NBA that day:
* The New York Knicks lost to the Baltimore Bullets, 104-97 at Madison Square Garden.
* The Chicago Bulls beat the Golden State Warriors, 107-106 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena. Bob Love scored 33 points.
* The Milwaukee Bucks beat the Phoenix Suns, 119-117 in overtime at the Milwaukee Exposition & Convention Center Arena, a.k.a. The MECCA. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar scored 44 points and had 20 rebounds.
* The Houston Rockets beat the Detroit Pistons, 122-106 at the Hofheinz Pavilion (now the Fertitta Pavilion) in Houston. Elvin Hayes scored 36 points and had 18 rebounds.
* And the Seattle SuperSonics beat the Cincinnati Royals, 122-106 at the Seattle Center Coliseum. Spencer Haywood scored 38 points and had 21 rebounds.
There were 4 games played in the American Basketball Association:
* The New York Nets lost to the Virginia Squires, 121-119 at The Scope in Norfolk. Charlie Scott scored 45 points.
* The Carolina Cougars beat the Pittsburgh Condors, 146-130 at the Greensboro Coliseum. George Carter scored 34 points.
* The Kentucky Colonels beat the Memphis Pros, 123-100 at Freedom Hall in Louisville. Johnny Neumann scored 40 points.
* And the Indiana Pacers beat the Dallas Chaparrals, 115-113 in overtime at the Moody Coliseum in Dallas. George McGinnis scored 35 points.
And there were 6 games played in the NHL:
* The Montreal Canadiens beat the Detroit Red Wings, 8-1 at the Montreal Forum. Yvan Cournoyer scored 2 goals, and brothers Frank and Pete Mahovlich each had 1.
* On the CBC's nationally-broadcast Hockey Night In Canada, the Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Vancouver Canucks, 7-1 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. Paul Henderson scored 3 goals, Norm Ullman 2. In September of that year, Henderson would become one of the biggest heroes in Canadian history, in any walk of life.
* The Pittsburgh Penguins beat the Philadelphia Flyers, 5-2 at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh.
* The Chicago Black Hawks beat the California Golden Seals, 3-0 at the Chicago Stadium.
* The St. Louis Blues beat the Minnesota North Stars, 3-2 at the Metropolitan Sports Center in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.
* The Boston Bruins beat the Los Angeles Kings, 5-4 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California.
* And the New York Rangers and the Buffalo Sabres were not scheduled.
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