John F. Kennedy Quotes
If we can lower the voting age to nine, we are going to sweep the state.
John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963, 35th President of the United States, Campaign Speech, Girard, OH, October 9, 1960
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Referring to the fact that unpledged delegates tipped the balance against him in several states where he had won the majority of delegates in the 1988 Democratic Presidential primary elections:
The voting age was reduced from 21 to 18, when 18 year olds were being drafted for military service and some were being killed or wounded. Many argued that a person who was old enough to die for America was old enough to vote in America. 18-21 year olds however have not voted in the same proportions as older citizens. The guilt emenated from the fact that 18 year olds could at that time be drafted to fight in America’s wars and perhaps die, but they could not vote.
At the time, this was considered a very radical point of view by the Democrats and Republicans. It was classic populism.
At the time less than 10% of the Southern Blacks were allowed to vote. The result was that Southern segregationists were elected to Congress even in a state like Mississippi which had a majority Black population, The Southern segregationist bloc was large enough that with a few very conservative Republicans, they formed a coalition could block any civil rights legislation including voting rights reform,
A student had asked the director if the rumor that the CIA had influenced the 1970 Chilean election through covert activities was true. Note that for Helms, the ends justified the means. . See {622167}.
Brat, a college professor, had never run for any political office before. His opponent, Eric Cantor, outspent him by a ratio of nearly 25 to 1. Cantor spent more on steak dinners than Brat spent in total for his whole campaign.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, often referred to by his initials JFK, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. Kennedy served at the height of the Cold War, and the majority of his work as president concerned relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba. A Democrat, Kennedy represented Massachusetts in both houses of the U.S. Congress prior to becoming president.
