The candidate

 

My father took this photo of then Vice President Richard M. Nixon and his wife Thelma Catherine “Pat” Nixon on June 20, 1960, in Williston, North Dakota, in front of the Grand Movie Theater.

Nixon was running for President against Senator John F. Kennedy, and was campaigning in North Dakota. He was also there on behalf of the Republican Senate candidate.

Two candidates were competing for the U.S. Senate Seat of William “Wild Bill” Langer in a special election set for June 28, 1960. Langer had died in office in 1959, and former Governor Norman Brunsdale was appointed by the current Governor, John Davis, to fill the seat. Governor Davis, a Republican, was now battling it out against Congressman Quentin N. Burdick, the Democrat, for the seat. North Dakota had not sent a Democrat to the Senate in many years, so national Republican leaders were working hard to continue that tradition. New York Governor Nelson M. Rockefeller, among others, also came to the state to campaign for Davis.

Burdick, a native of Munich, North Dakota, was the son of U.S. Representative Usher Burdick, a Republican who regularly voted with the Democrats. Quentin moved to Williston as a young child, where his father farmed and practiced law. He graduated from Williston High School, my alma mater, in 1926.

Burdick ultimately defeated the sitting governor for the Senate seat, and served until 1992 when he died in office as the third longest serving Senator in the nation’s history. Burdick’s senatorial election, three months prior to the Presidential election, led Kennedy strategists to believe that the West was winnable for the Democrat.

I am amazed that my father, an amateur photographer without press credentials, was able to get this close to a sitting Vice President. How times have changed.