Primary Concerns

Primary Concerns Gary Hart's infamous blunder. It may have cost him the election, but America learned that Hart was quite the showman. Hart-Break Colorado Senator Gary Hart's campaign for the Democratic nomination stalls badly in New York State on March 30, 1984 when he addresses an audience at Syracuse High School wearing blackface and affects a deep, theatrical Southern accent, though he does not explain why he is wearing the make-up or stray from his normal stump speech. Later, a Hart aide calls the long-planned moment "a strategic error." Scream for Gene Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy was an early opponent of the Vietnam War in the 1968 campaign for president, which became heated when he came close to beating incumbent President Lyndon Johnson in the New Hampshire primary. Though his campaign gained significant momentum from young, liberal students, McCarthy seemingly overreached in his efforts to keep their support by performing an illegal abortion in a New Haven, Connecticut laundromat before the news media on April 17, for which he was subsequently arrested. "Doors" singer Jim Morrison called the publicity stunt "very poor taste." King George George H.W. Bush hoped his sterling resume would be reason enough for GOP voters to give him a shot at challenging President Jimmy Carter in 1980. But the hard-charging bedrock conservative Ronald Reagan had won nearly all the early contents in the race for the Republican nod. Bush finally found traction by criticizing Reagan's so-called "Trickle-Down" economic plan of giving tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans as "voodoo economics." Bush was so excited about the publicity surrounding his remark, aides said, he got carried away by appearing dressed as a voodoo high priest at a subsequent debate as a way of taunting Reagan. The attempt backfired when the audience found Bush - shirtless, wearing a cow skull atop his head and drinking a glass of chicken blood - difficult to take seriously. Silent T Senator Paul Tsongas won the 1992 New Hampshire primary, but Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton was surging. Tsongas suffered from the impression that he lacked empathy for the working man in the face of Clinton's more demonstrative tactics. So determined was Tsongas to win over working-class voters that he stopped campaigning and spent months aboard a fishing vessel the North Atlantic. By the time he returned, Clinton had won most of the primaries and voters were ambivalent about Tsongas's new thick Danish accent and refusal to wear any garment that was not a wader. Humpty Humphrey Senator Hubert Humphrey had been a top progressive U.S. Senator and the mayor of a major American city by the time 1960 rolled around, but the bald, slightly chubby man paled in comparison to the handsome and youthful John Kennedy of Massachusetts. Seeking to overcome this "charm deficit," on the eve of the Wisconsin primary, Humphrey set about earning a reputation as a ladies' man by inviting select reporters to follow him around Milwaukee while he attempted to seduce women. The subsequent stories - which veiled Humphry's actual dealings in the name of good taste - featured headlines such as "Humphry Chased Off Lawn," "Candidate Deeply Unpopular with Women" "Would-be Prez Stunned By Transvestite," and "Senator Unable to Maintain Erection During Attempted Encounter with Aged Woman."