Nixon announces his candidacy for president
Richard M.Nixon announces his candidacy for the presidency.Most observers had written off Nixons political career eight years earlier when he had lost to John F.
Kennedy in the 1960 election.Two years after losing to Kennedy Nixon ran for governor of California and lost in a bitter campaign against Edmund G.(Pat) Brown but by 1968 he had sufficiently recovered his political standing in the Republican Party to announce his candidacy for president.Taking a stance between the more conservative elements of his party led by Ronald Reagan and the liberal northeastern wing led by Governor Nelson Rockefeller Nixon won the nomination on the first ballot at the Republican National Convention in Miami Beach.Nixon chose Spiro T.
Agnew the governor of Maryland as his running mate.Nixons Democratic opponent Vice President Hubert Humphrey was weakened by internal divisions within his own party and the growing dissatisfaction with the Johnson administrations handling of the war in Vietnam.Alabama governor George C.
Wallace running on a third party ticket further complicated the election.Although Nixon and Humphrey each garnered about 43 percent of the popular vote the distribution of Nixons nearly 32 million votes gave him a clear majority in the Electoral College and he won the election.
