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Mary LaskerMary Lasker
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himself, in the spring of '62, both Johnson and Kennedy, that he would come out for no one.

However, on the morning of Wednesday, before the roll, Wagner telephoned to me, which meant that the Kennedy forces were still worried about whether they would have enough votes, for he urged me to urge Stevenson to come out for Kennedy then and to nominate him. I said, “I don't think I have any influence with him on this matter. This is something that he will decide himself.” I think at that moment he was possibly tempted to come out for Kennedy, because great pressure was brought to bear on him, but he had gotten Monroney and Monroney's son and Doyle and other people so committed to his candidacy that it really would have been an act of bad faith to let them down at this time; they had gone too far really. He really would have had to get their permission to support Kennedy, and they still had hopes as of that morning that Kennedy didn't have the votes and that there would still be a standoff between what they thought they had and what Johnson and Symington had.

Q:

Mrs. Lasker, did you ever think that perhaps you could have gotten more support for Stevenson if you had actually been a delegate?

Lasker:

No, I wouldn't have, and, what's more, I wouldn't have been appointed a delegate. The people who appointed the delegates were DeSapio and Wagner and they really weren't for Stevenson. They appointed the people they knew they could control.





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