Subseries: Patrick Lucey, 1985 April 18
Note

• Access online.
• Also on Audio 1030A/60-61.

INTRODUCTION

LUCEY'S EARLY ACTIVITIES AS STATE CHAIR OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY WERE AIMED TOWARD THE 1958 ELECTIONS
Scope and Content Note: His goal was simple: “I wanted to make the Democratic Party the majority party in Wisconsin.” Immediately began recruiting candidates for the 1958 campaign. Set out to revitalize the county organizations. Shortly after he became chair, the party held a retreat at Wisconsin Dells. There, “without too much of a hard sell, I got John Reynolds thinking about running for attorney general.” Felt the party had gone through a period of neglect. “In fact, if Proxmire had not won that special election in '57, I think the party was about ready to fall apart. It had been a long hard struggle for more than a decade and I think an awful lot of people were ready to just throw in the towel on the thing. And, of course, the Proxmire win put everything in a new perspective.” Lucey put people in the field to recruit candidates in order to insure a full legislative slate and as many county candidates as possible. Lucey persuaded Philleo Nash, whom he had defeated for party chair “in a rather bitter fight,” to run for lieutenant governor.

THE BREAK THROUGH IN 1958
Scope and Content Note: One factor was the organizational work done between November 1957 and November 1958. Also, there was a Democratic national trend. Nelson did not think he really had a chance to be elected Governor in 1958. “It all fell into place.”

HIRING OF FIELD DIRECTORS
Scope and Content Note: Hired two field directors and a fund raiser. Paid for by an increase in membership and also creation of the “Century Club,” wherein people paid one hundred dollars a year instead of the regular dues. “And, you did some of this on the cuff. You have to be a little daring.” Hired Norman Clapp and Jim Magellas as field organizers. They had both been defeated in congressional races in 1958 and both wanted to run again in 1960, “and in the meantime, they were sort of at liberty. So I persuaded them to come on board as fulltime field organizers, but I divided the state from north to south so that Norm, who had run in the third district, would have the third district as part of his area of responsibility, whereas Jim Magellas, who had run in the sixth district, would have the eastern half of the state and therefore would include his district.” Thus, they could do work for the party and still maintain contacts in their own congressional districts. Their jobs were to build membership, raise membership money through the “Century Club,” speak at county meetings, and recruit candidates.

ROLE OF THE PARTY IN THE 1960 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN IN WISCONSIN
Scope and Content Note: Lucey instructed Clapp and Magellas to help both Kennedy and Humphrey. “The Kennedy people particularly couldn't believe this.” The party in Massachusetts was not very strong; there “you were either a Kennedy person or you weren't. And if you were not, then you weren't to be trusted. But it worked out rather well.” Clapp probably voted for Kennedy and Magellas for Humphrey. “What I wanted to have happen--obviously, I wanted Kennedy to win, but I didn't want the party to be torn to shreds by the contest. It seemed to me if the party, if the paid staff of the party was helpful to both sides, then they would be in a position to pull the party together after that primary.” Lucey felt the primary produced “some unhappiness within each camp.” He and Ivan Nestingen both supported Kennedy, but “somehow we were never as good a friends after that campaign as we had been before. In a sense the primary was divisive within camps.” On the other hand, Harvey Kitzman and Lucey were on opposite sides during the primary, but came out of it closer friends than previously.

HOW LUCEY CAME TO KNOW AND SUPPORT JACK KENNEDY
Scope and Content Note: Herman Jessen introduced Lucey to Jack Kennedy at the 1952 convention. At that convention Lucey was an alternate delegate and wore a Kefauver hat, but had a Stevenson badge in his pocket. “I was loyal to Kefauver so long as he was in the running. And when I ran into Jack Kennedy at the bar at the Stockyard Inn, it turned out that Jack was already working hard for Stevenson. And so we had a rather unpleasant exchange.” Lucey told Kennedy that he understood the Stevenson people were prepared to accept a southern vice president if that was needed to get a majority of the delegates, “and he told me in no uncertain terms that the Stevenson people would reach in any direction they had to to get a majority of the delegates and if the northern liberals didn't like it, why it was just tough. And when he referred to northern liberals, it was sort of in the third person as though he didn't consider himself one of them. And so I walked away rather unhappy with Jack Kennedy.” In 1957, Kennedy aide Ted Sorenson found an excuse to contact Lucey right after his election as state chair, “and it was obvious that he was using that as an excuse to establish a working relationship with the new chairman of the party.” Most of Lucey's contacts remained with Ted Sorenson. In the spring of 1959, Lucey told Sorenson he would help the Kennedy campaign, but short of a public endorsement. Lucey tried to convince himself that the “Irish Catholic thing was not a factor, but I suppose it had some impact.” Rationalized to himself that while Humphrey was more liberal than Kennedy, Kennedy was the most liberal person who could be nominated. “And that to deny Jack Kennedy a win here, would probably throw the thing to Lyndon Johnson and most of us at that point did not want Lyndon Johnson to be president and I think would have been shocked if someone had suggested that, if Jack Kennedy got the nomination, that he would pick Lyndon for vice president.” Stevenson “had had two good shots and ... the torch should pass.”

FINANCIAL RELATIONSHIP OF DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF WISCONSIN AND THE DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE
Scope and Content Note: “We rarely paid dues to the national organization.”

MILWAUKEE COUNTY DEMOCRATIC PARTY
Scope and Content Note: Ran its own headquarters. Did not rely on state headquarters for service. “What really was irritating was that some of the ward organizations in Milwaukee were quite wealthy and they existed like clubs. And the fact that a political campaign occurred every two years, really was a bit of annoyance to them ... The last thing they would do would be to write a check for five hundred dollars to the local assembly candidate” even though they might have treasuries of four or five thousand dollars. They existed separate and apart from any campaign effort. Nor would they help pick up part of the Milwaukee dues to the state organization. “They had existed prior to the DOC; and they were some personalties who enjoyed meeting each month with their friends in the back room of a Polish tavern on the southside and that sort of thing. They were really kind of an anachronism, I think.”

ADMINISTRATIVE COMMITTEE SUPPORT FOR LUCEY
Scope and Content Note: “We had our ups and downs.” Dispute over allocation of delegate strength to the 1960 national convention. Lucey lost that one. “And I think that was the only vote that I ever lost on the administrative committee in the six years that I was chairman. And Bobby Kennedy was very upset with me.” Lucey would call people the day before the administrative committee meeting to make sure he had the votes for something he felt was important. If the support was not there, he would not bring it up at the meeting.

DOES NOT RECALL WHETHER AN ADVISORY COMMITTEE TO THE ADMINISTRATIVE COMMITTEE WAS EVER SET UP

END OF TAPE 64, SIDE 1

INTRODUCTION

RELATIONSHIPS OF ELECTED DEMOCRATS TO THE PARTY
Scope and Content Note: “We never seemed to have any money to help legislative candidates.” Had schools to teach candidates how to write press releases and the like. Sometimes field representatives would help candidates set up campaigns, especially in special elections. “But we never seemed to be able to write any checks.” The one exception was 1962 when Lucey was able to raise the price of the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner to one hundred dollars a ticket. This was also the only time he recalls being able to give any money to the national committee, but that contribution was a condition of getting President Kennedy as the speaker. Because of this dinner, the party was able to contribute to congressional candidates. “So...our work with legislative candidates was pretty much in-kind assistance rather than cash assistance.” In the early days sitting legislators had a closer relationship with the party than they did later. Lucey had a very close relationship with the party when he was in the legislature, partly because the legislature was so understaffed. “Bill Proxmire, who was a reporter for the Capital Times, agreed that he could do some moonlighting for us. So Bill and I would usually meet early in the week and decide on the subject of a press release. Then he would draw up the press release. And then we would meet later in the week and decide which legislator to attribute the quotes to and so forth. Then we would take it over to Esther Kaplan at the party headquarters. She would go down and run off the addresses from the REA file of weekly and daily newspapers and we would send out this once-a-week press release from the Democratic caucus That was really a very close hand-in-glove relationship with the party.” As the number of Democratic legislators grew and as the legislature became better staffed, “they tended to draw away from the party headquarters.” On the other hand, legislators gradually came to have more and more to say in the writing of platforms. Today most of the policy committees at the party convention are headed by legislators, who bring staff along with them. However, legislators also came to feel less of an obligation to introduce in the legislature all the planks of the party platform; and, indeed, for a while they felt the party platform was so liberal they could not run on it and therefore met after the primary at the stutory committee meeting and drew up their own platform. The DFL in Minnesota, however, because of its early creation of interest caucuses, became “a source of embarrassment to Wendy Anderson when he was governor. I didn't have that same feeling about the Democratic Party over here.”

PARTY CHAIR LUCEY'S DIFFERENCES WITH GOVERNOR NELSON
Scope and Content Note: “I think a lot of it was a clash of personalities. I never quite understood that.... There was never any thought that our careers were going to lead to some sort of giant confrontation at some point.... There was never any likelihood that I would compete with Gaylord to be governor or to run for senator, anything like that, which is the kind of circumstance that causes hostility between an elected official and a party leader.” In terms of issues, Lucey was not ready to give up the party's stance against the sales tax as soon as Nelson was, “but once he took that stand, I refrained from making any public comment on the sales tax.... I somehow felt that the party chairman was a nuts and bolts man and, once you elected a governor, he was the leader of the party as far as the public issues were concerned. I think that part of the hostility came out of the Kennedy thing but there was some even before that.” Lucey defeated Philleo Nash without Nelson's support, but there was “no reason why he should have gotten his hands dirty in that kind of a contest” since he intended to run for governor the following year. Proxmire, on the other hand, left no doubt where he stood on the Lucey-Nash contest. “I think Gaylord miscalculated and assumed that I would not succeed in beating Philleo. And I heard a report that he was rather upset that he had miscalculated. But, during that campaign there was a certain strangeness between the party headquarters and the Nelson campaign.” During the campaign Lucey saw very little of Nelson, though he kept in touch with various Nelson aides. “I used to stay in touch with Esther Kaplan. In fact, I remember at one point, Esther and I shifted some money from the party over to the Nelson campaign in the hope that in the last days money would come in that would pay it back. Well, it didn't work out that way and finally they agreed to let ... the party put on the inaugural fundraising dinner so that we could recover the money that we had invested in the campaign....” Nelson never visited party headquarters after he was elected. Took some effort to get Nelson to subscribe to the Century Club, “when actually it should have been just a matter of course that the governor, the head of the party, would want to promote that sort of thing. And then we used to get into some awful tangles involving Milwaukee.” Lucey was very opposed to Nelson's appointment of Christ Seraphim as judge. Howard Meister, Milwaukee County party chair, “was a real bone of contention between us.” Lucey felt threatened by Nelson's appointment of Meister to the Real Estate Board because Lucey was a realtor and Meister was a “very evil man and I had visions of his trying to destroy all my business in retaliation for political differences.” Lucey worked hard to get John Reynolds to run for attorney general in 1958 and openly supported him in the primary against Christ Seraphim, but Nelson felt Lucey should have been neutral. Lucey's later opposition to the appointment of Seraphim as judge was not done publicly. “The Milwaukee thing was a very serious sore point between us.” The Milwaukee party, headed by Meister, opposed the 1962 Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner for which Lucey had arranged President Kennedy as the speaker. John Schmitt, of the state AFL-CIO, was making speeches against the dinner. The dinner was a success anyway, raised 200,000 dollars, “unheard of in those days.” Once it became clear the dinner would be a success, Nelson wanted to introduce the president. “At that point--I tried to say this as politely as I could--but I told him that I had decided that I would introduce the president. I had done all the work on the dinner and I thought that that was one small honor that I would reserve for myself. As I recall those days now, it's hard to appreciate the degree of the rancor that existed in some of those situations.”

RANCOR BETWEEN MILWAUKEE AND MADISON
Scope and Content Note: Milwaukee people, like Henry Maier resented the “intellectual elite” in Madison. Milwaukee had the strength in terms of votes, and the Madison intellectuals “couldn't even deliver the west side of Madison” but still had a very strong influence in the party. Jim Doyle was the intellectual leader of the party. “Some of the intellectual leaders in Dane County, I think, did not suffer fools very well and regarded some of their colleagues in Milwaukee as being in that category.” Lucey's differences with Milwaukee were partly based on this personal opposition to Meister and Seraphim and partly because he did not feel Milwaukee paid its proper share of the costs of running the state party. “Maybe I wasn't always as sensitive to the needs of organized labor as I might have been.” Had a very good relationship with the UAW, but an arms-length relationship with the state AFL-CIO and “of course, we never reached an accommodation with the Teamsters. They were always sort of in the Republican camp.”

LUCEY'S OPPOSITION TO THE APPOINTMENT OF SERAPHIM AS JUDGE
Scope and Content Note: “I thought that he was tempermentally unfit.” Egotistical and very emotional. “He did become a very serious embarrassment as years went on.”

NELSON'S RELATIONSHIP WITH THE PARTY IN MILWAUKEE
Scope and Content Note: Nelson “sort of feared Milwaukee.... Viewed Milwaukee as very large and very strange and I think that he wanted people to sort of handle the Milwaukee end and relieve him of the need for really getting terribly involved in that strange morass down there that he knew so little about. And so, I think that when very vocal and self-confident people came forward, like Meister and Seraphim, that he tended to rely on them to handle Milwaukee for him; and, in fact, Seraphim, for a while, was designated as the governor's Milwaukee representative.... Vernon Thomson, before him, had had a similar relationship with another Greek lawyer, Pete Kondos....” Kondos “came to no good end either. I think he finally did time for income tax evasion.” Seraphim was eager to replace Kondos in that role once a Democrat was elected governor. “The rivalry went back to their youth in the Greek community.”

OPPOSITION TO THE 1962 JEFFERSON-JACKSON DAY DINNER
Scope and Content Note: John Schmitt mainly opposed it because of the increased cost--one hundred dollars. Lucey could never understand why the Milwaukee people outside labor opposed this dinner.

ANECDOTE ABOUT THE 1958 JEFFERSON-JACKSON DAY DINNER
Scope and Content Note: Jack Kennedy was the speaker. Ted Sorenson and Lucey drafted a letter, to be signed by Kennedy, to about 3000 likely ticket purchasers. This was Lucey's first introduction to letter-signing machines. Really helped sell tickets. People for years afterward still treasured their letter, assuming it contained a John Kennedy autograph.

MORE ON LUCEY'S CHAIRMANSHIP OF THE PARTY
Scope and Content Note: During his tenure, Democrats won every major statewide race, except for the presidency in 1960, “which was one I wanted to win more than anything else.” Figured turning the chairmanship over to Louis Hanson, a Nelson man, would bring the party together. Felt six years was enough; his business had suffered a little from his party activity.

LUCEY RACE FOR LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR, 1964
Scope and Content Note: Reynolds insisted, “which I thought was a kind of dumb idea, but he felt that that would be the way that I could help the ticket the most.... And then I was really dumbfounded on election night when I won and he lost.”

REYNOLDS DEFEAT IN 1964
Scope and Content Note: Probably due mainly to his failure to keep his 1962 campaign promise of repealing the sales tax. Was finally forced into a position of either expanding the sales tax or closing down the University. He took the responsible position.

END OF TAPE 64, SIDE 2

INTRODUCTION

MORE ON THE DEFEAT OF JOHN REYNOLDS IN 1964
Scope and Content Note: May have been hurt by running as Lyndon Johnson's proxy in the Wisconsin presidential primary that year against George Wallace. The press made a big deal out of Wallace's showing. The remarkable thing about that primary, however, is that Reynolds got more votes for president than any candidate has received before or since in a presidential primary. Nevertheless, Reynolds attacked Wallace as a racist in that primary and that may have cost him some blue collar votes. when he ran for governor. The sales tax, however, was the big issue in the gubernatorial race. “I never dreamed that he could lose while I was winning.”

THE 1962 CAMPAIGN AND THE SALES TAX
Scope and Content Note: Nelson people were offended that Reynolds was running on a platform to repeal Nelson's sales tax.. “I am not at all sure that Gaylord could have been elected governor in '62.” Lucey feels that Reynolds running against the sales tax actually helped Nelson's chances running for senator by removing the sales tax issue from Nelson's campaign.

MORE ON THE 1964 ELECTION
Scope and Content Note: Not only had Reynolds not repealed the sales tax, but he expanded it. The sales tax actually was the fault of the Republican legislature and Reynolds tried to use this in his campaign, but “he's not the great communicator that Ronald Reagan is.”

1966 GUBERNATORIAL ELECTION
Scope and Content Note: “Bloodletting” primary, mainly in Dane County between Lucey and David Carley, who today are good friends. “David does have a capacity to go for the jugular....” The Capital Times “was really the villain of the piece. They had never forgiven me for my support of Jack Kennedy, Miles McMillin particularly. So, I was really savaged in that campaign by the Cap Times.” Lucey was “clobbered” in the primary in Dane County and the surrounding counties, “and it showed up in the general election.... I don't think, in fairness, that any Democrat could have defeated Warren Knowles in '66. He had only been in office two years. Most people feel... that a governor is entitled to a second term.” Knowles avoided a tax increase in his first term. Also, it was not a good year for Democrats. But even if Knowles had been more vulnerable and if it had been a Democratic year, “I think that the effect of the primary would have been devastating to my chances.” Lost to Knowles in the general election by over 100,000 votes.

LUCEY'S SUPPORT FOR ANTI-VIETNAM WAR CANDIDATES IN 1968 HELPED HIM IN HIS GUBERNATORIAL RACE IN 1970
Scope and Content Note: “Having been for Jack Kennedy was one thing, but supporting Bobby in '68, somehow was almost a cleansing exercise because he was so strong against the war. And then after Bobby was killed, my going to Chicago to be floor manager for Gene McCarthy, I think really won back the support that I had lost in the past in Dane County.”

ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS GOVERNOR (1971-1977)
Scope and Content Note: “I don't want to sound egotistical, but there are so many it's hard to know where to start.” Will be most remembered for the merger of the two university systems. Effort to equalize the burden and benefits of taxes so they were distributed according to need, rather than origin. A more even distribution of mental health care and health care generally. Equalization of the school tax. “All of these reforms fall under a sort of general category of trying to achieve equity.”

DISAPPOINTMENTS AS GOVERNOR
Scope and Content Note: “The last battle that I lost was in trying to achieve more accountability in public elementary and secondary education. We still have these arguments about competency testing of both the students and of teachers in our public schools. And I was out on the cutting edge of that....”

MORE ON ACCOMPLISHMENTS AS GOVERNOR
Scope and Content Note: Told the Republican legislative leadership before the 1974 election that he would not run for reelection if they would pass “my whole legislative program that year.” Had raised some money for a third term, but “I really felt a little uncomfortable about it because I didn't have a program. Almost everything that I had promised to do, I had achieved. I'm sure I could have thought of some good reasons for electing me to a third term, but I would have to scratch around.”

LUCEY AS AMBASSADOR TO MEXICO
Scope and Content Note: Carter called, and Lucey thought he was calling about the trade delegation to China which Lucey had arranged, but he asked him to be ambassador to Mexico. Took about a week to make up his mind, then agreed to do it, “partly because the agenda was pretty well accomplished here and I did have mixed feelings about running for a third term and there were those who argued that I couldn't be elected to a third term.” Has no regrets about the ambassadorship. “Had I been president, I'm not sure I would have sent Pat Lucey to Mexico.” Spanish is so common in the United States, someone who speaks the language should be appointed ambassador to Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries. It is hard to say if he would have been much more effective if he had spoken Spanish. His successor, a Chicano academic, “all reports indicate that he was a disaster,” partly because he assumed that knowing the language, he also knew the culture. The Mexican foreign minister, with whom Lucey is still a good friend, may have influenced Carter's decision to appoint Lucey because he had indicated to the Carter administration that he wanted a politician, not a diplomat, as ambassador, “and he particularly did not want a hyphenated American.” Mexicans feel Chicanos left the country of their own accord and they would rather have a Yankee as ambassador. Carter probably did not realize it, but Lucey had had a lifelong interest in Latin America. Spent thirty-three months in Puerto Rico during World War II and since then read extensively about Latin America. Had only been to Mexico twice before the ambassadorship.

LEFT THE CARTER ADMINISTRATION AND CAMPAIGNED FOR TED KENNEDY FOR THE 1980 DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION
Scope and Content Note: Not really a break on issues “but I thought that, as president, he was just a disaster. I was convinced that he could not be reelected and probably shouldn't be reelected.” Probably would have left the ambassadorship even if the Ted Kennedy campaign had not been taking shape then. Being ambassador to Mexico was like being on a “rollercoaster” and he had decided to leave when things were looking good. Carter's visit to Mexico in 1978 was viewed as a disaster by the press because of a remark he made, but it actually was a pretty successful trip. That trip got the United States and Mexico back to the bargaining table in negotiations involving Mexico's natural gas supplies. However, the image was one of strained relations because of a tasteless joke made by Carter and the tongue lashing the Mexican president gave him. In September of 1979, there was a successful meeting of the two presidents and the natural gas agreement was reached. Those things accomplished, Lucey felt he could resign in November of 1979. Carter became “very exercised” about keeping Lucey as ambassador or in some other capacity with the administration. Even asked Lucey to go to Madrid to participate in the Helsinki Agreement talks. “It was so obvious he wasn't asking me to go to Madrid because he thought I would be the best person to negotiate. It was to keep me out of the Kennedy campaign.”

LUCEY JOINED THE JOHN ANDERSON CAMPAIGN AS THE VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE
Scope and Content Note: The Democratic convention came up with a “loyalty oath,” pledging all delegates to support of the party's nominee. Lucey knew by this time that Kennedy could not get the nomination and left the convention rather than submit to the “loyalty oath.” He had already made up his mind that he would support Anderson over Carter. Tried to leave the convention quietly, but there was “quite a bit of fanfare.” Anderson people, who had been in touch with Lucey earlier, got in touch with him right after he left the convention and asked him to co-chair the Anderson campaign. Lucey refused. Lucey and his wife then left for a vacation in Canada and returned to several phone messages from Anderson. “So for ten weeks I conducted a very strenuous campaign for vice president, knowing that it would take at least a double miracle to have it happen.” Admired Anderson from the time of the Iowa debates. Felt Anderson and his platform were the best available that year. “I must say that I was a little relieved that our effort did not make the difference. If we turned out to play a spoiler role, I think I'd a been a bit chagrined.” Denied a few states to Carter, but not enough to make the difference. “I thought there was an outside chance that the Carter thing would just collapse totally.”

END OF TAPE 65, SIDE 1

INTRODUCTION

CONCLUDING REMARKS ON THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF WISCONSIN
Scope and Content Note: Probably would not be possible “today to develop the kind of party that we put together in the 1950s.” Value of political parties have been minimized during his lifetime. Party machine charity and the patronage of the post office, while replaced by good reforms, have weakened political parties. Advent of television gave candidates the ability to reach into the homes of voters and “eliminate the middleman.” Campaign finance changes, with the creation of political action committees, provide for contributions which side-step the party. Democratic Party in Wisconsin today has been watered down, “but the very fact that it exists at all, I think, is a tribute to the very selfless people who worked all those years to develop a citizens' party in this state.” Fourteen or fifteen hundred delegates still meet at Democratic Party of Wisconsin conventions, even knowing that they cannot endorse candidates and the candidates can ignore the platform if they so choose. “The very fact that that process continues, I think, is evidence that the Democratic Party of Wisconsin has survived its most serious challenge, and that is the challenge that comes when success occurs. And for what it's worth, I think that the work that went into that period still is bearing some fruit. And certainly at the time that all of this was going on, I think it had a very salutary impact on public life in Wisconsin and brought about the two party system that we have now.”

END OF INTERVIEW