Nixon was the
front-runner for the Republican nomination and to a great extent the story of the Republican primary campaign and nomination is the story of one Nixon opponent after another entering the race and then dropping out. Nixon's first challenger was
Michigan Governor
George W. Romney. Romney's grandfather, a member of
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, had emigrated to Mexico in 1886 with his three wives and their children, after the U.S. federal government outlawed
polygamy. However Romney's parents (monogamous under
new church doctrine) retained their U.S. citizenship and returned to the United States with him and his siblings in 1912. Questions were occasionally asked about Romney's eligibility to hold the office of
President due to his birth in Mexico, given an asserted ambiguity in the
United States Constitution over the phrase "
natural-born citizen". By February 1967, some newspapers were questioning Romney's eligibility given his Mexican birth. A Gallup poll in mid-1967 showed Nixon with 39%, followed by Romney with 25%. However, in a
slip of the tongue, Romney told a news reporter that he had been "brainwashed" by the military and the
diplomatic corps into supporting the Vietnam War; the remark led to weeks of ridicule in the national
news media. As the year 1968 opened, Romney was opposed to further American intervention in Vietnam and had decided to run as the Republican version of
Eugene McCarthy (
The New York Times 2/18/1968). Romney's support slowly faded and he withdrew from the race on February 28, 1968. (
The New York Times 2/29/1968). Nixon won a resounding victory in the important New Hampshire primary on March 12, winning 78% of the vote. Anti-war Republicans wrote in the name of
New York Governor
Nelson Rockefeller, the leader of the GOP's liberal wing, who received 11% of the vote and became Nixon's new challenger. Nixon led Rockefeller in the polls throughout the primary campaign. Rockefeller defeated Nixon in the
Massachusetts primary on April 30 but otherwise fared poorly in the state primaries and conventions. By early spring,
California Governor Ronald Reagan, the leader of the GOP's conservative wing, had become Nixon's chief rival. In the
Nebraska primary on May 14, Nixon won with 70% of the vote to 21% for Reagan and 5% for Rockefeller. While this was a wide margin for Nixon, Reagan remained Nixon's leading challenger. Nixon won the next primary of importance,
Oregon, on May 15 with 65% of the vote and won all the following primaries except for California (June 4), where only Reagan appeared on the ballot. Reagan's margin in California gave him a plurality of the nationwide primary vote, but when the Republican National Convention assembled, Nixon had 656 delegates according to a
UPI poll (with 667 needed for the nomination). Total popular vote •
Ronald Reagan – 1,696,632 (37.93%) •
Richard Nixon – 1,679,443 (37.54%) •
James A. Rhodes – 614,492 (13.74%) •
Nelson A. Rockefeller – 164,340 (3.67%) • Unpledged – 140,639 (3.14%) •
Eugene McCarthy (write-in) – 44,520 (1.00%) •
Harold Stassen – 31,655 (0.71%) •
John Volpe – 31,465 (0.70%) • Others – 21,456 (0.51%) •
George Wallace (write-in) – 15,291 (0.34%) •
Robert F. Kennedy (write-in) – 14,524 (0.33%) •
Hubert Humphrey (write-in) – 5,698 (0.13) •
Lyndon Johnson (write-in) – 4,824 (0.11%) •
George Romney – 4,447 (0.10%) •
Raymond P. Shafer – 1,223 (0.03%) •
William W. Scranton – 724 (0.02%) •
Charles H. Percy – 689 (0.02%) •
Barry M. Goldwater – 598 (0.01%) •
John V. Lindsay – 591 (0.01%)
Endorsements ;Former Presidents •
Dwight Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States ;U.S. Senators •
Edward Brooke (R-MA) •
Clifford Case (R-NJ) •
Mark Hatfield (R-OR) •
Jacob Javits (R-NY) •
Thruston Morton (R-KY) •
Charles H. Percy (R-IL) ;U.S. Representatives •
Edward G. Biester Jr. (R-PA) •
Daniel Button (R-NY) •
Silvio Conte (R-MA) •
Paul Findley (R-IL) •
Gilbert Gude (R-MD) •
Seymour Halpern (R-NY) •
Margaret Heckler (R-MA) •
Frank Horton (R-NY) •
John Lindsay (R-NY) •
Pete McCloskey (R-CA) •
William E. Miller (R-NY) •
Daniel J. Evans (R-WA) •
Claude R. Kirk Jr. (R-FL) •
John A. Love (R-CO) •
Tom McCall (R-OR) actress •
Billy Daniels, •
Philip Johnson, architect •
William Scranton (R-PA) ;Lieutenant governors •
William Milliken (R-MI) ==The convention==