Mid-September 1971: Nixon, Aides Discuss Ways to Split Democrats’ Votes in ‘72 Elections

Shirley Chisholm. [Source: Ted Streshinsky / Corbis]President Nixon and his aides discuss several ways to split the Democrats in 1972. One is to secretly pump $5 million of Republican money into the prospective presidential campaign of antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy. Another is to secretly finance an African-American presidential candidate. Some of the names bandied about are civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm (D-NY), Cleveland mayor Carl Stokes, and Georgia state legislator Julian Bond. [Reeves, 2001, pp. 370-371] Chisholm will run an unsuccessful campaign for president in 1972 [Jo Freeman, 2/2005] , but it is not known whether her campaign receives any money from Republicans as Nixon suggests.