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Mob didn't turn out vote for Kennedy: UIC professor
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| Parent(s) |
Race
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| Contributor | RP |
| Last Edited | RP Mar 21, 2006 06:56pm |
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| Category | Study |
| Media | Newspaper - Chicago Sun-Times |
| News Date | Wednesday, March 22, 2006 12:55:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | No, the Mafia did not win the 1960 presidential election for John F. Kennedy, according to a study by a University of Illinois at Chicago professor.
After Kennedy's razor-thin victory over Richard Nixon in Illinois, which cemented Kennedy's lead in the electoral college, Nixon backers blamed Mayor Richard J. Daley's notorious precinct captains for election-night hijinks.
But years later, another argument emerged: Kennedy or his father made a deal with the mob to throw the election in Chicago -- and thus Illinois -- to Kennedy.
Author Seymour Hersh made the argument in a 1997 book. Frank Sinatra's daughter, Tina, and Judith Campbell Exner, reputed former mistress of the late president and of late Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana, also made versions of that argument.
To test the theory that the mob turned out the vote in Chicago's 1960 general election, John Binder, a finance professor at UIC, analyzed vote totals for five city wards where the mob reputedly had clout, as well as in Cicero and Chicago Heights.
Those areas performed no differently than the non-mob wards and suburbs, Binder found. "There's really no evidence to support that story," Binder said. "Some of the people telling these stories are nuts." |
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