Frank Gannon's interview with Richard Nixon, February 9, 1983, part 5.

GANNON: --taken a little better care of.

NIXON: And Willis Cove and it's near this?

GANNON: Yes, you'll--you'll see it if you look off. It's called Anguilla because it means "eel," and it's shaped like an eel.

NIXON: Well, I'll tell you, there's nothing primitive about this place.

GANNON: No.

NIXON: It's one of the most ex--Los Hermanos is one of the most expensive places in the world, not just the U.S. And it's terrifically good.

GANNON: Let's start with--let's start with the--the letter from Herman Perry again. Then--then the two a.m. phone call and Tricia's--do you mind talking about Tricia's being born, and the minks next door?

NIXON: Yeah. We don't want to go too long. That's fine if you think it's good.

GANNON: And then--and then we're into the '46 campaign.

NIXON: If it's--if it's good.

GANNON: Then that's the last--

NIXON: Yeah.

OFF SCREEN VOICE: Ten seconds.

GANNON: I think it's--

GANNON: You've said that it was a letter that brought you into politics. Is that true?

NIXON: A letter from Herman Perry, who was in college with my mother at Whittier College, who was then the head of the Bank of America branch in Whittier, one of the town fathers there, one of those who urged me to run for the state assembly before I came east to go with the OPA.

GANNON: In 1941? Before the war?

NIXON: Before the war, in 1941. What had happened there was that Gerald Kepple, the assemblyman, was decided--had decided not to run because he was going to be appointed to a judgeship, and they looked around, and they decided that, as a young, coming fellow who was very active in community affairs, that I might be a 00:02:00good candidate. It was--it was quite an honor to be asked.

GANNON: And you said yes?

NIXON: No, I said that I'd like to think about it, and then I opted to answer the other letter that I'd received with--from Tom Emerson with regard with going to the AP--OPA.

GANNON: I'm sorry. I meant that you said yes to the--

NIXON: Oh, I'm sorry.

GANNON: --to the--to the later Perry letter.

NIXON: Oh, yes. With the Perry letter, yes. I called on the phone, as I recall, and he, of course, made it very clear that he didn't have the nomination to offer, that they had a committee, and that you'd have to fly out there to appear before the committee. And then I got to work and wrote letters and all that sort of thing, setting up the stage for going before the committee. One of the real problems I had was finding a way to get out there. I was settling these contracts with not only the Martin Aircraft Company, but also with Engineering 00:03:00Research Company, and I was right in the middle of negotiations, and airplane tickets were hard to come by, and I remember the controller of E.R.C.O., Bill Carroll was his name, said that he'd go down, pick up a ticket for me, and he went down to the airport, picked up a ticket on one of the airlines to go to California. It was American Airlines, as a matter of fact, and then he billed me from his credit card when he got the bill. Years later, during the famous fund crisis, one of my critics pointed out that I had borrowed money from a contractor in order to run for Congress. And that's what that's all about.

GANNON: Was this--was the group that Perry represented the Republican organization?

NIXON: No. They were all Republicans, but this was a--a Committee of 100, as 00:04:00they called them, citizens getting together who wanted to find a candidate who could beat Jerry Voorhis.

GANNON: Who was the incumbent.

NIXON: Jerry Voorhis was the incumbent, had been the incumbent for ten years. He had just slaughtered every Republican candidate up to that time, and everyone up to that time had been ultra-conservative. Now, Perry was a conservative, but he was also a realist. And the other people in this committee, they weren't big businessmen. Basically, they were insurance people, real estate people, one was an auto dealer, et cetera, et cetera, but they were people that knew that you had to have a progressive stance in order to beat Jerry Voorhis even in that district, which was more conservative than Voorhis was. And so, consequently, a group of a hundred representing the various cities in the district sort of put themselves together, a--and then they proceeded to interview candidates. Of course, one of the apocryphal stories out of that campaign was that this committee put an ad in the paper asking if people wanted to run for Congress and to apply to the committee. There was never any ad. There was a news story to the 00:05:00effect that they were going to interview candidates, and finally six finally showed up in Whittier, appearing before that committee at the William Penn Hotel the night I did, the first night. And it was after that first night that the decision was made, at least I learned it was made, in my favor.

GANNON: How did you hear?

OFF SCREEN VOICE: Excuse me, gentlemen. I have to inter-interrupt for one second. [unintelligible]

OFF SCREEN VOICE: [unintelligible] Keep rolling tape.

OFF SCREEN VOICE: We'll come back to you, Frank, on camera one.

GANNON: Right.

NIXON: Oh, that's Herman, all right. I don't recognize some of the others.

GANNON: Sorry? That's the right one.

OFF SCREEN VOICE: Okay.

NIXON: Jesus, what memories.

GANNON: I'm going to ask you how you got the--

GANNON: How did you find out the result of the committee's deliberations?

NIXON: I--When I went out and appeared before the committee, I made a ten-minute speech, as did the other six candidates, and I was in my uniform, of course, and I did rather well, I--apparently.

GANNON: You made the speech--

NIXON: I was the last speaker.

GANNON: You made the speech in--in uniform?

NIXON: Yes. Oh, yes. I didn't have a suit, not at that time, and I flew back to Middle River, and to continue with my work with the Navy, and late at night I had a call from a man that I had met out there, Roy Day, who was the Pomona representative on the ticket--on that committee. And he shouted on the phone. He said, "Dick! The nomination is yours! The committee has voted for you," so much to so many. I remember it was about three to one. Well, of course, I was very excited, but I hadn't heard from Herman Perry. He was the one that didnt call me. About ten minutes later, Herman Perry called, and he told me the same thing. And, incidentally, I practiced then a lesson I learned from my mother many, many years before. I remember once she said that George Washington once said that a gentleman has never heard a joke. And so when Herman told me, it was news. And I have learned that with politics all my life. Somebody will say, "You 00:08:00have won this or that or the other thing," and when he thinks he's telling you for the first time, he is, and you must let him think he is.

GANNON: We have a photograph of some of your early supporters, some of the members of the Committee of 100 in 1946.

NIXON: And that's Herman Perry right in the middle.

GANNON: That's the man who brought Richard Nixon into politics.

NIXON: He certainly is. He was a marvelous man. He didnt live until I became president, but his son did, Hubert, and he was very active in all my campaigns.

GANNON: Do you recognize any of the other--

NIXON: I can't from--from here. Let's see.

GANNON: You recognize him.

NIXON: That one I can pick out, but I must say [unintelligible].

GANNON: He looks like a kid.

NIXON: Well, he was. [Laughs.] Thirty-two at the time. No, I can't remember the others. I can't recall them. There's Chief Newman. I recognize him in the 00:09:00back row.

GANNON: That was your football coach.

NIXON: And there's [Tom Buley] on his right. Chief, you--is, of course, the swarthy-complected--my football coach.

GANNON: Did he play an active part in campaigning for you?

NIXON: Oh, yes. He wasn't political, but, on the other hand, the word got around, everybody that played at Whittier College--"Well, Dick's the one," and so forth and so on. And I had a strong group of supporters there, not only in that campaign, but in the senate campaign, the vice presidential campaign, the presidential campaigns, from then on.

GANNON Was Mrs. Nixon enthusiastic about the possibility of going to Congress?

NIXON: Oh, yes, very much. She was very much for it. She knew that my interests were in that direction. She liked adventure. She thought that it was very important to live an exciting life, and, frankly, going to Congress was--would be exciting, she thought.

GANNON: Wasn't--Tricia was born just about the time of the campaign?

NIXON: Tricia was born in February of the next year, and, incidentally, it was an occasion that I don't like to be reminded of. The doctor had told me and her 00:10:00that Tricia would be born in about two days--two or three days. And actually first babies usually are born late, you know. In this case, she was born a bit early. And I was over in Los Angeles, meeting with a group of my political supporters at the University Club in Los Angeles, when the telephone rang and she said, "You're the father of a baby girl." So I rushed home, but I wasn't there when Tricia was born.

GANNON: Mrs. Nixon, I think, helped you in the campaign after--

NIXON: Oh, did she help. She--we--we had very little money. You see, we weren't the organization candidate. Not that the organization was against us. They didn't have any other candidate, but this was before the nomination, and she worked in the office. She did envelopes and passed out literature and all that sort of thing. She had a very interesting experience, as a matter of fact. We 00:11:00had limited funds and the--at one time somebody came in and took a whole lot of our--of our campaign literature out, and then came in and took out some more. We found out that it was just being thrown in the wastebasket. In other words, it was just one of the opposition playing a prank. So she watched very closely. After that, she let them have--take only one at a time.

GANNON: Was Voorhis a good congressman?

NIXON: I thought that he was. He was a very sincere congressman, and, incidentally, he was very effective. After Tricia was born, I remember that he sent us a baby book, which was common in those days. I wrote him a little note thanking him for it. Also, I remember seeing him on the House floor. The only time prior to the time of my going to Washington as a congressman that I saw the House in session was when I graduated from Duke. My grandmother came back with 00:12:00my mother and father and two brothers in a Chevrolet car, and six of us went in that car up to Washington. I had to get a ticket to get in to see the House of Representatives. And we got it from Jerry Voorhis' office, because he was the congressman of the Twelfth Congressional District, in which Whittier was located. I remember we got there late in the afternoon , and there were only four on the floor, which was a shock and a disappointment. I was to learn later that it was quite common at the end of a day. and the speaker on that occasion speaking was John Stephen McGrority, who was sort of a halfway poet and so forth, who was a liberal congressman from California, a Democrat, who was for the Townsend Plan. Incidentally, my old man was for the Townsend Plan, too, because he believed that it was very important to do something about older people in their retired years. One of the few listening was a young congressman--to Jerry Voorhis--that I had met in [Jack Betit's] barn just 00:13:00three--two years before that. And I remember so well, after John Stephen McGroarty finished his speech, and the speaker said, "The House will now stand in recess until twelve o'clock tomorrow," that Voorhis gathered up a whole lot of papers that he was working on all the way--all the time, stayed there to hear his colleague finish his speech, and he went walking out of the room, the chamber, very, very speedily. And I sort of thought, "Well, there is a very conscientious man." You know, Voorhis was a very decent man. His problem was he wasn't effective, and his political problem was he was a liberal, ultra-liberal as a matter of fact, in a relatively conservative district. And that was the fundamental reason why in 1946 he lost. There were other reasons, but that was the main one.

GANNON: How did you beat him?

NIXON: Well, first, in all fairness to him, the tide was running in our favor. It's very possible that--that I would have won if I hadn't campaigned at all, 00:14:00although I doubt it because he was very good at constituent relations, not only baby books to me, but agriculture books to the farmers and all that sort of thing and so forth and so on. He handled his mail very well. He always answered it. He was good to his constituents, but I think what happened that really gave me the lift was that after the primary, when he was substantially ahead of me--since we were both filing on both tickets, we could tell who was ahead--that after that, I challenged him to debate. The way it came about is that we were invited to a joint appearance before one group, and then I--after that debate, which was in south Pasadena, the League of Women Voters, I challenged him to more. We had three more. They drew increasingly great crowds. And in debate, first, it created interest in the campaign. Second, it made me known, and up to that point he was more--better known than I was. He should never have accepted 00:15:00the challenge, incidentally, from a political standpoint, but he was good sport enough to do it. And, third, it enabled me to point up what were our real differences, which were philosophical. He was pro-labor in a district which was not anti-labor but thought that the labor laws, as I did, had to be modified to an extent to avoid some of the very terrible strikes that came immediately after the war. He was--he had been a socialist years before, and that was reflected in his thinking. He was for more and more government enterprise, and I was more for