When President Lyndon B. Johnson unexpectedly announced that he would neither seek nor accept the Democratic nomination for President on March 31, 1968, the filing deadline for the June 4 New Jersey Democratic primary was on April 25.
With anti-Vietnam War protestors heckling him from outside the White House, Johnson’s announcement came nineteen days after he won a closer-than-expected 50%-42% victory in the New Hampshire primary against Eugene McCarthy. Robert F. Kennedy entered the race on March 16.
In those days, presidential primaries were beauty contests and delegates were not obligated to vote for a particular candidate at the national convention.
New Jersey Democratic leaders formed an uncommitted “Regular Democratic Organization” delegate slate, with Gov. Richard Hughes, U.S. Senator Harrison Williams, former Gov. Robert Meyner, Secretary of State/Democratic State Chairman Robert Burkhardt, and Hudson County Democratic boss John V. Kenny running as statewide at-large delegates.
Only McCarthy ran an opposition slate of delegate candidates; Robert Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey decided to take their chances on swaying the party leaders.
McCarthy won 19 district delegates in New Jersey, with the uncommitted organization candidates winning 63 delegate seats; the statewide, at-large organization slate won by a more than 2-1 margin against the McCarthy-backed slate.
Nine of the McCarthy delegates came out of Bergen County, where insurgents beat big-name organization candidates like Matthew Feldman, Gerry Calabrese, and Jerry O’Connor; only former State Sen. Ned Parsekian survived.
No candidates filed for president in the Democratic primary, and 25,5216 Democrats cast write-in votes – just 8% of those who voted for delegate candidates: McCarthy defeated Kennedy, 39%-34%, with Hubert Humphrey finishing third with 22% and George Wallace at 5%. Johnson received 380 write-in votes.
On the first ballot at the convention in Chicago, New Jersey delivered 62 votes for Humphrey and 18 for McCarthy. One of the McCarthy delegates, Robert S. Browne of Teaneck, an economics professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University and one of seven Black delegates from New Jersey in 1968, cast his vote for Rev. Channing Phillips, the first Black person to have his name placed into nomination for the presidency.