October surprise
In the politics of the United States, an October surprise is a news event that may influence the outcome of an upcoming November election (particularly one for the presidency), whether deliberately planned or spontaneously occurring. Because the date for national elections (as well as many state and local elections) is in early November, events that take place in October have greater potential to influence the decisions of prospective voters and allow less time to take remedial action; thus, relatively last-minute news stories could either change the course of an election or reinforce the inevitable.[1] The term "October surprise" was coined by William Casey when he served as campaign manager of Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign.[2] However, there were October election-upending events that predated the coining of the term.[1][2]
This article is about the term in U.S. politics. For the storm in Buffalo, New York, see Lake Storm "Aphid". For discovery of the Charm quark, see J/psi meson.Prior to 1980[edit]
19th century[edit]
In mid-October 1840, shortly before the 1840 presidential election, federal prosecutors announced plans to charge top Whig Party officials with "most stupendous and atrocious fraud" for paying Pennsylvanians to cross state lines and vote for Whig candidates in New York during the 1838 elections.[3] In 1844, an abolitionist newspaper published an article, purportedly based on a book titled Roorback's Tour Through the Southern and Western States in the Year 1836, implying that James K. Polk had his slaves branded.[4] (For some decades afterward, the practice now known as "October surprise" was called "roorbacking" or "roorbaching".[5])
On October 20, 1880, shortly before the 1880 presidential election, a forged letter was published purportedly written by James A. Garfield voicing support for Chinese immigration to the United States. At the time, most white Americans opposed Chinese immigration and both presidential candidates were in favor of immigration restrictions.[3]
In the week leading up to the 1884 presidential election, Republican nominee James G. Blaine attended a meeting in which Presbyterian preacher Samuel D. Burchard claimed that the Democrats were the party of "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion". Blaine's failure to object to Burchard's message cost him support from anti-prohibitionists, Roman Catholic immigrants, and southerners, playing a role in his narrow loss to Democratic candidate Grover Cleveland.[3]
Two weeks before the 1888 US presidential election, the Republicans published a letter by Lionel Sackville-West, the British ambassador to the United States. In the letter, Sackville-West suggested that Democratic presidential candidate Grover Cleveland was preferred as president from the British point of view.[6] The letter had a galvanizing effect on Irish-American voters exactly comparable to the "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion" blunder of the previous presidential election[7] by trumpeting Great Britain's support for the Democrats. That drove Irish-American voters into the Republican fold, and Cleveland lost the presidency to Republican candidate Benjamin Harrison.
20th century[edit]
In the weeks leading up to the 1920 presidential election, rumors circulated that Warren G. Harding was of African-American descent. Harding's campaign feared that the rumor would affect his popularity amongst white southerners and so his campaign made it a point to prove Harding's whiteness.[8][3]
Less than a month before the 1940 presidential election, President Roosevelt's press secretary Stephen Early kneed a black police officer in the groin outside Madison Square Garden. Roosevelt had already been facing skepticism from black voters because of his failure to desegregate the military. Roosevelt responded days before the election by appointing the nation's first black general, Benjamin O. Davis Sr., and announcing the creation of the Tuskegee Airmen.[3]
The Suez Crisis and Hungarian Revolution have both been described as October surprises during the 1956 presidential election.[9]
On October 7, 1964, just under a month before the 1964 presidential election, one of President Johnson's top aides, Walter Jenkins, was arrested for disorderly conduct with another man at the Washington D.C. YMCA, a place described by the Toledo Blaze as "so notorious a gathering place of homosexuals that the District police had long since staked it out with peepholes for surveillance". However, a week later, Nikita Khrushchev was ousted from power by hardliners in the Soviet Union, the Labour Party won the United Kingdom election, and China conducted its first nuclear weapons test.[3] During the 1968 presidential election, Hubert Humphrey—who was rising sharply in the polls due to the collapse of the Wallace vote—began to distance himself publicly from the Johnson administration on the Vietnam War, calling for a bombing halt. The key turning point for Humphrey's campaign came when President Johnson officially announced a bombing halt, and even a possible peace deal, the weekend before the election. The "Halloween Peace" gave Humphrey's campaign a badly needed boost. In addition, Senator Eugene McCarthy finally endorsed Humphrey in late October after previously refusing to do so, and by election day the polls were reporting a dead heat.[10]
During the 1972 presidential election between Republican incumbent Richard Nixon and Democrat George McGovern, the United States was in the fourth year of negotiations to end the lengthy and domestically divisive Vietnam War. On October 26, 1972, twelve days before the election on November 7, the United States' chief negotiator and presidential National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger appeared at a press conference held at the White House and announced "We believe that peace is at hand."[11] Nixon, despite having vowed to end the war during his presidential election campaign four years earlier, had failed to cease hostilities but had withdrawn all American ground combat units and most other American military personnel. While Nixon was nevertheless already widely considered to be assured of re-election, Kissinger's "peace is at hand" declaration increased Nixon's already high standing with the electorate: in the event, Nixon defeated McGovern in every state except Massachusetts and won by 23.2 points in the nationwide popular vote, which was the largest margin since 1936. Remaining U.S. military personnel were withdrawn in 1973, but U.S. involvement in Vietnam continued until 1975.[12]
