Fifty years ago, a fellow named Brown was on the Democratic primary ballot in California. Governor Pat Brown, father of Jerry, was seeking to be his state’s favorite son at the party’s presidential nominating convention. Vice President Nixon was unopposed on the GOP ballot. Then, as now, primary rhetoric could get a bit overheated, as we can see in the June 5, 1960 New York Times:
A much larger vote for Mr. Brown in the Democratic primary than for Mr. Nixon in the Republican would be interpreted by Premier Khrushchev of the Soviet Union, voters were cautioned, that the American people do not support “the Administration’s tough attitude toward communism.”
Should the Nixon total substantially exceed the Governor’s, the other side retorted, this would bring “smear, bigotry and falsehoods” into the fall Presidential campaign.