How Did Nixon Hope To Win Southern Support

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As a U.S. Navy lieutenant overseeing logistical motion of arms at Guadalcanal Air Base in the Solomon Islands and other posts during World War Ii, Richard Nixon'south unit was subjected to such regular Japanese air bombings, it became known as "Murder, Incorporated."

But once the future president was transferred to the more than peaceful Dark-green Island, he found time for more leisurely pursuits—namely poker. In fact, he became such a carte shark that, when he returned from his service, he brought home thousands of dollars in winnings—plenty cash to assistance fund his beginning run for political office, when he won a California congressional seat in 1946.

"He was the finest poker actor I accept ever played confronting," quondam Navy comrade James Udall recalled in a 1970 Life magazine interview. "I once saw him bluff a lieutenant commander out of $ane,500 with a pair of deuces."

"I never saw him lose," some other Navy human being, Lester Wroble, told Life.

Nixon, who left his job every bit a lawyer at a federal agency in Washington at age 29 to join the Navy, was an unlikely card shark. He grew upwardly in a deeply religious Quaker family in southern California, where gambling—along with drinking and swearing—was frowned upon. (His Quaker background would have also excused him from armed services service in the state of war, had he called not to enlist.)

U.S. Naval Reserve Lt. Richard Chiliad. Nixon

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When he arrived at an air base in Dark-green Island in the Solomons in 1944 to supervise the loading and unloading of cargo aircraft, by one account, he didn't fifty-fifty know how to play cards.

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Simply as detailed in Jonathan Aitken's biography, Nixon: A Life, the time to come president apparently was intrigued later on he spent a couple of evenings watching his swain officers playing the game. (The officers ordinarily played five-card stud or draw, with null wild, co-ordinate to the Life article.)

In Aitken's business relationship, Nixon reportedly asked a poker-playing friend, James Stewart, if there was a certain way to win the game. Stewart replied that if there was, "I'd be sitting in Brazil with five million bucks in the banking concern."

Nevertheless, Stewart shared with Nixon a strategy that he thought might work for a highly disciplined actor. It involved turning in the cards about 80 percent of the time, and staying in the game but when you felt confident that y'all held the best hands. Information technology was a wearisome way to gamble, but Nixon plainly wasn't looking to exist entertained. He wanted to make some cash.

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"In everything he did, Nixon tried to chief the fundamentals," Ken Hughes, a historian with the University of Virginia's Miller Center, and author of the 2015 volume Fatal Politics: The Nixon Tapes, the Vietnam War, and the Casualties of Reelection, says in an email. "When he wanted to learn poker in the Navy, he studied the game before risking any of his money, spending hours and days with the all-time players he could find, listening to their lectures, learning their moves, playing do games with no stakes.

Hughes explains that poker wasn't merely a game to Nixon, information technology was a skill to be honed and so put to employ turning a profit. "It was work, and Nixon always worked difficult, well and successfully," Hughes says.

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"I think Nixon'south approach to poker shows outset of all the enormous cocky-field of study and determination to succeed in his character," Aitken says via email. "He probably did not get much pleasure from the game, but I feel he would have obtained dandy satisfaction for it because he achieved his goal, which was to build up coin for his savings."

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Nixon quickly mastered poker strategy, he also obviously became good at reading the other players and figuring out how to exploit their psychological flaws. "I establish poker instructive besides equally entertaining and profitable," Nixon later wrote in RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon. "I learned that the people who take the cards are usually the ones who talk the least and the softest; those who are bluffing tend to talk loudly and give themselves away."

The poker-playing moment that stuck in Nixon's heed was the evening when he drew a royal affluent in diamonds. "The odds against this are about 650,000 to ane, and I was naturally excited," Nixon recalled. "But I played it with a true poker face, and won a substantial pot."

By Nixon's ain account, on one occasion he passed up an opportunity to have dinner with legendary aviator Charles Lindbergh, who was visiting the base, because it conflicted with a poker game that he had agreed to host. On Green Island, "Our poker games were more than idle pastimes, and the etiquette surrounding them was taken very seriously," he explained.

In July 1944, Nixon's overseas tour ended when he was ordered to return stateside to finish his Navy stint. "When the state of war ended, so did Nixon's poker-playing career," Hughes says.

When he came home to his wife Pat, Nixon brought a sizeable stack of cash. It'due south not completely clear how much coin Nixon won at poker during his Navy days, but co-ordinate to Nixon biographer John A. Farrell'southward book Richard Nixon: The Life, he told his family unit that he pocketed about $8,000—slightly more than $111,000 in today's dollars. Aitken cites a lower estimate of $6,800.

A campaign poster for then-congressman, Richard Nixon's 1950 run for U.S. Senate. His run for the House of Representatives in 1946 was partially bankrolled from poker winnings.

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Nixon originally planned to puddle that money with his wife's bacon to purchase a firm. Only instead, afterward receiving a letter from businessman Herman Perry urging him to run for a congressional seat in California's 12th District, he decided to take on Autonomous incumbent Jerry Voorhis.

"Pat was dubious virtually spending our savings on what was at all-time a risky political entrada," Nixon recalled in his memoir. "Merely the more we thought about the possibility of returning to Washington as a congressional family, the more than enthusiastic we became."

Nixon'southward poker money made up a portion of the war chest that he amassed in his run confronting Voorhis, whom he defeated easily in the fall of 1946.

"Nixon'south first campaign certainly price more he'd saved from his poker winnings, just having some coin saved meant that Nixon could afford to take a calculated risk on running for office," Hughes says.

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"He would have been contributing 20 percent of the unabridged campaign costs from his accumulated poker winnings," Aitken says. "Very few candidates then or now contribute xx pct of a Congressional entrada costs personally."

Though Nixon apparently didn't play poker equally president, during Watergate he did sometimes resort to poker metaphors, according to one-time White House counsel John Dean'south book,The Nixon Defence: What He Knew and When He Knew it.

On one occasion, for example, Nixon derided his FBI managing director, L. Patrick Gray, for showing also much outward bravado in a congressional hearing, which he felt betrayed an inner lack of confidence. Equally Nixon said, "With a good poker role player, you never know either style, if he'south got the cards or if he doesn't."

Source: https://www.history.com/news/richard-nixon-campaign-funds-wwii-poker

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