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BICHARD NIXON . . . strong, self confident and in command of his Mount Prospect audience. Republicans and curious voters from a three county area arrived in the thousands Saturday to see the candidate and listen to abrief speech before his campaign plane otok him to Pennsylvania and New Jersey. See a lull page of photo coverage of the Nixon rally on page C-8. .(Staff Photo by Tom Grieger)Nixon To 10,000: Illinois Mine’by JAMES VESELYRichard Nixon, poised as a marble statue and twice as smooth, brought his own particular brand of Presidential politics to the suburbs Saturday and told local residents what thqy wanted to hear,Departing only slightly from his standard campaign speech, the front-running Presidential candidate spoke of “not only what is wrong with America, but what is right with this country.NIXON BROUGHT Up the issues of law and order, police training and foreign policy but it wasn't until he began to speak of taxation and spending that he ready heard the roar of the crowd.Nixon sought to involve his audience by citing a factory worker's paycheck and then saying. You don’t have $14 a W'sk more as Hubert Humphrey says you have, you have less than you mode before because of rising prices.Don’t vote for a rise in prices,” Nixon urged, and then called for national programs which would place “millions onpayrolls instead of welfare rolls.’’Nixon’s 35-mlnute speech culminated the local Republican activities for the morning and drew nearly 10,000 persons to Prospect High School to see the candidate.PEOPLE BEGAN lining up in front of the doors to the field-house as early as 7 a.m., nearly Vh hours before the doors were finally opened to let them Into the auditorium.Preceding the large crowd was a host of Republican candidates for local, state and national office.Senators Everett Dirksen and Charles Percy were on the podium with Congressman Donald Rumsfeld (R-13th).Candidates for the offices of lieutenant governor down to state's attorney also were on hand, circulating among the members of the audience and making brief speeches early in the rally,But it was Nixon’s show all the way. Even the infectious and popular Sen. Dirksen could quiet the crowd only for a moment as they waited for Nixon'sUj»4WI*ANixon Rally: Page of Pictures -On Page C-8..i.arrival, *DIRKSEN repeated his previous performance at the Republican National Convention by ordering tbe crowd to be quiet and then waiting for silence on the floor.Dirksen, together with .Percy, who preceded him on the podium, called for a Republican sweep in November and cited the state GOP ticket as the “winning combination.”Despite the speeches and the cheers for Dirksen, Percy and gubernatorial candidate Richard Ogilvie, by 10:30 a.m. tbe crowd in the fieldhouse was getting impatient“Quit stalling and give us Nixon,” people in the bleachers began to yell, and William Rentsehler, head of Nixon’s Illinois campaign, had to promise the arrival of the candidate “in a few seconds.”ACTUALLY. NIXON was speaking to an audience at that moment. Several thousand persons who had not been allowed inside the hall were crowding around the entrance to the field-house and Nixon stopped outside to address them before entering the school.Ushered into the hall by Ogilvie, Nixon made his way through the crowd and mounted the podium at 11 a.m. He was accompanied by his wife, Pat, and a coterie of security men who then surrounded the platform.Nixon’s mood was jubilant as he listened to the Prospect High School band and beard the applause Irom the fieldhouse audience.I had a feeling as I came through the crowd, Nixon began, “and I feel it now . . . it is a sense of victory in the air.“DO I have doubts about Illinois?” he continued. “Not when I’m on the ticket with Everett Dirksen.” With nods toward Rumsfeld and Percy, Nixon then launched into the main theme of his total campaign: “You cannot name one area of tbe world where respect for this country is not low. The American people know this and they are fed up to here andthey’re going to vote against the administration that put us where we are today.”“People are concerned about America,” he said, and when the Republican administration gets into office I pledge this to you, Ufe American flag will not be a doormat for anybody.” Nixon continued to recall for his audience the years of the Eisenhower administration and blamed the “men who stumbled through the sixties toward the present state of voter discontent.POINTING TO members of the Prospect High band and other students in the audience, Nixon told them, You will be a great generation and we will give you the leadership you deserve,”Then ending on an optimistic note, Nixon said he believes “we can go to the end of the century without another war,” providing tbe voters authorize a new foreign policy and a new direction for the country.Although Nixon did not say anything new in his Mount Prospect speech, he appeared to have an electrifying effect on members of the audience close enough to see him at first hand.After concluding his remarks, Nixon waded into the crowd fora brief time and then walked up into the bleachers among the high school band to talk briefly to them.A MOMENT later he was gone.The momentum of the rallycontinued for just a few mort minutes and suddenly there wa-. no one for the audience to cram their heads at, no potential president to glimpse and the biggest political rally In the area was over.
Newspaper Details
Arlington Heights Daily Herald Suburban Chicago
Arlington Heights, Illinois, US
Mon, Oct 21, 1968
Page 34
Full Page
Clipped by
Mount P.
IL, USA 16 Sep 2023
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