Humphrey For Tate

Looking for more information on my late first cousin once removed, former Philadelphia Mayor James H.J. Tate, I found this speech urging his re-election - against Republican challenger Arlen Specter - given by none other than then-Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey (below) on October 24, 1967, exactly two weeks before the Philadelphia mayoral election.

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For a former Mayor who believes, as I do, that the quality of life in America depends upon the vitality of our local governments - and particularly the governments of our major cities - it is always good to be back in Philadelphia.

Or at least it has always been so since that day in January, sixteen years ago when Joe Clark and the Clark team - Dick Dilworth, Jim Finnegan and Jim Tate among them - entered City Hall with brooms in hand and with the dream of rebuilding a great city. From that day on Philadelphia and Philadelphians have had the benefit of municipal leadership unsurpassed in the nation - a municipal leadership which has demonstrated a genius for having the right man in the right position at the right time.

In the early 1950s, Philadelphia's problem was to re-structure its government to create a first-rate civil service system with opportunity for all regardless of race, color or creed and to attract this nation's finest administrators. Joe Clark did that job.

With a firm basis in modern government, Philadelphia was ready to take on the task of urban renewal by the late 1950s. Commerce increased. Industry was encouraged to return to the city from the suburbs. A modern transportation system was built. That was Dick Dilworth's great contribution to Philadelphia. And now in the 1960s, when the attention of our entire nation is focused on the blight of poverty and despair in urban slums . . . when that despair has all too often broken out in violence . . . when Philadelphia's need, like that of all our other major cities.

Make no mistake about it: this is a troubled time. Every city in this nation requires political leadership of the highest quality. It requires a Mayor who knows, as Jim Tate knows that the citizens must have strict and impartial enforcement of the law. It requires a Mayor who understands~ as Jim Tate understands, that the ultimate solution is not a night stick but an open hand of opportunity . . . not unemployment relief but a job . . . not a jail cell but a decent house . . . not a bigger juvenile court but better schools.

That is the kind of leadership that Jim Tate has provided.

For although this is a troubled time, it is also a time of hope and a time for builders. It is a time of unprecedented prosperity. It gives us the chance and the means to open new doors of opportunity for millions of fellow Americans.

That is the kind of opportunity and the kind of challenge we Democrats have always welcomed.

It is certainly not a time for the timid and fainthearted - for those who are afraid to dare, to hope to dream, and to face difficult odds - whether those odds are in an election or in eliminating a city's slums.

Jim Tate has that kind of courage . He fights for the things he believes in and he believes in Philadelphia . As President of the National League of Cities he fights for the programs which America's cities need.

Jim Tate is a scrapper.

Jim Tate is a worker.

Jim Tate is my kind of Mayor - one who loves his city and never ceases to work for it.

Philadelphia is a leader in a great national struggle for a better America.

And Jim Tate has helped earn you that position of leadership. But as Election Day approaches in Philadelphia, as we look ahead to the next session of Congress , and as we look ahead to 1968, we are forced to ask whether or not that struggle is going to be allowed to continue. Is America, with its unprecedented prosperity, its know-how, its democratic traditions and free institutions, going to complete the task of guaranteeing the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to every citizen?

When the 200th anniversary of our independence arrives in 1976, will we be able to say to the world, "Yes, Americans are free from poverty! Yes, all Americans are getting, the best education our wealth and knowledge can provide! Yes, every American , regardless of color or creed, regardless of birth or background, has a full opportunity to develop his human capabilities! Yes, this great nation is ready to use its power and its food , and its factories to help build a stable, peaceful, prosperous world for all mankind!"?

I am proud to say that the Johnson-Humphrey administration has been building tirelessly toward those goals. I am proud to say we have taken up the sacred trust passed on to us by Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and I am proud to say we have done it under the banner of the Democratic Party.

But just as we finish putting into law the platform we put forth in the last election, the Republican opposition begins to learn lip service for it.

"Well , all right," they say - "that's what the people want, so let's say we are for it. But, take it easy, it is time for a pause?"

What they really wanted all along was a pause - in fact , they wanted to pause before we started.

That is why 80 per cent of them voted against the Model Cities appropriation in 1967.

That is why they voted against rent supplements in 1966 and 1967 - 97 percent the first time, 93 percent the second time.

That is why they voted against the War on Poverty in 1964 and in 1966 - 87 percent the first time, 88 percent the second.

You can go right down the list of progress programs -- food stamps, Medicare, civil rights, education, minimum wage . It's the same story - an almost unblemished record of foot-dragging and obstruction.

What this nation really has to ask itself - today, tomorrow and next year - is whether it wants the leadership of a party that has proven over the course of decades that it has faith in the future and knows how to build toward it . . . . or whether it wants a party that is content to stand still and look backward. Does America want Democratic Builders or Republican Stand-Patters?

And if anyone among us thinks it is possible to simply stand still in these times, he is sadly mistaken .

If you're not moving forward, you're falling behind.

Now there are occasionally good people who have been stranded in the wrong party by accident of birth. But at this critical moment in the history of America it is time to think of the team that can offer support in depth for the kind of future you want.

Jim Tate stands for that future , and he has a lot of friends -like Lyndon Baines Johnson and Hubert Humphrey and forward-looking Democrats - who are right there with him.

Philadelphia needs Jim Tate. America needs Jim Tate. He needs your help. I ask you to give that help.

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Mayor Tate won re-election, but I almost cried when I read Vice President Humphrey's speech.  As we all know, we did stop making progress going into the seventies, and so much progress has been reversed for the past forty years.  And the Republicans, when you get right down to it, haven't really changed much.  We never could answer "Yes" to those questions in 1976 that Humphrey rhetorically asked nine years earlier, and we won't be able to answer "Yes" to them in 2026 either. 😢