Sept. 6, 1964 - Robert F. Kennedy, the Democratic nominee for Senator, was received like a Republican yesterday on his first campaign trip to upstate New York.
Wherever he stopped in Onondaga County — a Republican stronghold since 1860 — he was surrounded by men, women, children, and especially teenaged girls. They screeched, shouted, grabbed his coat, asked for his autograph, and applauded.
“I’ve been reading that the population of California has passed New York’s,” Kennedy said in a brief speech at the New York State Exposition near Lakeland, south of Syracuse. “So, I brought nine and a half other Kennedys with me to New York. I challenge any other candidate to make that statement.”
Kennedy and his wife, Ethel, have eight children and are expecting a ninth in December.
It took Kennedy 18 minutes to walk 125 yards through the industrial pavilion. There, as elsewhere, people said, “Good luck” and “Welcome aboard, Bobby” and “You’ll get my vote.”
Kennedy then traveled to North Syracuse, where he dedicated a playground named for his brother, President Kennedy.
As his motorcade passed along Salina Street, the city’s main thoroughfare, motorists climbed out of their cars to wave.
As Salina and Jefferson, Kennedy plunged into a crowd that completely filled the sidewalk. The crush was so great that when he tried to enter an office building to meet some local politicians, he was pushed in backwards. The right side of the suit of Dean Markham, one of his aides, was torn away.
Later, at the Hotel Syracuse, Kennedy gave a short news conference.
Asked whether he would serve a full term if he was elected, Kennedy said: “I’m going to serve a full six years” — and then, smiling, he added: “I don’t know where else I have to go.”
In the evening, Kennedy was greeted warmly by thousands of New York City residents spending the Labor Day weekend at three big Catskill resorts — Grossinger’s, the Concord, and Kutsher’s — and at Monticello Raceway.
In the dining room at Grossinger’s, he recalled that he had predicted 16 years ago that Israel would survive and prosper. He also made it a point to say that aid to Israel had been greater than ever under the Kennedy Administration.
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