Dick Tuck
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dick Tuck (b. 1924) was a U.S. Democratic Party campaign strategist, advance man, and political prankster. He began his career dogging Richard M. Nixon in the 1950s while working for U.S. Senate candidate Helen Gahagan Douglas, who had been subject to red-baiting by Nixon.
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[edit] Pranks
Tuck's most famous prank against Nixon is known as "the Chinatown Caper." During his campaign for Governor of California in 1962, Nixon visited Chinatown in Los Angeles. At the campaign stop, a backdrop of children holding "welcome" signs in English and Chinese was set up. As Nixon spoke, an elder from the community whispered that one of the signs in Chinese said, "What about the Hughes loan?" The sign was a reference to an unsecured $205,000 loan that Howard Hughes had made to Nixon's brother, Donald. Nixon grabbed a sign and, on camera, ripped it up. (Later, Tuck learned, to his chagrin, that the Chinese characters actually spelled out “What about the huge loan?”)
After the first Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960, Tuck hired an elderly woman who put on a Nixon button and embraced the candidate in front of TV cameras. She said, "Don't worry, son! He beat you last night, but you'll get him next time."
Tuck has been credited with waving a train out of the station while Nixon was still speaking, but he denies committing this prank. The prank became a Trivial Pursuit question, but cannot be attributed to Tuck. Tuck has said he did wear a conductor's hat and waved to the engineer, but that the train stayed put. His pranks against Barry Goldwater in 1964 were seen as light-hearted fun. He was dubbed by one newspaper, "the Democrat[ic] Pixie of 1964."
[edit] Political Career
In 1964, Tuck ran for the California State Senate. His campaign billboards merely said "Tuck," but on the eve of the election he painted an extra line on the billboards, converting the T in his name to an F. Tuck lost the election. He said about his defeat, notoriously, "The people have spoken, the bastards."
Tuck was a key adviser in Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign. After Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles, he rode in Kennedy's ambulance as the mortally-wounded candidate was rushed to the hospital.
Tuck claimed that the Watergate break-in was an attempt to find information about the Hughes-Nixon relationship held by Larry O'Brien, chair of the Democratic National Committee.
Tuck was first and foremost a campaign operative, and claimed he was never malicious in his political pranks. Richard Nixon had an obsessive anger towards Tuck, however, as recorded in his presidential tapes. But Nixon also admired Tuck, comparing the dirty tricks committed by his staffer Donald Segretti unfavorably to the intelligence and wit behind some of Tuck's political pranks.
In 2006 Tuck was retired and living in Tucson, Arizona.
[edit] Controversy
Virtually every great "prank" Dick Tuck claimed to have pulled or has been associated with him has been disputed. Dick Tuck admitted to making up some of his pranks to author Neil Steinberg, who covered Tuck in his 1992 book If At All Possible, Involve A Cow: The Book of College Pranks.
However, Tuck is mentioned in an October 1972 Oval Office tape when Nixon, speaking to H.R. Haldeman about the Segretti disclosures, said, "Dick Tuck did that to me. Let's get out what Dick Tuck did!" Nixon goes on to describe egged limousines and staged violence in San José, Costa Rica, later traced to Republican operatives. But according to Karl Vick in a 1997 The Washington Post article, Nixon was not the first to confuse Tuck's record with Tuck's legend.
White House tapes also record Nixon speaking with John Connally on October 17, 1972, claiming Tuck had all of Goldwater's speeches in hand before they were spoken because, Nixon presumed, Tuck had an informant in the Goldwater campaign. Tuck has denied this.
[edit] References
- San Francisco Chronicle May 15, 1974 - R. Carrol
- California Living Magazine, June, 23, 1974 - S. Berman
- The Washington Post, June 17, 1997 - Karl Vick
- If At All Possible, Involve A Cow: The Book of College Pranks, August 1, 1992 - Neil Steinberg; St. Martins Press ISBN 0-312-07810-2
