Election Name: | 1958 United States Senate election in Massachusetts |
Country: | Massachusetts |
Flag Year: | 1908 |
Type: | presidential |
Ongoing: | no |
Previous Election: | 1952 United States Senate election in Massachusetts |
Previous Year: | 1952 |
Next Election: | 1962 United States Senate special election in Massachusetts |
Next Year: | 1962 (special) |
Election Date: | November 4, 1958 |
Image1: | JFK 1952 portrait.jpg |
Nominee1: | John F. Kennedy |
Party1: | Democratic Party (United States) |
Popular Vote1: | 1,362,926 |
Percentage1: | 73.20% |
Nominee2: | Vincent Celeste |
Party2: | Republican Party (United States) |
Popular Vote2: | 488,318 |
Percentage2: | 26.23% |
Map Size: | 250px |
U.S. Senator | |
Before Election: | John F. Kennedy |
Before Party: | Democratic Party (United States) |
After Election: | John F. Kennedy |
After Party: | Democratic Party (United States) |
The 1958 United States Senate election in Massachusetts was held on November 4, 1958. Democratic incumbent John F. Kennedy was reelected to a second six-year term, defeating Republican candidate Vincent J. Celeste.
Senator Kennedy was unopposed for renomination.
Celeste was unopposed for the Republican nomination.
Kennedy was overwhelmingly popular in Massachusetts and the 1958 elections were a wave election favoring the Democratic Party. Celeste's campaign was poorly funded but the candidate worked 17-hour days, running his campaign out of his law offices and attempting to frame the race as one pitting a working-class child of Sicilian immigrants against "that millionaire Jack Kennedy."[1]
The Kennedy campaign had bought and produced thousands of pieces of campaign material with the slogan "Be Proud of Your Vote!" but scrapped them after Celeste's nomination, as Senator Kennedy's father Joe thought the slogan could alienate Italian-Americans and divide the state on ethnic lines.[1]
Kennedy defeated Celeste by a margin of 874,608 votes; this represented the largest margin of victory in a statewide Massachusetts election up to that point.[2]