Marxism and Vietnam were issues in 1965 N.J. gubernatorial race

The #1 process issue of the 1965 campaign for Governor of New Jersey was over a Rutgers University professor who was a self-professed Marxist.  The GOP nominee, State Sen. Wayne Dumont (R-Phillipsburg) sought to hold Democratic Gov. Richard Hughes accountable for refusing to call for the firing of Prof. Eugene Genovese.

During an April '65 teach-in on the Vietnam War, Genovese told students: "Those of you who know me know that I am a Marxist and a Socialist.  Therefore, unlike most of my distinguished colleagues here this morning, I do not fear or regret the impending Vietcong victory in Vietnam.  I welcome it."

Hughes called Genovese's comments offensive, but declined to get involved in the politics of calling for the termination of a state university professor.  Dumont demanded that Genovese be fired, and said that the Rutgers teach-ins were "part and parcel of an organized conspiracy to undermine our position in Vietnam."

Dumont spent the next three months seeking to link the governor to the Rutgers issue, even going as far as to suggest that Hughes did not understand the danger of communism.  But the Warren County Republican stopped short of saying that Hughes was soft on communism. 

Hughes accused Dumont of politicizing dead American soldiers in Vietnam, and said that his Republican rival was an extremist.  "By using for his own little political gain the individual tragedies of young men dead in Vietnam, in what can only be called a kind of ‘vampire politics,' my opponent has opened a Pandora's box for the extremists of this state and nation," Hughes said.

Republicans were not necessarily on Dumont's page.  U.S. Sen. Clifford Case (R-Rahway), the only statewide GOP elected official, said in a WNBC-TV interview that Genovese's future should be left to Rutgers administrators and not argued as a campaign issue. 

About a week before the general election, former Vice President Richard Nixon, stumping for Dumont in Morristown, that he agreed that Genovese should be fired.  Hughes responded that Dumont was scraping the bottom of the barrel by using Nixon and alleged that other national Republicans refused to support the GOP gubernatorial candidate in his attacks on Genovese.

Hughes beat Dumont by 363,572 votes, 57%-41%, and both houses of the Legislature went Democratic.  Genovese left Rutgers in 1967 and taught at other colleges as he became prominent as a historian.  In later years, Genovese acknowledged his shift to the right and now considers himself to be a conservative. He lives in Atlanta.

Hughes is the father of Mercer County Executive Brian Hughes and former gubernatorial candidate Michael Murphy.