American Experience

Pat Hillings on Nixon's political consultant

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Murray Chotiner was among the first of the political consultants which are now so popular, or unpopular, as the case may be. Recent books have come out attacking political consultants in campaigns and that sort of thing. In those days, most work was done by volunteers. But now political consultants are the dominant theme, along with the media in the campaigns. Murray Chotiner was one of the first. He was a lawyer, a brilliant lawyer, from Beverly Hills. But who was always interested in politics. He did not feel that he had the appeal to run for office himself, although he tried it once and lost. But he became an advisor to various city officials, and was quite successful.

So when the time came to find someone to help Richard Nixon run for the Senate, a lot of his friends in Los Angeles said to bring in Murray Chotiner. So Murray Chotiner was the paid manager of the campaign. But often the pay was pretty small and I still think he made his living primarily as a lawyer, at least at that point. And he was tough. When I say tough, I don't mean dirty or mean. But Murray was a very aggressive, hard driving fellow. And he tried to encourage Nixon to take more aggressive stands on issues and to work harder, at least work harder in attacking the opposition.

He was a mechanic, a nuts and bolts man. He found, for instance, that Nixon was reading letters in the car as he'd be driving, and signing the letters, letters going out to people thanking them for their help. And he took them away from him. He said the only thing he should be doing in that car is thinking of his next speech. And he did all kinds of things like that that were based on detail. But Murray Chotiner became a very effective fellow and was probably the smartest and most experienced political operative in the Nixon campaign at that time.

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