Launching what he called the "New Frontier," Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy accepted the Democratic party's nomination for president at the National Convention in Los Angeles, July 15, 1960. Adlai Stevenson nominated Kennedy before a capacity crowd at the Los Angeles Colliseum.
In a surprise move, Kennedy chose Texas Senator Lyndon Johnson as his vice president and running mate. Earlier, Johnson himself waged a vigorous, but unsuccessful, bid for the presidential spot on the ticket. Kennedy-Johnson won in November by a narrow margin, defeating the Republican ticket of Nixon and Lodge by less than 120,000 popular votes. And in addition to being, at 43, the youngest man ever elected to the nation's highest political office, John F. Kennedy was the first Roman Catholic ever chosen president.