On Election Day, veteran conservative leader David Keene was regaling friends with the story of how the Nixon White House manipulated a split in liberal opinion to help elect James Buckley to the U.S. Senate from New York.

Left-wing support for liberal Republican Charles Goodell was shifting to Democrat Richard Ottinger when Vice President Spiro Agnew was trotted out to attack Goodell as the “Christine Jorgensen [the notorious sex-change figure of the time] of the Republican party.” Aghast at the Agnew ridicule of one of their own, Goodell’s liberal supporters rallied to him, and Buckley was able to win the three-way race with 39 percent of the vote.