1960 United States presidential election

====Republican candidates====
<gallery perrow="6">
File:Richard_Nixon_official_portrait_as_Vice_President.tiff|Vice President '''[[Richard Nixon]]''' 
File:George Bender.jpg|Former [[US Senate|Senator]] '''[[George H. Bender]]''' from [[Ohio]]
File:James_M._Lloyd.jpg|State Senator '''[[James M. Lloyd]]''' from [[South Dakota]]
File:Aankomst Rockefeller op Schiphol tijdens doorreis naar Noorwegen, Rockefeller ti, Bestanddeelnr 910-6196 (cropped).jpg|Governor '''[[Nelson Rockefeller]]''' of [[New York (state)|New York]]
File:Cecil H. Underwood.jpg|Governor '''[[Cecil H. Underwood]]''' of [[West Virginia]]
</gallery>

With the ratification of the [[Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution|22nd Amendment]] in 1951, President Dwight D. Eisenhower could not run for the office of president again; he had been elected in 1952 and 1956.

In 1959, it looked as if Vice President [[Richard Nixon]] might face a serious challenge for the [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]] nomination from New York Governor [[Nelson Rockefeller]], the leader of the Republican moderate-to-liberal wing. However, Rockefeller announced that he would not be a candidate for president, after a national tour revealed that the great majority of Republicans favored Nixon.<ref>(White, pp. 91–92)</ref>

After Rockefeller's withdrawal, Nixon faced no significant opposition for the Republican nomination. At the [[1960 Republican National Convention]] in [[Chicago|Chicago, Illinois]], Nixon was the overwhelming choice of the delegates, with conservative Senator [[Barry Goldwater]] from Arizona receiving 10 votes from conservative delegates. In earning the nomination, Nixon became the first sitting vice president to be nominated for president since [[John C. Breckinridge]] [[1860 United States presidential election|exactly a century prior]]. Nixon then chose former Massachusetts Senator and United Nations Ambassador [[Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.]], as his vice presidential running mate. Nixon chose Lodge because his foreign-policy credentials fit into Nixon's strategy to campaign more on foreign policy than domestic policy, which he believed favored the Democrats. Nixon had previously sought Rockefeller as his running mate, but the governor had no ambitions to be vice president. However, he later served as [[Gerald Ford]]'s vice president from 1974 to 1977.<ref>(White, pp. 242–243)</ref>