In the fall of 1959 , after the work on the Landrum – Griffin Act had wound up , Kennedy confided to Cox that he was running for president . In January 1960 he wrote Cox formally asking him to head up his efforts to " tap intellectual talent in the Cambridge area " and then " ride herd over twenty or thirty college professors " in their activities for him . Cox brought a number of eminent policy experts in a number of fields into contact with Kennedy . Although many were skeptical of his candidacy and some had been loyal to or inclined towards either Adlai Stevenson or Hubert Humphrey , Kennedy won them over at a meeting in Boston 's Harvard Club on January 24 . In the period leading up to the Democratic Convention in July Cox acted mainly as a " stimulator " to prod various academics to send memoranda to Kennedy or to find academics to supply Kennedy with policy positions on specific topics . While before the Convention Cox had not recruited extensively beyond the Boston area , he had at least one recruit from the University of Colorado and recruited from Stanford . as well . Even though the number was not large before the nomination , no other Democratic contender , not even Stevenson , had made an effort to recruit intellectual partisans
Democratic Convention
1960 Democratic National Convention
Archibald Cox