Kenneth Barnard Keating looked like Hollywood’s stereotypical version of a United States senator; stocky, white-haired, with an air of dignity about him. During Keating’s lifetime, he was a successful candidate for public office frequently and was a Republican, albeit of the eastern variety in a state dominated during the 1940s and early 1950s by Thomas E. Dewey. Keating had a well-deserved reputation for milking every opportunity for publicity in representing a large state like New York.
Keating, like most of his contemporaries, had joined the armed forces during the Second World War, where he was promptly sent to India, where he headed the office that administered the all-important Lend-Lease program for much of the war’s Far Eastern Theatre. Rising to the rank of colonel, Keating completed his war service in Washington, D.C. While not facing combat, Ken Keating had been deeply involved in much of the Second World War’s diplomatic efforts, coordinating American and British cooperation, and he was decorated with the Legion of Merit and the Order of the British Empire.
After every war, returning veterans seek offices from the courthouse all the way up to the White House. 1946 was no exception, and Kenneth B. Keating sought election to what was then New York State’s Fortieth Congressional District, which included the city of Rochester and its surroundings. Keating faced incumbent congressman George F. Rogers, who had won the seat in 1944 when Franklin D. Roosevelt had been at the top of the Democratic ticket. The Republican National Committee, headed by Tennessean Carroll Reece, ran a shrewd campaign, capitalizing upon the discontent of voters who were tired of the deprivations brought about by the war effort with the slogan: “Had Enough?” They had, and Keating beat Congressman Rogers badly, winning by a margin of 29,531 votes and polling better than 60% of the ballots cast. It was an impressive political debut.
Rogers sought a rematch in 1948, and while the race was much closer in a presidential election year, Keating had managed to entrench himself with the people of the Fortieth Congressional District and won a narrow victory, topping Rogers by 4,800 votes and winning 51.37% of the ballots cast. Never again did Ken Keating face a close election inside his congressional district for the remainder of his career in the House of Representatives.
In 1958, Senator Irving Ives, a Republican who had been handpicked by Governor Thomas E. Dewey, the GOP “boss” in New York State, was ailing and announced he would not seek a third term. Keating was reluctant to give up his safe congressional seat but was finally importuned to join the GOP ticket headed by Nelson Rockefeller, who was making his first campaign for governor.
Keating’s opponent in the general election was Frank Hogan, the high-profile district attorney for New York City. From the beginning, Keating was considered the underdog in the race. 1958 was an abysmal year nationally for the Republican Party, which lost thirteen seats in the U.S. Senate. The country was deeply mired in recession and voters were unhappy. Yet New York proved to be the bright spot for Republicans as both Rockefeller and Keating won. Congressman Keating carried all but three counties and beat Hogan by 132,992 votes out of more than 5.5 million cast.
As he had inside his own congressional district, Keating set out to provide excellent constituent service to the people of New York. It was Keating who broke the news that he had been informed the Soviet Union had constructed sites in Cuba to be able to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles, which could easily target locations inside the United States. Keating was an outspoken supporter of Israel, which pleased the large Jewish population of New York. Senator Keating was also a vocal supporter of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Yet the Republican Party became divided when it nominated Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona for the presidency in 1964. A delegate to the Republican National Convention, Keating led the New York delegation in a walkout once Goldwater was nominated.
TIME magazine reported Keating’s declaration of his candidacy in 1964. Noting the senator was tanned, his hair “freshly trimmed, Keating said, “Well, ladies and gentlemen, we all know what we’re here for. And I want to announce at the outset that I will not be a candidate for the United States Senate. . .” Keating, delighted and relishing the moment, paused with perfect timing as reporters were momentarily stunned before the senator finished. “. . .from Massachusetts.” That brought a roar of laughter from the audience while Keating grinned. Following his joke, Senator Keating announced what had long been expected of him, that he was seeking a second term. Keating used his announcement to state he would not back Barry Goldwater for the presidency. Goldwater had defeated New York’s liberal Republican governor, Nelson Rockefeller, for the GOP presidential nomination in 1964. Goldwater was arguably the most conservative candidate ever nominated for the presidency of the United States by the Republican Party. “I cannot in good conscience conceal my convictions behind a façade of conformity disguised as unity,” Keating stated. “I seriously doubt that any voter in New York would be impressed by any lip service I might give Senator Goldwater.”
Hillary Clinton was not the first candidate to choose New York State as a political base. With his brother Ted sitting in the Senate seat that had once been held by the late John F. Kennedy, his native Massachusetts was no longer a political option for Robert F. Kennedy. Bobby Kennedy was frequently deemed to be the hardest of the brothers, long on grudge and short on gratitude. It had been Bobby Kennedy who could remember every delegate who had not backed his brother Jack at the beginning of the 1960 Democratic National Convention. The patriarch of the Kennedy clan and the financier of the political ambitions of his sons, Joseph P. Kennedy, decreed that Bobby would serve as JFK’s Attorney General. It was a lofty position and especially for one who had never practiced law. Bobby Kennedy had first come to notice through serving as the assistant counsel for Senator Joseph McCarthy’s infamous committee as Joe Kennedy helped to finance the Wisconsin demagogue. Kennedy then became the crime-fighting counsel for Senator John McClellan’s Labor Rackets Committee in 1957, which is where Bobby Kennedy’s blood feud with Teamsters’ Union president Jimmy Hoffa began.
Kennedy spent liberally in his drive to win the Democratic nomination. Only Mayor Robert Wagner of New York City seemed to loom in the path of Kennedy to the nomination. Son of the legendary New Deal U.S. senator of the same name, Wagner had been the senatorial nominee in 1956 but had lost to Jacob Javits, who remained in office. Wagner waived aside the fact that Robert F. Kennedy did not live in New York, saying “New York State has taken to its bosom millions from abroad and from other parts of the country, giving out state constant infusions of new blood and renewals of vitality. All Americans are at home in New York.” At the root of Wagner’s pronouncement was his belief there was no other Democrat who could beat Keating, even with Barry Goldwater at the top of the GOP ticket.
As Lyndon Johnson buried Barry Goldwater beneath an avalanche of votes, the landslide proved to be too much for Senator Kenneth Keating to overcome. The senator lost by just under 720,000 votes to Robert F. Kennedy. The senator retreated to the Virgin Islands for a two-week rest following his loss. Once recharged, Ken Keating hurried back to New York once out of office, where he resumed a hectic schedule of speaking before clubs and organizations. “I enjoy speaking tremendously,” Keating told a reporter. “Besides, I have lots of time on my hands now.”
Keating denied another run for elective office was in his immediate future, and the reporter skeptically noted, “If you listen to him talk, you think he means it.” Keating acknowledged he would continue to comment on issues “if asked.”
Sixty-four-years-old in 1965, Keating said he was considering which law firm to join after completing his service in the U.S. Senate. Six months later, the former senator was the Republican nominee for New York’s highest state court, the Court of Appeals. The election was held in the off-year, and New York GOP officials believed Keating had amply demonstrated his own personal popularity and ability to run ahead of his own ticket. The race for the State Court of Appeals was the only statewide office on the ballot in 1965, and whoever was elected judge would serve a 14-year term.
Keating’s name had been placed in nomination by his former colleague in the U.S. Senate, Jacob Javits, who said the former senator held “a rather special place in the hearts of New York voters.” “They are unhappy about what happened in 1964, and they will repair it in 1965,” Javits said. Governor Rockefeller immediately announced he would also campaign on behalf of Keating.
Throughout the 1965 campaign for New York’s Court of Appeals, the theme was stated over and over again that the voters of the Empire State recognized they had turned out of office a dedicated and zealous public servant and wished to rectify the wrong done to Ken Keating. The results seemed to bear that out as Kenneth Keating won in a landslide of his own, polling 3.1 million votes to his opponent’s 2 million. The former senator won more than 58% of the vote statewide and beat Democrat Owen McGivern by more than a million votes.
As was his habit, Keating, realizing all too well time stood still for no one, set out to make an impression as a judge of the State Court of Appeals and authored more than 100 opinions in a relatively short period of time. Although elected to a 14-year term on the bench, Keating resigned in 1969 following the election of Richard Nixon as president. Nixon appointed the gregarious Keating as America’s ambassador to India.
When Keating had lived in India during the Second World War, his domicile was an old warehouse which had been converted into a haphazard apartment building. “There were lizards all over the wall,” the former senator remembered. “It was quite primitive but very interesting.” As the ambassador of the United States to India, Keating occupied the Roosevelt House, a “mammoth modern” residence which had been designed by architect Edward Durrell, who had won a prize for his concept of the $1.4 million complex that served as the official abode. While not as glamorous perhaps as an assignment to London or Paris, Keating did preside over the largest U.S. mission at the time outside of Vietnam, which was the site of the ongoing war. The ambassador enjoyed a nice lifestyle, arising at 7:30 a.m. and swimming in the beautiful pool in “his spacious grassy backyard.” After his swim, the ambassador dressed and then breakfasted while reading one of six English-language newspapers published in Delhi. Ambassador Keating also perused a pile of clippings accumulated by his staff from other news publications.
Keating trudged through official communications from the State Department and greeted visitors, sometimes hurrying to Delhi’s airport to see off a visiting dignitary. Keating cheerfully acknowledged his assignment as “this complex, sensitive, interesting post.” “One of the high spots of my life” was Keating presenting his credentials as America’s ambassador to India to then-acting President Varahagiri Venkata on July 2, 1969. Wearing tails, Keating had arrived at the presidential palace flanked by the mounted lancers of the Indian president’s guards. Keating showed a reported five pages of mimeographed pages chock full of minute instructions in the conduct of diplomats, which choreographed every detail to the letter. “It was quite a show for a boy from the country,” Keating laughed.
Ambassador Keating walked through guards, who held up their drawn swords, after having climbed a steep marble staircase, and trumpeters actually sounded the Fanfare, as per the written instructions.
Keating was reassigned, serving as America’s ambassador to Israel from 1973 until 1975 when he suffered a heart attack and died on May 5 at age seventy-four.
© 2026 Ray Hill
