Miami, July 1972:
Later that night, at a party on the roof of the Doral, a McGovern staffer asked me who I thought should have been chosen for VP . . . and finally, after long brooding, I said I would have chosen Ron Dellums, the black congressman from Berkeley.
“Jesus Christ!” he said. “That would be suicide!”
I shrugged.
“Why Dellums?” he asked.
“Why not?” I said. “He offered it to Mayor Daley before he called Eagleton.”
“No!” he shouted. “Not Daley! That’s a lie!”
“I was in the room when he made the call,” I said. “Ask anybody who was there — Gary, Frank, Dutton — they weren’t happy about it, but they said he’d be good for the ticket.”
He stared at me. “What did Daley say?” he asked flatly.
I laughed. “Christ, you believed that, didn’t you?”
He had, for just an instant.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72
