Last week, I wrote about an incident that happened prior to the 1972 Presidential Election in Newhall:
Way back in 1972, someone in the Newhall-Saugus area (there was no Santa Clarita back then), probably upset about the war in Vietnam, Watergate, or Tricky Dick himself, apparently put a Molotov Cocktail at the front door of the local Nixon/GOP HQ. A little hippie vigilantism right here in the 91321 (or perhaps Black Power, Women’s Libbers or Gay rights?) Or was MacGregor right? Had George McGovern’s secret political operatives planted a Molotov Cocktail on the doorstep of an office building in our sleepy little town?
The Molotov Cocktail-in-Newhall incident was used by the Nixon Administration to distract the press from the burgeoning Watergate controversy. I thought that was a pretty remarkable bit of local-cum-national history so I wanted to follow up.
In Newhall there is a crook!
Alas, there’s not much more I can add to this story after checking with some local history experts.
Leon Worden hadn’t heard of the incident but wondered why the perp didn’t throw the Molotov Cocktail into the window of the Newhall Nixon reelection HQ.
Perhaps the perp had second thoughts.
John Boston had heard of the incident but said there wasn’t much to add to the story, other than the fact that it was a lit Molotov Cocktail:
You essentially have the entire report. Someone did light a Molotov cocktail, left it in front of the Nixon HQ and ran off. It didn’t explode. Nixon carried the valley by a 3 to 1 margin that election. Sorry I can’t provide more info, but that’s all I have.
Boston told me the Nixon reelection HQ was on San Fernando Road in Old Town Newhall, probably “close to the Newhall Pharmacy.”
I’ve put a call into Dr. Alan Pollack, president of the excellent SCV Historical Society, but he hadn’t heard of the incident either. He’s going to check with Pat Saletore to see if she knows more, and I’ll update this as more information comes in.
So there you have it. No idea who did it, no idea if anyone was ever caught, no idea as to the motivation of the perpetrator.
It’s entirely possible, in other words, that the would-be firebomber still lives among us, blissfully unaware (or perhaps secretly relishing) his/her bit part in the greatest Presidential scandal in the history of the Republic.
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Also possible it was a tricky-Dick-inspired phony, intended to implicate his opponents. Might explain why it was lit but not thrown…
Definitely a wanna be anarchist, who thought the soaked fabric on a Molotov acts like a fuse. Anyone with any reasonable understanding of chemistry and physics knows the cocktail has to be thrown and the glass broken to release the accelerant, with the soakd wick then ingniting it.
This doesn’t bode well for historians and those interested in the local history.
Nixon wasn’t that long ago.
Maybe it underscores the absurdity of mentioning it as a counter-example to Nixon’s dirty tricks. So insignificant that longtime resident historians barely remember it, if at all.