October Surprise
1964 Goldwater vs. Johnson
Walter Jenkins, a longtime top aide to President Lyndon Johnson, had a sex scandal reported weeks before the 1964 presidential election, when Jenkins was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct with another man in a public restroom in Washington, D.C.'s YMCA ("so notorious a gathering place of homosexuals that the District police had long since staked it out with peepholes for surveillance"[1]). Johnson was largely saved by sudden events that pushed voters away from Goldwater and toward the stability hoped from continuity of government in a string of October surprises over 3 consecutive days: