Later, Vanocur covered the 1968 United States presidential election in which United States Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. Vanocur, who had interviewed Kennedy on June 4, 1968, shortly before the Democratic candidate was shot, reported on the incident from The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California, for the entire night. Kennedy died the following day at Good Samaritan Hospital. On the final night of the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, during a convention-wrapping Thursday night round-table discussion with his fellow NBC floor reporters in the vacated folding chairs on the convention hall floor, Vanocur suggested that the Republicans had "kissed off the black vote" in 1968, a comment which caused a media uproar in the ensuing week.