In his autobiography, Me, the Mob, and the Music: One Helluva Ride With Tommy James and the Shondells, Tommy describes his active role in Hubert Humphrey’s presidential campaign.  He traveled all over the country, and even gave HHH a black beauty once to help him stay awake to write a speech.  Tommy writes:

We were there the night of the election at the Leamington Hotel in Minneapolis.  I can’t begin to tell you how electric the scene was.  It was so exciting because of how much was riding on this election, the assassinations months before, the convention, the war – we felt like we were at the center of things.  And we were.  The hotel was filled with celebrities like Gene Barry, Lee Majors.  All the TV networks were there.  We were actually on all three at once and we played a couple of sets waiting for the results to come in.  Nixon had begun months before with an outrageous lead in the polls, somewhere around 30 percent.  By election night, the candidates were neck and neck.  Humphrey credited us with the bump in the polls, and though I don’t think we played that crucial a part, we were tickled with the compliment.

David Hicks again:

Also in 1968 election night HHH had his election party at the hotel Leamington which had Tommy James and The Shondells playing at one side of the grand ballroom and Sonny and Cher playing at the same time on the other side of the ballroom. What a night. I was about 10 feet in front of the stage when HHH gave his [ever optimistic] speech at about 2:30 in the morning.

Tommy James said that the voting machines in Chicago had broken down.  “Later that morning, a flood of votes went Nixon’s way and he was projected the winner.  Everyone knew what had happened.  It was Mayor Daley’s revenge on the Democrats for his national humiliation at the [Democratic National] convention.”  Humphrey officially conceded the next day.