The Irish immigrants who settled on the Comstock Mining District in western Nevada (its first period of greatest prosperity was 1860-1880) were typically Republicans. These immigrants - usually experienced miners from the far southwest of Cork - arrived in a territory and then state (1864) of Nevada, which was fiercely pro-Republican/pro-Union. To be a Democrat there was to be aligned to pro-slavery Southerns who were viewed as traitors.

This set up an odd situation that fed into conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination. John McCone was an Irish immigrant who set up an iron foundry on the Comstock in the early 1860s. His son Alexander McCone moved the business to the Bay Area, where he established McCone Steel, the ancestor of one of the biggest producers on the West Coast. His son, John Alexander McCone (1902-1991), was a Republican like all his family going back to the 1860s. Despite this, JFK named him as CIA director - as Jackie Kennedy would later remark about the entire administration (not specifically about McCone), the "Murphyosa" was a powerful force with the Kennedys. I had the opportunity to speak with McCone twice during his retirement: he was researching his family's Comstock roots, and I had evidence that his grandfather was a member of the Fenians. When I asked him about his appointment, despite being a Republican, he confirmed that his Irish-Catholic connections went a long way.

After the assassination, a great deal of suspicion was cast toward McCone because of his party affiliation, but it had less to do with party allegiance than it did to the fact that Irish immigrants who went West were often Republicans while those who settled in Eastern cities were often "captured" by the Democratic party.