Bobby Richardson failed to win a S.C. congressional seat in 1976, even though when I was a kid he was my favorite Yankee.

Did I ever tell you I'm a life-long New York Yankees fan, and that round two of the American League playoffs start tonight?

OK, enough about me. But Joel Shapiro of Bound Brook, N.J., has this Yankee-related question:

Other than Jim "Bulldog" Bouton (1972 NJ Democratic primary), have any former Yankees been on any election ballots?

I had forgotten that Bouton, the former pitcher-turned-"traitor" (for his Ball Four expose of Yankee-dom), was a delegate for George McGovern at the 1972 Democratic convention.

But Bobby Richardson, the steady second-baseman (and my favorite player when I was a kid -- he wore #1), was the Republican nominee for Congress in South Carolina's 5th District in 1976. A born-again Christian, Richardson gave incumbent Democrat Ken Holland a tough battle but ultimately lost by about 4,000 votes (51-48%). It was the closest race ever for Holland, and Richardson was seen as a good candidate. But Jimmy Carter won South Carolina in a landslide that year, which helped Holland.

With Massachusetts expected to change the law and allow its governor to appoint an interim U.S. senator to succeed the late Edward Kennedy -- and with an appointment expected within days -- there came this question from Harvey Hudson of Eden Prairie, Minn.:

Reportedly if Massachusetts law is changed to provide for the appointment of an interim U.S. Senator pending a special election, Michael Dukakis, the former governor and 1988 Democratic presidential nominee, is likely to be named. Dukakis is now 75 years old. Has anyone that age ever become a freshman senator before?

Dukakis would be up there but not the record holder. That honor goes to Rebecca Felton (D), who was 87 years, nine months and 22 days old when she was appointed to the Senate in 1922.

Felton had spent decades in Georgia political and public life, beginning when her husband served in the House. On Sept. 26, 1922, Sen. Tom Watson (D) died. Gov. Thomas Hardwick quickly announced his own candidacy for the seat, but in an effort to help his cause with female voters -- and trying to bury the fact that he initially opposed ratification of the 19th Amendment -- he picked Felton to serve until the special election. Felton won acclaim for becoming the first woman to become senator, but Hardwick's symbolic move was seen as a "transparent political ploy." He lost the Democratic primary for the Senate seat to Walter George.

When President Harding called for a special session of Congress in November to consider the Ship Subsidy Bill -- my goodness, I can talk about the Ship Subsidy Bill forever -- it gave Felton an opportunity to appear on the floor. But the special session lasted just two days -- making Felton not only the oldest senator, and the first woman, but one with the shortest tenure. On that second day, she essentially ceded her job to Sen.-elect George.

This information was taken from an invaluable resource: Women In Congress 1917-2006, compiled by the House Clerk's office, and edited by Matthew Wasniewski.

Noemi Levine of Berkeley, Calif., loves the idea of a Senator Michael Dukakis:

Dukakis could be a great rest-of-Kennedy's-term senator if he took it as an opportunity to work and vote for everything as Kennedy would have, and I hope as Dukakis himself would, especially real "health reform," without having to think about getting re-elected or any obligations to Big Pharma / Oil / Whathaveyou. He could be quite the maverick (take that, McCain!) and make everyone forget the unfortunate incident with the tank. He could sweet talk (or maybe wrestle) Max Baucus and come out with a single-payer bill. He could do a lot in his time in the Senate. Having said that, I have no doubt that I'll still have to stay employed until I'm 65 and eligible for Medicare, no matter what happens. It'd be nice, though.

And apparently the editorial page of today's Boston Globe agrees, calling Dukakis "the best choice to fill the vacancy":

The ideal candidate for the interim job would have a high profile, significant policy expertise, and a record of political independence - but no further political ambitions. Dukakis is the most logical choice; indeed, he may be the only one who meets all the relevant criteria.

As Patrick faces a tough reelection battle, he may be reluctant to return the state's last Democratic governor to the political stage, for fear of inviting more comparisons between the state's current fiscal troubles and the economic crisis of the late 1980s and early '90s. But Patrick shouldn't let what happened a generation ago bother him now. And he should resist the temptation to choose a non-politician for what will be a four-month stint.

The interim senator will have to do more than join the health care debate. He or she will have to represent Massachusetts's interests in hundreds of funding requests and constituent services. Dukakis, as a former Democratic presidential nominee, knows how politics works and can get his phone calls returned. He is far more likely to deliver tangible returns for Massachusetts residents than a career academic or anyone else who has never held elected office.

A variety of other names have been bruited about in recent weeks, most of which represent a cleaner break from Massachusetts political history. But Dukakis remains what he's always been: a dedicated student of public policy with a record of serving this state honestly and effectively.

A question from Greg Jackson of Woodland Hills, Calif.:

You wrote that Edward Kennedy was the third-longest serving U.S. senator in history, after Robert Byrd (D-WV) and Strom Thurmond R/D-SC).

My copy of the Almanac of American Politics indicates that Daniel Inouye (D-HI) was also elected to the Senate in 1962, as was Ted Kennedy. If they were both sworn into office in January 1963, wouldn't they both would have the same number of years of service? In any case, if Sen. Inouye is the fourth longest serving senator, who is the fifth?

It is true that both Kennedy and Inouye were first elected to the Senate on Nov. 6, 1962. But Kennedy was running in a special election -- to fill the seat left vacant when Sen. John F. Kennedy, his brother, was elected president in 1960. (An interim appointee, Benjamin Smith II, was a placeholder, serving until Teddy was old enough to run.)

And because it was a special election, Kennedy was sworn in shortly after the election to fill the seat -- on Nov. 7th. That's why he's more senior than Inouye, who is fourth all time.

Number five is Carl Hayden, an Arizona Democrat. He served from 1927 until he retired in Jan. 1969 -- 41 years, 9 months, and 30 days.

(Number six? Mississippi Democrat John Stennis, who served 41 years, one month, and 29 days.)

A question from Sally Smith of Ashburn, Va.:

The U.S. Senate currently has four members who were appointed to the office: Michael Bennet (D-CO), Roland Burris (D-IL), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Ted Kaufman (D-DE).

This number will surely grow, as two senators, Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) and Mel Martinez (R-FL), have announced their decisions to resign, and two others, Robert Byrd (D-WV) and Ted Kennedy (D-MA), are gravely ill. In the modern (post-17th Amendment) Senate, what has been the largest number of appointees?

Before I answer, one note about Massachusetts: It doesn't allow the governor to appoint a Senate successor. When John Kerry (D) was running for president in 2004, and a Republican, Mitt Romney, was governor, the Democratic-controlled state legislature pushed through a bill that would take away the power of the governor to appoint a senator in the event of a vacancy and instead call for a special election. So if Sen. Kennedy were to leave his post, his seat would be filled by an election, not appointment.

Back to your question. In an editorial earlier this week, the Washington Post noted that, when you include new appointments in Florida and Texas, "26.6 percent of the nation's population will be represented by a senator no one voted for."

But six states is not a record. I forwarded your question to Donald Ritchie, the associate historian of the Senate -- and soon to become the Senate historian, with the retirement later this month after 34 years of Richard Baker. He says that the largest number of Senate appointees was during the 79th Congress (1945-46), when there were 13 appointed senators (out of 96 at the time.)

The 13, listed in order of their appointment (senators in bold were subsequently elected): Frank Briggs (D-MO), Thomas Hart (R-CT), Milton Young (R-ND), E.P. Carville (D-NV), William Knowland (R-CA), James Huffman (D-OH), Charles Gossett (D-ID), William Stanfill (R-KY), Thomas Burch (D-VA), George Swift (D-AL), Spessard Holland (D-FL), Ralph Flanders (R-VT), and William Umstead (D-NC).

Briggs, by the way, was appointed to succeed Vice President Harry Truman. He was then defeated in the next election. And that leads to another fun fact: the immediate defeat of senators who were appointed to succeed vice presidents. It also happened to two others since Briggs: William Blakley (D-TX), who was appointed to replace Lyndon Johnson in 1961; and Wendell Anderson (D-MN), appointed to replace Walter Mondale in 1976.

In light of yesterday's death of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, my trivia question in today's Junkie segment on Talk of the Nation was:

Who was the first member of the immediate Kennedy family -- that is, Eunice's siblings, and her siblings' children -- to be defeated by voters in a bid for office, either in a primary or a general election?

The answer: Bobby Kennedy, who lost the 1968 Oregon presidential primary to Eugene McCarthy.

But not everyone was sure.

Cody Cowdin of Hartland, Wis., wrote, "I'm pretty sure that the first of JFK's siblings to lose an election was, in fact, Joe Kennedy, Jr. I believe he ran for elected office (in Massachussets, methinks) sometime before World War II."

Nope, Joe Jr. never ran for office. Joe Sr.'s plan had always been to have his oldest (and favorite) son go into politics. But the 29-year old Joe Jr. was lost over Europe when his plane went down during World War II -- ironically, on this very day in 1944.

And Frank Cuoco wanted to know why I omitted John Kennedy and his unsuccessful bid for vice president in 1956.

JFK did make a bid for vice president at the '56 Democratic convention, after presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson threw the decision up to the delegates. Kennedy fell to Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee on the second ballot.

But I anticipated someone calling in with the Kennedy for VP campaign, and that's why I specifically said I was looking for a defeat handed to a Kennedy by voters (as opposed to delegates) in a primary or general election (not a convention ballot).

The first Kennedy to lose a general election, and one caller correctly had this, was Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who was defeated in a bid for Congress against Rep. Helen Bentley (R) in 1986.

Part of last week's trivia question in the Political Junkie segment on Talk of the Nation was thus: name the last Cabinet member who was elected president.

The answer was Herbert Hoover, the Secretary of Commerce who was elected president in 1928.

Robert Murff begged to differ. He's with the RAF at the U.S. Air Force base in Alconbury, England.

He wrote that we forgot George H.W. Bush, who was in the Cabinet as CIA director under Nixon and who was later elected president. But the CIA director didn't have Cabinet status until William Casey (under Reagan, in 1981), so that eliminates Bush as the correct answer.

We are not always perfect, of course. Jeff Rundell of Seattle points out that I once said that the late Admiral James Stockdale won the Congressional Medal of Honor, when it was actually just the Medal of Honor. Alan Layne of Lyons, Ga., noticed that TOTN host Neal Conan incorrectly said the late Sen. Richard Russell was from Louisiana, when of course he was from Georgia. But we do work hard to make sure we are correct, and if we make mistakes, we'll tell you that too.

New trivia question in tomorrow's show.

This question is from Michael Stubbs of Cincinnati, Ohio:

When was the last time, if ever, that a sitting president was not nominated by his party for a second term?

It only happened once to an elected president. That was Franklin Pierce, the 14th president, who was elected as a Democrat in 1852. His pro-Southern sentiments and his policy of failing to lead on the divisive issue of slavery badly hurt his standing with the voters. Especially damaging was his support for the pro-slavery Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which backfired on him as Kansas was overrun by pro-slavery forces, mostly from the slave state of Missouri. The events angered Northerners everywhere and helped lead to the creation of the Republican Party. When Democratic delegates gathered in Cincinnati for their convention in 1856, it was clear that they had had enough of Pierce. James Buchanan, who had been defeated by Pierce for the nomination four years earlier, won the nomination on the 17th ballot.

Four other presidents were denied the nomination of their party, but none of these were elected in their own right. They were:

John Tyler, Whig, 1844. Tyler became president in 1841 following the death of William Henry Harrison. Tyler, a conservative Southerner, was out of step with many in the Whig Party, which instead nominated Henry Clay for president.

Millard Fillmore, Whig, 1852. Fillmore also ascended to the presidency following the death of the incumbent. In this case it was Zachary Taylor, who died in 1850. Taylor's death left the Whigs in disarray, and the party convention chose Gen. Winfield Scott over Fillmore and Daniel Webster.

Andrew Johnson, Democrat, 1868. Johnson, a Southerner and a Democrat, was chosen to be part of a Republican unity ticket led by President Abraham Lincoln in 1864. Following Lincoln's assassination the following year, Johnson tried in vain to win the support of the late president's allies; in fact, he was impeached and nearly convicted by a GOP Congress. The Democratic nomination went to Horatio Seymour.

Chester Arthur, Republican, 1884. Arthur was picked for VP by James Garfield in 1880 in order to help the GOP carry New York. Following Garfield's assassination in 1881, Arthur alienated his erstwhile allies by attacking the patronage system that had helped his career until that point. Arthur lost the GOP nomination to James Blaine.

They may be pleased it's over in Minnesota, but that doesn't end questions about the prolongued Senate contest. Here's a question from Jess Davis of St. Simons Island, Ga.:

Do you know if Al Franken's case was the longest time between a Senate election and confirmation?

Well, it was the longest since 1975, when the New Hampshire Senate race to replace retiring Republican Sen. Norris Cotton went undecided for more than ten months past election day.

That 1974 Senate race featured a two-vote difference between Louis Wyman (R) and John Durkin (D). The GOP-controlled N.H. Ballot Commission said Wyman was the winner, but the Dem-controlled U.S. Senate refused to seat him. It remained a stalemate until August of 1975, when the Senate declared the seat vacant and called for a September special election, which Durkin won.

Here are some court- and Senate Judiciary-related questions from readers.

Harry Grinage of Virginia, Minn., writes:

When were the Supreme Court Confirmation hearings first televised?

1981, with Sandra Day O'Connor.

From Jon Cohen of Philadelphia:

Did Supreme Court nominees always testify in person before the Senate Judiciary Committee?

Nope. The first one was Harlan Fiske Stone, in 1925.

And from Brett Sonnenschein of Brooklyn, N.Y.:

I was surprised to find out that Al Franken is a member of the Judiciary Committee since he isn't a lawyer. This seems odd to me since so many senators are lawyers and being on the Judiciary Committee would seem to require a good amount of legal knowledge. Are any other members of the Judiciary Committee non-lawyers?

There was a note in Neil Lewis' article in the New York Times the other day about Franken being one of five senators of the 19-member Senate Judiciary Committee who are not lawyers. Actually, I count six (though I could be wrong). Including Franken, I have Tom Coburn (R-OK), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Charles Grassley (R-IA), Ted Kaufman (D-DE), and Herb Kohl (D-WI).

A question from David Ray of Annandale, Va.:

A Jewish candidate has won one of Minnesota's U.S. Senate seats six elections in a row -- Rudy Boschwitz (R) in 1978 and 1984, Paul Wellstone (D) in 1990 and 1996, Norm Coleman (R) in 2002, and Al Franken (D) in 2008. Is this the longest such streak of Jewish candidates winning one Senate seat since the direct election of senators?

Actually, two other states have had a six-in-a-row victory streak for Jewish candidates in one Senate seat.

New York started it with Herbert Lehman (D) in a special 1949 election. He was re-elected in 1950, and was succeeded in 1956 by Jacob Javits (R), who was re-elected in 1962, '68 and '74.

The other one is current, and it's held by one person. Michigan's Carl Levin (D) was first elected in 1978 and re-elected five times: in 1984, 1990, 1996, 2002 and 2008.

What's most interesting about Minnesota sharing the record is that in three of these races -- 1990 and '96 (Wellstone vs. Boschwitz) and 2008 (Franken vs. Coleman), Jewish candidates ran against each other. Not bad for a state whose total Jewish population is 46,685 out of 5,132,799 -- 0.9 percent. (The national average is 2.2 percent.)

In the wake of my post yesterday about political sex scandals, Andy Toomey of New York City writes:

In your recap you forgot two obvious ones, Clinton/Lewinsky and Gary Hart/Donna Rice.

It's impossible to forget these scandals, but yesterday's post only went back to 2001 and Gary Condit. In 1998, when my Political Junkie column ran on the Washington Post Web site, I compiled a Congressional Sex Scandals in History feature, designed to appear during the Clinton/Lewinsky investigation.

Unable to defeat FDR in his third-term bid, they changed the Constitution to get back at him, albeit posthumously. There were some who wanted a repeal of the 22nd Amendment to give Reagan a third term.

In a Monday post, I dealt with a question about the effect on the presidency of the Twenty-Second Amendment, which limited presidents to two terms. I wrote that, in my opinion, the only incumbent truly affected by the constitutional amendment was Bill Clinton.

That brought this question from Mary Peterson of Spokane, Wash.:

I think you are off in your analysis. Ronald Reagan was very popular and he would have won a third term in 1988 if he were eligible to run.

Reagan, the nation's 40th president, was indeed very popular, but his polling numbers tailed off in the latter years of his administration. His average job approval rating in the Gallup Poll for 1987 was 48 percent, and in 1988, his last year in office, it was 53 percent. Better, of course, than his three immediate predecessors -- Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon -- but not exceptional numbers.

Continue reading "Ronald Reagan And The 22nd Amendment" >

Matt Kuhns of Lakewood, Ohio, says the decision by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to discard term limits led to this question:

Would American politics be significantly different if the presidency had never been term-limited? Or would inevitable moods for change, plus the toll which the office seems to take, have generally held administrations to two terms anyway?

Term limits on the president have had less of an impact than you'd think. They didn't exist until the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1951. Taking a posthumous shot at FDR, who was elected four times, a Republican Congress pushed through the amendment that limited a president to two terms.

Continue reading "The Effects Of Term Limits: Which Presidents Paid The Price?" >

Or at least that's how it appeared to Gus Sperrazza of Washington, D.C.:

Wow, how do you think Jimmy Carter took Obama's comments about Ronald Reagan -- that Reagan "restored a sense of optimism ... that the American people sorely needed....during a difficult period"?

Wow is right.

Yesterday at the White House, President Obama, with former first lady Nancy Reagan at his side, announced the creation of a commission that will honor Ronald Reagan on Feb. 6, 2011, which would have been the late president's 100th birthday. Signing the bill, Obama said, "President Reagan helped as much as any president to restore a sense of optimism in our country. ... It was this optimism that the American people sorely needed during a difficult period -- a period of economic and global challenges that tested us in unprecedented ways."

Hmm. If Reagan brought in a "sense of optimism" during a "difficult period," does that mean the bad times were the fault of his predecessor, the Hon. James Earl Carter? That's a delicious question that I'm sure will be discussed.

Reminds me of what George Bush said at the 1988 Republican convention, that he would offer a "kinder and gentler" path. Kinder and gentler than whom? His predecessor, Ronald Reagan?

Love to hear what you think.

Here's a question from Carol Berman of Baltimore:

What can you tell me about a so-called "Jewish seat" on the Supreme Court?

It's not officially called that, of course. But after Associate Justice Benjamin Cardozo died in 1938, Felix Frankfurter succeeded him on the court. And when Frankfurter retired in 1962, President Kennedy named another Jew, Arthur Goldberg, to succeed him. That's when the term "Jewish seat" began to be widely used.

Continue reading "The 'Jewish Seat' On The Supreme Court" >

As it turned out, President Obama has nominated Sonia Sotomayor, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals, to fill a soon-to-be-vacant seat on the Supreme Court. But he could have picked someone with no legal experience at all.

And that leads to this question from Allen Ayers of Williamsburg, Va.:

The United States Constitution contains no prerequisites for appointment to the Supreme Court. How many U.S. Supreme Court justices have not been lawyers and what were their names?

You are certainly correct about qualifications (or lack of same) to be considered for the Supreme Court. But every single justice on the court, dating back to John Jay, has been a lawyer; each one either attended law school, took law classes, was admitted to the bar, or practiced law.

While you're pondering that headline, here's a question from Matthew Bond of Nashville, Tenn.:

At the White House Correspondents' Dinner, why did President Obama characterize John Boehner as being of a color "not found in nature"? What did I miss?

In Washington, people for the longest time have always wanted to know about (or made jokes about) Boehner's perpetual tan. (The Almanac of American Politics calls him "eternally tanned." Kim Clark, writing in The New Republic, said Boehner is "preternaturally tan." You get the point.)

Ron Elving and I, in our award-winning "It's All Politics" podcasts, have often joked about Boehner being a "person of color."

At the White House dinner earlier this month, Obama played along. In "suggesting" that Boehner, the House minority leader, is a "person of color" -- Ron, did we copyright that joke? -- the president followed by saying, "Although not a color that appears in the natural world."

For the record -- and I can't believe the conversation has turned serious -- there have been four genuine African-American Republicans in Congress since Reconstruction:

Rep. Oscar De Priest (IL) -- 1929-34
Sen. Ed Brooke (MA) -- 1967-78
Rep. Gary Franks (CT) -- 1991-96
Rep. J.C. Watts (OK) -- 1995-2002

Katie Trzaska of De Pere, Wis., wants to know:

When was the last time someone with no judicial experience was appointed to the Supreme Court?

The last one was William Rehnquist, who was appointed to the Court by President Nixon in 1971. Rehnquist had been a law clerk to Justice Robert Jackson (in addition to being an assistant U.S. attorney general) but had no judicial experience of his own.

Another Nixon appointee was Lewis Powell, who had been president of the American Bar Association and later president of the American College of Trial Lawyers. He too lacked judicial experience.

The fact that all nine justices of the current Supreme Court were formerly appeals court judges is more of a historical anomaly than anything else. Of the nine justices named by FDR, for example, five -- Stanley Reed, Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas, James Byrnes and Robert Jackson -- all lacked judicial experience.

A Junkie blog post last night following President Obama's nationally televised news conference brought this comment from Joy Trenton:

I'd love to know how many households were tuned in to Lie to Me vs. Big O. Let us know if you get the numbers.

According to The Nielsen Co., which measures these things, Lie to Me -- one of my favorite shows, I should add -- was viewed by 7,754,000 people on Wednesday, which was the sixth-best showing on TV that evening, an evening that Fox won.

As for the president's news conference, Nielsen has these numbers:

Last night's primetime press conference to mark Barack Obama's 100th day in office was viewed by 28.8 million people in the U.S., according to The Nielsen Company. The event pulled an 18.8 household rating on 10 TV networks.

Viewership for the presser was 29% less than the President's last press conference on March 24, which was seen on 11 networks. President Obama's first primetime press conference was watched by 49.5 million U.S. viewers on eight networks. ...

Networks airing last night's press conference from 8pm to 9pm ET included ABC, CBS, NBC, Univision, CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, CNBC, and MUN2. Telemundo aired the press conference on a tape delay at 11:35pm ET.

A philosophical question of sorts from Gary Apter of Boise, Idaho:

So, with Arlen Specter being a chameleon again, what does this say about party affiliation?

That's the question of the moment, and that's what we'll be focusing on today during the Political Junkie segment on NPR's Talk of the Nation.

It's not just what the Specter move means to politics, the Obama admnistration or the dwindling Republican Senate minority. There's a bigger question: How important is party allegiance anymore?

Continue reading "Today On TOTN: The Specter Switch " >

And you thought the answer was George Washington.

A fun question from Debbie Lloyd of Rochester, Minn.:

Just found out that one of my fellow Obama campaign supporters is pregnant -- due in October. With a little math, it appears that they were doing a little celebrating of their own on inauguration night. Any stats about past inauguration babies or projections for the number of 2009 October babies?

I have never seen or read anything like this before. Does anyone have anecdotes to share? Past inaugural stories? For example, in January of 1965, did anyone go "all the way with LBJ," so to speak?

This could make for an entertaining Political Junkie segment on Talk of the Nation. Or, just an embarrassing blog post. It's up to you, America.

Too much attention directed at the new White House dog? Maybe so, suggests Lea-Ann Germinder of Tenafly, N.J.:

Do you know of any other presidential cats other than Socks and India? I am doing research and it seems as if Abraham Lincoln also had cats. In fairness, I work with the CATalyst Council, www.catalystcouncil.org, which is all about raising the stature of cats. Bo is great news, but it seems another presidential cat would help the cause!

Continue reading "The Politics Of Fighting Like Cats And Dogs" >

Here's a question from Scott Porter of Poughkeepsie, N.Y.:

In all the coverage about [former] Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, I keep hearing that he was the longest serving Republican senator in history. What about Strom Thurmond? Stevens couldn't have been in the Senate longer than Thurmond?

Ted Stevens served in the Senate from Dec. 24, 1968, when he was appointed to fill the seat of the late Bob Bartlett (D), until he left office last Jan. 3, following his 2008 defeat at the hands of Democrat Mark Begich.

Strom Thurmond, as you correctly note, was in the Senate longer: He was first elected in 1954, as a write-in candidate (the only one in history), but he fulfilled a promise that he would resign his seat in 1956 and then run again, as a Democrat, which he was and which he did. He won that 1956 special election, and was re-elected in 1960.

It wasn't until Sept. 16, 1964 that Thurmond -- a fan of Barry Goldwater's (R) presidential campaign and opposed to President Lyndon Johnson (D) and his policies -- left the Democrats and switched to the GOP. Thurmond was re-elected as a Republican in 1966, 1972, 1978, 1984, 1990 and 1996. He retired from the Senate after 2002 and died on June 26, 2003.

Thurmond was the longest serving senator at his retirement, a record since broken by West Virginia's Robert Byrd (D). But he only served as a Republican from 1964 until 2002 -- 38 years and three-plus months. Stevens, a Republican his entire Senate career, served in that capacity a shade over 40 years ... and thus, more than any other Republican in Senate history.

Here's a question from Nancy Hoffman of Worcester, Mass.:

I thought of you today [March 14] when I read a profile about Dick Gregory in the New York Times. They had this wonderful replica of a dollar bill with Gregory's picture on it, a memento from his campaign for president in 1968. On the fake bill, it had one signature that read "Dick Gregory President," and another that read "Mark Lane Vice President." Who is/was Mark Lane?

Dick Gregory, the activist/comedian, made a half-serious bid for president in '68 as the candidate of the Freedom and Party -- not to be confused with the Peace and Freedom Party, which ran another black activist, Eldridge Cleaver, for president that year. On the ballot in eight states, Gregory received 47,133 votes.

When he was picked to run for VP, Mark Lane was (and is -- he's still alive) a white left-wing activist best known for his books dismissing the conclusion of the Warren Commission that a lone gunman assassinated President John Kennedy. Lane served one term in the New York state Legislature, where he worked to end the death penalty. He often demonstrated against segregation in the South and was arrested once, in 1961. He ran for Congress in 1962 from Manhattan but lost the Democratic primary. He also, at various times, represented Marguerita Oswald (the alleged assassin's mother) and the Peoples Temple of cult leader Jim Jones in Guyana, even in the wake of the 1978 murder of Rep. Leo Ryan (D-CA) and subsequent mass murder/suicide in Jonestown. Throughout the 1960s and '70s, he was a leading opponent of the war in Vietnam.

A drizzly, dreary day in Washington. Perfect time to freshen things up with some readers' e-mails.

Lynda Rothschild of Gaithersburg, Md., asks a question that we're all asking:

Please settle a bet for me. Who won the Minnesota Senate race: Al Franken or Norm Coleman? I say it was Franken.

I say you can't collect your money just yet. But the odds are looking good that ultimately it will be Franken.

Continue reading "We May Not Be Close To Resolving The Minnesota Senate Race" >

Here's a question to start off the week from David Kuhn of Bethesda, Md.:

Barack Obama's grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died two days before the election. Has there ever been a president with a living grandparent?

No. Had Ms. Dunham lived through the inauguration, Obama would have been the first.

And here's a similar trivia fact, relatively speaking: Only three men who served as president had both parents alive when they were in the White House: Ulysses Grant, John Kennedy and George W. Bush.

On the other side of the grandparent coin, John Tyler, the nation's 10th president, had the most grandchildren: 44.

Here's a question from Robert Spahle of Las Vegas, Nev.:

What is the difference between earmarks and pork and who controls the addition of these to otherwise sound legislation?

There is no one better to handle this than Peter Overby, NPR's money, power and influence correspondent. I pitched it to him, and he hit it out of the park:

This goes straight to the imprecision of political jargon. Earmarks and pork are overlapping but not synonymous terms. Roughly speaking, pork is about content (by definition wasteful, and usually in someone else's district), while earmarks are about process (nefarious, at least in current usage).

Pork is short for pork barrel. Wordsmith William Safire said it began before the Civil War, likening lawmakers plundering budget funds with slaves rushing a barrel of salt pork put out by the master. Just lovely. Earmark is less loaded. Loosely, it's a provision that's added to a tax or spending bill by one or a few lawmakers. But one champion of earmark reform, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), has defined it more narrowly, as a provision snuck into the bill without a committee hearing or other public discussion. Exhibit A here might be the earmark for a road project in Florida, which Rep. Don Young of Alaska added to a bill after passage.

As for controlling earmarks and pork in legislation: This is the lookout of committee chairs, subcommittee chairs and congressional leaders. For most of our history, the provisions were opaquely written -- applying to any corporation which filed its incorporation papers in New York City on Dec. 2, 1906, to make up one example. Then journalists and reformers started digging out the earmarks put in by the "Cardinals," the chairmen of the Appropriations committee and its subcommittees. Numbers skyrocketed in the late 1990s, when Republican leaders in the House began using earmarks much more liberally (yes), bartering with all GOP members for votes on legislation. Democrats point out that they have cut the number of earmarks significantly, and that's true, as far as it goes.

Members of Congress point out, and fairly, that the White House can earmark money too, in its budget requests. As Ken likes to say in another context, it's all politics.

A question from Joyce Newland of Opelika, Ala.:

In your Political Junkie segment Wednesday on Talk of the Nation, you mentioned a source list of all of the allocations on the budget bill President Obama signed today. Can you please give it again?

They can be found on the Web site of Taxpayers for Common Sense. It's all there, exhaustingly yet comprehensively.

A question from Gus Sperrazza of Washington, D.C.:

Is there any chance that Arlen Specter could lose his party's primary and run as an independent, a la Connecticut's Joe Lieberman in 2006?

Well, there certainly is a chance that Specter could lose his primary -- as we discussed on Monday -- but if he does, that's it for him. Pennsylvania law does not permit a candidate defeated in the primary to run as an independent (or on another party line) in the general election.

In the past half-century, of all the senators who were denied renomination in the primary, only two tried to keep their seat in November running as an independent or on a third party. The most recent, of course, was Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who lost the Democratic primary in 2006 to anti-war activist Ned Lamont but then mounted an independent effort in the fall to win a fourth term.

The other was Jacob Javits. The New York Republican, seeking a fifth term, was beaten in the 1980 Republican primary by Al D'Amato. Javits stayed in the race as the candidate of the Liberal Party; he had never served in the Senate majority and desperately wanted to have that chance. But all he did was split the liberal (small "l") vote with Democratic nominee Elizabeth Holtzman, and the divide on the left helped D'Amato win the first of his three terms.

Thomas Dodd, a two-term Connecticut Democrat, sought re-election in 1970. But he doesn't qualify for this list because not only did he not lose his party's nomination, he didn't even seek it. He was censured by the Senate in 1967 for redirecting campaign funds for personal use and found that he had no chance of getting Democrats to back him for a third term. So rather than seek renomination, he ran on a third-party line in the general election, unsuccessfully.

One of the problems that led Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) to withdraw from consideration as President Obama's commerce secretary was a perceived tug of war that was going on over who -- the Commerce Department or the White House -- would have control over the 2010 census, which will determine the next round of redrawing congressional districts.

The politicization of the census is not a new thing. A lot is at stake. Republicans have long been accused of favoring an undercount, which would presumably help their cause; Democrats are thought to benefit from an overcount. Neither party is altruistic in its approach. And both sides are suspicious of the other.

But if we can take politics out of the equation for a second (wait, did I really say that?), here's a less loaded question from Christopher Stearns of Olympia, Wash.:

What do you foresee as the potential for the decennial redistricting to produce by 2012 elections in the makeup of the House?

One thing we pretty much know now is what the population is going to look like on April 1, 2010, the date when those numbers will be used to apportion the House. What we don't know is what will happen in the 2010 gubernatorial and legislative elections, and that's where the politics comes in. But here's an early guess -- and it's no more than that -- of which states will gain/lose in the next round of redistricting and the number of seats we are talking about:

GAIN

Texas (+4) -- currently has 32
Arizona (+2) -- currently has 8
Florida (+1) -- currently has 25
Georgia (+1) -- currently has 13
Nevada (+1) -- currently has 3
Oregon (+1) -- currently has 5
South Carolina (+1) -- currently has 6
Utah (+1) -- currently has 3; irrespective of whether the state is part of a "deal" by which D.C. gets a voting member of the House

LOSS

Ohio (-2) -- currently has 18; one possibility is the elimination of Tim Ryan's (D) seat if he leaves to run for higher office
Illinois (-1) -- currently has 19
Iowa (-1) -- currently has 5
Louisiana (-1) -- currently has 7
Massachusetts (-1) -- currently has 10
Michigan (-1) -- currently has 15
Minnesota (-1) -- currently has 8
Missouri (-1) -- currently has 9
New Jersey (-1) -- currently has 13
New York (-1) -- currently has 29; if the Republicans win the open Kirsten Gillibrand seat in the March 31 special election, you can bet this will be the seat the Democratic state Legislature decides to eliminate
Pennsylvania (-1) -- currently has 19

Michael Louisell of Kalamazoo, Mich., asks a question that we'd all like to know the answer to:

When is the Minnesota Senate race likely to be decided?

Don't hold me to this, but I'm guessing sometime before 2010. A more serious answer is that, in the wake of some judicial decisions that went against Norm Coleman, the former Republican senator whose term expired Jan. 3, it may be just a matter of time before Al Franken, the Democratic candidate, joins Amy Klobuchar (D) as one of Minnesota's two senators. But every time we think we're close to a resolution, something else happens.

(For example: A Political Junkie post on Feb. 5 was titled "New Life for Norm Coleman in Minnesota?")

Earlier this week, a three-judge panel rejected Coleman's request to reconsider its earlier decision eliminating 13 of the Republican's 19 categories of previously rejected absentee ballots he felt merited a second look by the judges. But the panel still has to review about 3,300 to 3,500 ballots, more than enough to eat away at Franken's 225-vote lead. There's no telling, however, which candidate would win those votes, should they ultimately be counted.

Some speculate that the Coleman legal team (led by noted GOP lawyer Ben Ginsberg) is attempting to continue the process until everyone decides the only way out is for a do-over -- a new election. That's exactly what happened more than three decades ago in a New Hampshire Senate race. I still can't see that happening, but don't discount the possibility of Coleman taking his challenge all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

If there was any question of what's at stake here, it was erased during last Friday night's Senate vote on the economic stimulus package. Democrats kept the vote open for five hours, waiting for Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) to return from his mother's funeral to cast the deciding vote in favor of the measure. Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), gravely ill with a brain tumor, could not make the vote. Every seat is extremely crucial, and both sides know it.

(And, on a peripheral matter, you can forget about the Senate mustering a two-thirds vote to expel Illinois' Roland Burris. First of all, no senator has been expelled since the Civil War. Second of all, proving he committed perjury is dicey at best. And finally, the Senate is not going to kick out its only African-American member.)

It's been over 3 1/2 months since the election. Before anyone wonders if this is the longest drawn-out Senate race in history, that previously mentioned 1974 New Hampshire race -- which came up in one of our posts yesterday -- went far longer. It wasn't until July 30, 1975 -- more than eight months after the election -- that the Senate voted to declare the seat vacant and call for a new election.

So, if you're looking for history, you've got a while yet. Let's see how long Minnesota voters stay patient.

Ignore the header to this blog post.

NPR White House correspondent Don Gonyea and I just finished our Web chat, which appears every Tuesday at noon and is hosted by NPR's David Gura, and the Dow is down 265 points. Coincidence? Hardly.

This week's chat included conversations about the stimulus package, partisanship in Washington, the latest Roland Burris embarrassment and the Judd Gregg decision to withdraw from Cabinet consideration.

You can listen to it here.

And, in the wacky world of homonyns, you can hear last week's chat here.

The Obama-Biden administration has been in power for nine days already, so you'd figure it's time to start thinking about 2012. Well, maybe not for everyone, but certainly for Noemi Levine of Berkeley, Calif., who asks this question:

Do you think Vice President Joe Biden will retire after his first term, giving another Democrat a foot in the door to run for president in 2016? Otherwise the Democrats will be in the same predicament the Republicans were in this go-round, and are sure to fall on their faces when Obama leaves after two terms to take up his seat in the Senate again.

Biden will be 70 years old in 2012, hardly an age where an incumbent vice president might think of retiring. As for the Democrats being without an heir apparent in '16 -- as what befell the Republicans last year -- that's less of a concern than what the state of the union will be by then. With or without a president-in-waiting, Democrats will have no shortage of candidates ready to succeed Obama, should he be re-elected in 2012. And, in case you are wondering, Hillary Clinton will be only 69 in 2016.

And speaking of Biden's age, there's this question from Ron Merlo of Glendale, Calif.:

Except for Alben Barkley, who was 71 on Inauguration Day, how would Biden's age compare with other vice presidents?

Only five were older. Barkley, as you correctly note, was 71. Charles Curtis, VP under Herbert Hoover, was 69 years old when he took office in 1929. Elbridge Gerry, the fifth vice president who served under James Madison, was 68 (and died in office a year and a half later). William King (VP under Franklin Pierce) was 66 years and 11 months old when he became vice president; he died of tuberculosis 45 days after he was sworn in. Nelson Rockefeller, appointed vice president by Gerald Ford, was 66 years and five months. Biden was 66 years and two months old at his swearing in last week.

Staying on the Biden theme, Jean Seibel of Bellevue, Neb., wants to know why his oath -- that of the vice president -- was different from Obama's.

I don't know the answer to that, though while the 35-word oath for the president is in the Constitution, there is no mention of a VP oath. Biden's oath was the same one he took as senator, so I suspect the reason for that is, as president of the Senate, the vice president was seen as more like a senator than as the chief executive. Anyone have a more coherent answer?

And then there was this from Mark Curley of New York:

Joe Biden and Dick Cheney both come from states with three electoral votes. Has it ever happened that two successive vice presidents came from such electorally insignificant states? And, since Sarah Palin also comes from a state with only three electoral votes, I wonder if the two major parties have ever nominated two VP candidates from such small states.

Never before have there been back-to-back vice presidents from states with so few (three!) electoral votes. And never before has an election featured VP candidates from such electorally deficient states. In the old days, of course, many running mates were chosen because of their hoped-for ability to bring along their vote-rich home states.

And yes, I made a mistake in yesterday's posting about the four new appointed senators in Delaware, Colorado, Illinois and New York. I wrote that in Delaware, Ted Kaufman was chosen to fill "the last two years of the term vacated" by Biden. Not so, correctly notes Des O'Dwyer from Roscommon, Ireland:

In fact, Joe Biden got re-elected to a full six-year term last year, but Kaufman can only do two years before a special election is called. He's not filling the last two years; he's filling the first two years of Biden's latest term!

Yesterday's trivia question during the Political Junkie segment on NPR's Talk of the Nation was, with the Super Bowl coming up on Sunday, what former player on a Super Bowl team later ran for Congress. The answer was Phil McConkey of the New York Giants, who sought a New Jersey congressional seat in 1990 but was defeated in the Republican primary by Dick Zimmer.

Evan Balkan of Lutherville, Md., thinks we're mistaken:

Today's quiz answer was incorrect (I'm fairly certain anyway). Peter Boulware, a linebacker on the Baltimore Ravens' 2001 winning Super Bowl squad, ran for and was subsequently appointed to a House seat in Florida this past November.

That is not correct. Boulware ran for a seat in the Florida House of Representatives, not Congress. Last year, he was the GOP nominee for the state House seat. After he lost -- narrowly -- he was appointed to the state Board of Education by Gov. Charlie Crist.

But Mason Macklem of Halifax, Nova Scotia (one of those pesky Canadian provinces) correctly takes issue with my assertion that J.C. Watts, the former Oklahoma GOP congressman, never played pro football:

Watts had a short (1981-1986) but moderately successful professional career in the Canadian Football League, playing for the Ottawa Rough Riders, and was even the MVP of the Grey Cup (the equivalent of the Super Bowl in the CFL) in his rookie season.

Yesterday's Senate vote to confirm Timothy Geithner as Treasury secretary is one more step toward President Obama's completing his Cabinet. There's still the matter of Attorney General-designate Eric Holder, whose confirmation vote will take place tomorrow in the Senate Judiciary Committee, before it reaches the full Senate. But it's still not 100 percent. Hence this question from Nate Beck of Akron, Ohio:

What's happening with the commerce secretary nomination? Since Bill Richardson withdrew, I've heard diddlysquat about who might replace him.

To recap, Richardson, the governor of New Mexico, withdrew his name from consideration on Jan. 4 amid an ongoing federal investigation into pay-to-play activities involving the state government. No one has been named to fill the post, though some were suggesting William Daley. The brother of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, Bill Daley was commerce secretary during the Clinton administration.

What I'm hearing now is that it's going to be John Thompson, the outgoing CEO of Symantec, the Silicon Valley network security firm that makes the Norton anti-virus program, among other things. Thompson is 59, African-American and a fundraiser for Democratic causes; he gave money to the Obama campaign as well as the inauguration. He has been enthusiastically endorsed for the post by California Sen. Barbara Boxer. I'm guessing it's Thompson.

Back to the Geithner vote. It was 60-34, with most Democrats voting yes and most Republicans voting no. But three Dems -- Tom Harkin of Iowa, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Robert Byrd of West Virginia -- voted against Geithner, as did independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont. We can talk about the pressing economic needs until we're blue in the face, and we probably will. But Geithner's failure to pay his taxes on time and his constant acknowledging of "mistakes" during his confirmation hearings were certainly an inauspicious beginning for someone with a very important position.

Blagojevich is not going to leave voluntarily. Despite two new campaign buttons.

Now that the circus in New York seems to have been resolved, the continuing circus in Illinois -- the impeachment trial of Gov. Rod Blagojevich -- is expected to move on to a new phase on Monday.

And that leads to this question from James McKinstra of Freeport, Ill.:

Do you know if the general public will be allowed to attend and observe the Blago impeachment trial?

I didn't know the answer, so I turned to NPR's David Schaper, who has been following the fun.

I was just looking over the rules as I prepare to cover the trial, so here is the rule regarding the openness of the trial:

Rule 23. Sessions; open or closed.

(a) At all times while the Senate is sitting upon the trial of an impeachment, the doors of the Senate and the Senate galleries shall be kept open, unless the Senate directs the doors to be closed while deliberating upon its decisions. A motion to close the doors may be made by any member of the Senate, and the motion shall be deemed granted only if sustained by two-thirds of those elected to the Senate by record vote.

(b) By granting a motion under subsection (a), the Senate finds that it is in the public interest for the Senate, as provided in Section 5(c) of Article IV of the Constitution, to conduct deliberations and debate on impeachment matters in closed session.

I would expect most if not all of the impeachment trial, including deliberations, will be open to the public.

There is a gallery for the general public to view all the action on the floor of the Illinois Senate, but there may be space limitations. I believe the trial will be broadcast online, and can be viewed through the Illinois General Assembly's web site: www.ilga.gov

A Delay? Samuel Adam, Blagojevich's new attorney, is considering a lawsuit to halt the trial, calling the Senate rules "completely unfair." And the governor himself said he had no intention of mounting a defense if the rules don't change. In light of the overwhelming vote in the state House to impeach Blago, it is unlikely that the Senate vote to convict will be much different. Pat Quinn is expected to be the next governor of Illinois sometime in February.

That Explains It. In an interview this morning on WLS radio, Blagojevich said the reason Illinois lawmakers are anxious to get rid of him is so they can go ahead and raise taxes once he's gone.

Rod And Reel. He's not going to go willingly, but nonetheless a group called "Rod Must Resign" has been holding demonstrations in Chicago in the past couple of weeks calling for the gov to leave. Spokesman Phil Molfese said, "We believe that the governor can no longer lead our state, because he has lost the trust of the people he was elected to represent. His effectiveness as an elected official has been compromised beyond all repair." Scott Cohen, a local businessman who founded the group, said, ""Blagojevich has been asked by President Obama and Senator Durbin. Now, he's being asked by the voters, the people who put him in office, to resign." The group has the buttons to show for it. And that's good enough for us.

Barack Obama is the 44th president of the United States.

Or is he?

Ponder this question from Marc Spear of Denver:

The oath of office is the only direct quote in the U.S. Constitution. After Chief Justice John Roberts' mangling of the oath, Barack Obama "faithfully" misquoted, and that leads me to ask: Do we have a constitutional problem? Obama has not taken the oath as written in the Constitution, since the word "faithfully" was ultimately in the wrong place.

"Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:

'I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.'"

This oath has, technically, not been taken.

Other readers had the same question. Rick Lohmeyer of Broomfield, Colo., asks, "Would it be necessary for President Obama to repeat the oath of office in private with the correct words?" Jennifer Loustau of West Grove, Pa., wondered the same thing.

Well, guys, you're not alone. Jonathan Turley, the famed legal scholar, says we may have a problem. And he will talk about it today during the Political Junkie segment on NPR's Talk of the Nation.

Remember, the Junkie segment airs every Wednesday at 2 p.m. Eastern time on TOTN, NPR's call-in program, where you can often, but not always, find interesting conversation, useless trivia questions and sparkling jokes.

And remember, if your local NPR station doesn't carry TOTN, you can hear the program on the Web or on HD Radio. And if you are a subscriber to XM/Sirius radio, you can find the show there as well (siriusly).

You can listen to last week's show -- Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour was the special guest -- here.

Wanna be on the Junkie mailing list? Sign up at politicaljunkie@npr.org.

For those who get their news from this blog, Barack Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States last November. But in the process, he lost the state of Missouri -- which has voted with the winner every time in the past century except for 1956, when it preferred Adlai Stevenson (D) over President Dwight Eisenhower (R).

And that leads to this question from Charles Vigneron of Walla Walla, Wash.:

Missouri has long been the bellwether state for presidential voting, but no longer. What state takes its place?

It's Nevada. Going back to 1912, it has voted for the winner in 24 of the past 25 elections -- missing only 1976, when it voted for President Gerald Ford (R) over Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter (D).

New Mexico may also try to make a claim for the title. Like Nevada, it also missed on 1976. True, it voted for Al Gore over George W. Bush in 2000. In that case, it didn't get the winner, but it did get the popular vote winner.

With the 111th Congress all settled in, Karen Schafer of Rio Rancho, N.M., has this question:

What's the best way to find out the office address of a newly elected U.S. senator or representative?

You can find out everything you want about members of the Senate, including their office address, by going to the official Senate Web site. The same information for House members can be found at the House Clerk's Web site.

You can also always send a note to any senator c/o Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510, and to any representative at House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515.

And how can they be holding Cabinet confirmation hearings if Barack Obama is not yet the president? That's what Nathan Irwin of Peoria, Ill., wants to know:

We all know that Cabinet members are nominated by the president, subject to Senate confirmation. But how can these nominations be taken up this early? Obama, of course, takes office on Jan. 20, at which point he has the authority to send his nominations to the Senate, but before that date, he's not the president.

Because Obama is, as you correctly say, not yet the president, he has not officially "nominated" anyone to his Cabinet. But he has named them. And the idea is for the Cabinet to be in place the moment Obama takes office. What happens is the respective Senate committees investigate the choices, hold the confirmation hearings and then vote on them -- that's what's going on now. Once Obama is sworn in on Jan. 20, he then officially nominates the members of his Cabinet, and the full Senate votes on them.

Here's a question from Debbie Warren of Milwaukee, Wis:.

What's the date of Obama's State of the Union address this year?

The short answer is that there is none. A newly elected president doesn't have an SOTU address, but he does give a speech to both houses of Congress, usually to discuss his goals. George W. Bush, first sworn in on Jan. 20, 2001, gave his speech to Congress on Feb. 27. There is no date scheduled as of yet for Obama's congressional speech.

Finally, a question all of America -- including Jeff Roberts of Ankeny, Iowa -- is asking:

What relation, if any, is Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper to Iowa's former Sen. Bourke Hickenlooper (1945-68)?

Actually, Bruce Gerhardt of Omaha, Neb., asked the same thing a while back. It came up when Mayor Hickenlooper was high on the list of prospective Senate replacements for Ken Salazar (D-CO) once he is confirmed as secretary of interior. So it may indeed be a question that's sweeping the nation. Just like Baby Fish Mouth.

Anyway, according to Sabrina D'Agosta of the mayor's office, there was a relationship: They were cousins.

We received this question from James McKinstra of Freeport, Ill.:

Will Joe Biden be the first Roman Catholic vice president?

The answer is yes, and it's interesting that, in this year of history-making, this hasn't been widely pointed out.

Five other vice presidential candidates were Catholic: William Miller (R-1964), Ed Muskie (D-1968), Thomas Eagleton (D-1972, briefly), Sargent Shriver (D-1972) and Geraldine Ferraro (D-1984).

Have a question? Write us at politicaljunkie@npr.org. Please include your city and state.

We always say that every vote counts, and that's certainly true in Minnesota this year (witness the still unresolved Senate race) and some of the House elections that were decided by a whisker.

But when it comes to filling Hillary Clinton's soon-to-be-vacated Senate seat, only one vote counts: that of David Paterson. He's the Democratic governor of New York who ascended to the job in March after the resignation of Eliot Spitzer, who was embroiled in a prostitution scandal.

 

Paterson is the state's first African-American governor and, with Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, it is the first time in history that there is more than one at the same time. Which leads to a bunch of questions, starting with Greg Jackson of Burbank, Calif. (A similar question came from Brian Engel of Yokohama, Japan):

The other night on Jeopardy! the answer to a question was "David Paterson, governor of New York." Host Alex Trebek said that Gov. Paterson was the fourth African-American governor. I can think of only two others -- Deval Patrick in Massachusetts and Douglas Wilder in Virginia. Am I forgetting someone or is Alex wrong?

First things first: Greg, you should know that Alex Trebek is never wrong.

Paterson is indeed the fourth black governor. You correctly identified the second and third; Virginia's Doug Wilder (D) was elected to one term in 1989, and Deval Patrick (D) won in Massachusetts in 2006.

The first was P.B.S. Pinchback, who served as acting governor of Louisiana for five weeks, from Dec. 9, 1872, to Jan. 13, 1873. Pinchback, a Republican, was the state's lieutenant governor but moved up to fill the remainder of the term of white Republican Gov. Henry Clay Warmoth, who was suspended from office on corruption charges and was going through impeachment hearings. Pinchback had previously been elected to the Louisiana state Senate and was elevated to Senate president pro tempore. He succeeded to the position of lieutenant governor upon the death of incumbent Oscar Dunn, another African-American. It was this position that enabled Pinchback to become the first black governor.

Wilder was the first one to be elected, followed by Patrick. Paterson is expected to seek election in 2010.

A question from Barbara Hill of New York:

Is David Paterson the first New York lieutenant governor to become governor of the state? I can't think of any others.

Actually, there have been several, the most recent being Mario Cuomo (D). He was LG under Hugh Carey for Carey's second term (1979-82), succeeding Carey when the gov retired in '82, and going on to win two more terms before his defeat in 1994. Back in 1932, the year Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt (D) was elected president, Lt. Gov. Herbert Lehman ran and won the governorship for the first of his four two-year terms.

(When Lehman resigned his office in December of 1942, Lt. Gov. Charles Poletti became governor, but just for a month.)

And, for the record, on my Facebook page, where I'm asked for my religious views, I wrote, "I feel that New York's Malcolm Wilson was one of the best lieutenant governors in history." I'm not exactly sure why I wrote that, but that's for another day.

A question from Steve Martin of Vernon Hills, Ill.:

Is David Paterson related to the Paterson who ran for lieutenant governor in 1970 on the Democratic ticket with Arthur Goldberg?

Yes. David Paterson's father is Basil Paterson, a longtime political power in Harlem, who was Goldberg's running mate in 1970. The Goldberg-Paterson team lost to the Republican incumbent ticket of Nelson Rockefeller and the aforementioned Malcolm Wilson.

Here's a non-Paterson question from Kenneth Chester of Washington, D.C.:

I heard someone say that Richard Viguerie, the conservative who died on Thursday, was "responsible" for the defeat of Texas Sen. John Tower for secretary of defense. What exactly did Viguerie do?

It was Paul Weyrich, not Richard Viguerie (another conservative activist), who died. And it was Weyrich, not Viguerie, who helped torpedo Tower's nomination.

On Jan. 31, 1989, testifying before a Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing, Weyrich questioned Tower's moral character and fitness for the job, citing widely whispered reports of the former senator's drinking and womanizing. The committee ultimately voted against the nomination, but the Bush administration decided to fight for Tower before the entire Senate. The Democratic-controlled Senate, using Weyrich as cover for its own dislike of Tower, rejected the nomination in a 53-47 vote.

As for Richard Viguerie, and the above-pictured button, he sought the GOP nomination for lieutenant governor of Virginia in 1985 but lost at the state convention to Marshall Coleman. He also sought the presidential nomination of the American Independent Party in 1976, but the party instead chose former Georgia Gov. Lester Maddox as its nominee.

Weyrich never ran for public office.

Got a question? Send to politicaljunkie@npr.org. Please include your name and city/state.

This email came in just after today's Political Junkie segment on NPR's Talk of the Nation. It's from Pete Marshall of Charlottesville, Va.:

It was stated on today's show that the only race yet undecided was the one between Norm Coleman and Al Franken in Minnesota. I may be wrong but I believe the House race between Virgil Goode (R) and Tom Perriello (D) in Virginia's 5th District is not official yet. Periello was declared the winner but the margin was close enough for Goode to demand a recount, which started yesterday.

Pete, your note was correct, but not for long. The race became official this afternoon. Goode, a six-term Republican, picked up 18 votes in the recount, but ultimately it wasn't enough; he lost to Democrat Tom Perriello by 727 votes. The result was certified today by a three-judge panel and Goode conceded defeat.

With all the speculation that Barack Obama is about to name Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado his choice for secretary of the interior, an interesting question from Julia Moss of Washington, D.C.:

If Sen. Salazar is picked, would Mark Udall -- who was just elected in November -- become Colorado's senior senator?

It depends on when Gov. Bill Ritter (D) makes the appointment to replace Salazar. Udall, who won the seat vacated by retiring Republican Wayne Allard, is scheduled to be sworn in on Jan. 6. If Salazar is tapped for the Cabinet, resigns in December and Ritter names a replacement before the 6th, this new senator would be the senior senator. If the resignation/replacement occurs after that, Udall would be Colorado's senior senator.

Got a question? Send to politicaljunkie@npr.org. Please include your name and city/state.

In light of today's announcement by President-elect Barack Obama that Dr. Steven Chu is his choice for secretary of energy, we got this question from Mark Bernkopf of Arlington, Va.:

When was the last time that a Nobel laureate (other than a Nobel Peace Prize laureate) sat in the Cabinet? Has this even been the case?

Chu, a professor of physics and molecular and cellular biology at the University of California, Berkeley, was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1997. Chu may indeed be the first Nobel laureate to enter the Cabinet. Henry Kissinger received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973 for his efforts to end the war in Vietnam, but he was already in the Cabinet (secretary of state) at the time.

Got a question? Send to politicaljunkie@npr.org. Please include your name and city/state.

Today at 11am ET, Political Junkie will feature a live Web chat with national correspondent Liz Halloran and me. The chat will be hosted by NPR.org Editorial Director Dick Meyer. We'll discuss the week's political events, from the Rod Blagojevich scandal to last night's collapse of the auto industry bailout in the Senate. If you'd like to propose any questions to us ahead of the chat, please post a comment below.

On a day filled with eye-rolling and hand-wringing in the aftermath of the arrest of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich on corruption charges, one quote of his from Nov. 5 comes to mind. When asked if he would consider appointing himself to fill the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama, Blagojevich said he was "not interested."

Whew. That would have been something.

As it is, the governor still, after all this, retains the power to name Obama's successor. That's why the state Legislature is quickly talking about impeachment, and why Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) is proposing that Illinois voters decide who it should be in a special election. And who in their right mind would accept an appointment from Blagojevich in the first place?

But back to the original, now wacko thought ... that Blagojevich might have appointed himself. That was the subject of a Junkie question last month submitted by Rob Rosenberg, a student at McDaniel College in Westminster, Md. Shortly after the election, when we knew for sure that Obama's Senate seat would become vacant, Rob asked for examples of self-appointments in the past. The history is not promising.

Under arrest or not, governors who finagled getting themselves appointed to the Senate don't fare very well when they have to face the voters. With one exception, every governor who tried to win favor with the electorate has been defeated.

(For the record, these governors do not exactly appoint themselves; they resign as governor and have their successors name them to the Senate.)

The most recent example occurred in Minnesota, in 1977. After Sen. Walter Mondale (D) ascended to the vice presidency, Wendell Anderson (D) resigned as governor and had his successor, Lt. Gov. Rudy Perpich (D), appoint him to the Senate. At their first opportunity, in 1978, voters let Anderson know what they thought of his maneuver.

By the way, they're still calling that 1978 election the "Minnesota Massacre." Republican Rudy Boschwitz trounced Sen. Anderson in November. Gov. Perpich lost his bid for a full term to GOP Congressman Al Quie. And in the race for the other Senate seat — a special election necessitated by the death of Hubert Humphrey — the Democrats carved each other up in the primary and the seat went to Republican Dave Durenberger.

Of all the governors who had themselves appointed to the Senate, only one was able to win a subsequent election on his own. Kentucky Gov. Albert B. "Happy" Chandler (D), who came to the Senate in 1939, won in a special election in 1940 and again in 1942. (He resigned his seat in 1945 to become baseball commissioner.)

Here is a list of governors appointed to the Senate and the result of the succeeding election:

Montana, 1933 — Sen. Thomas Walsh (D) died. Gov. John Erickson (D) appointed self, lost 1934 primary.

Kentucky, 1939 — Sen. Marvel Logan (D) died. Gov. Happy Chandler (D) appointed self, won elections in 1940 and 1942.

Nevada, 1945 — Sen. James Scrugham (D) died. Gov. Edward Carville (D) appointed self, lost 1946 primary.

Idaho, 1945 — Sen. John Thomas (R) died. Gov. Charles Gossett (D) appointed self, lost 1946 primary.

Wyoming, 1960 — Sen.-elect Keith Thomson (R) died. Gov. John J. Hickey (D) appointed self, lost 1962 election.

New Mexico, 1962 — Sen. Dennis Chavez (D) died. Gov. Edwin Mechem (R) appointed self, lost 1964 election.

Oklahoma, 1963 — Sen. Robert Kerr (D) died. Gov. J. Howard Edmondson (D) appointed self, lost 1964 primary.

South Carolina, 1965 — Sen. Olin Johnston (D) died. Gov. Donald Russell (D) appointed self, lost 1966 primary.

Minnesota, 1977 — Sen. Walter Mondale (D) elected vice president. Gov. Wendell Anderson (D) appointed self, lost 1978 election.

A question today from Gus Sperrazza of Washington, D.C.:

"I've read that no Democrat has won a Senate seat in Kansas since 1932. Is that the longest-running drought in the nation? What's the longest one state has gone with one party not winning a seat?"

It's certainly the longest current streak. Kansas Democrat George McGill (D) won a special election in 1930, defeating Republican appointee Henry Allen (who took the seat of Vice President Charles Curtis). McGill then won a full term two years later. But that's the last time a Democrat won a Senate election in Kansas, a streak that has spanned 28 contests. The closest a Democrat has come in recent years was in the Watergate year of 1974, when GOP incumbent Bob Dole nipped Congressman Bill Roy by just 13,000 votes out of nearly 800,000 cast (51-49 percent).

When Mark Begich defeated Sen. Ted Stevens last month in Alaska, it was the first Democratic Senate victory in the state since 1974.

Other recent streaks broken include what had been a total Republican drought in Louisiana, which elected its first GOP senator since Reconstruction in 2004, David Vitter. He's up for re-election in 2010. Similarly, Arkansas Republicans elected their first senator ever in 1996 with Tim Hutchinson, but he lasted only one term.

Here are the rest of the Top 10 leading current Senate streaks after Kansas:

(2) West Virginia —
Last Republican winner: 1956, Chapman Revercomb

(3) Hawaii —
Last Republican winner: 1970, Hiram Fong

(4) Utah —
Last Democratic winner: 1970, Frank Moss

(5) Wyoming —
Last Democratic winner: 1970, Gale McGee

(6) Massachusetts —
Last Republican winner: 1972, Edward Brooke

(7) New Jersey —
Last Republican winner: 1972, Clifford Case

(8) Idaho —
Last Democratic winner: 1974, Frank Church

(9) Maryland —
Last Republican winner: 1980, Charles Mathias

(10) North Dakota —
Last Republican winner: 1980, Mark Andrews

A question from Coleman Travelstead of Albuquerque, N.M.:

In North Carolina, Bob Barr, the Libertarian presidential candidate, got more than the vote difference between Barack Obama [who won the state] and John McCain. Were there any other states where votes going to a third-party candidate could have changed the results from that state?

No one can say for certain that votes going to Barr would have gone to McCain. We had a similar argument in 2000, when many Democrats insist that Ralph Nader cost Al Gore the presidency. And it's true that Nader's vote totals in Florida (97,488) and New Hampshire (22,198) surpassed the difference between Gore and George W. Bush, who won both states that year.

Nader and others argued that there were plenty of other reasons Gore lost in 2000, such as the fact that Gore failed to win his home state, or that 500,000 or so Democrats voted for Bush in Florida.

But for the most part, Nader is often thought of (by Democrats at least) as the reason Bush was elected president.

Brian Mann, a reporter for North Country Public Radio in upstate New York who writes a blog (My God, does everyone write blogs???), had this to say about Nader a few days after this year's election when it was clear that Nader received more votes in Missouri than the difference between McCain (who won the state) and Obama:

Ralph Nader continued his personal and political disintegration this week.

He suggested in interviews with Fox News that America's first black president, Barack Obama, could turn out to be an "Uncle Tom."

Most pundits have observed that Nader has already slouched into irrelevancy, following his dramatic spoiler role in the 2000 elections.

But it now appears that Nader did manage to give some very real aid and comfort on Tuesday — once again to the Republican ticket.

In the key battleground state of Missouri, John McCain won 1,442,673 votes, a scant 5,800 more than Barack Obama.

Ralph Nader's role? He stripped away 17,769 votes from the Democrat, apparently costing Obama the state. (Missouri hasn't been officially called yet.)

Of course, it turns out that this is a bit of election night trivia.

Obama won the electoral college vote by a wide margin.

But imagine a different (and entirely plausible) scenario, where Missouri had turned out to be the Ohio of 2008.

If Obama had needed the Show-Me State's 11 electoral votes to put him over the top, then Nader would have emerged as the spoiler once again.

Well played, Ralph — well played.

It's pretty much a given that more people seem to get worked up about Nader's proving (or seeming) to be a spoiler for the Republicans than they do about Bob Barr for the Democrats; Barr not only may have cost McCain North Carolina but Indiana too. Here are the final tallies in the three states:

INDIANA

Obama: 1,374,039
McCain: 1,345,648
Barr: 29,257
Chuck Baldwin (Constitution Party): 1,024
Obama winning margin in state: 28,391

NORTH CAROLINA

Obama: 2,142,651
McCain: 2,128,474
Barr: 25,722
Obama winning margin in state: 14,177

MISSOURI

McCain: 1,445,814
Obama: 1,441,911
Nader: 17,813
McCain winning margin in state: 3,903

IN THE SENATE:

Conservative third-party candidates may have cost two Republicans their seats in the Senate as well. Ted Stevens lost his Alaska seat to Democrat Mark Begich by about 3,000 votes; Bob Bird of the Alaska Independence Party received 13,000 votes. In Oregon, Gordon Smith lost his seat by 50,000 to Democrat Jeff Merkley. Dave Brownlow of the Constitution Party won 87,000 votes.

In the House, there were several examples where the presence on the ballot of third-party or independent candidates may have thrown the race to one party or the other. The most notable was in Louisiana's 6th District, where the 36,000 votes won by Michael Jackson, an African-American independent, may have cost Democratic freshman Don Cazayoux his seat.