From Rivals to Running Mates

The last ticket comprised of primary opponents.

Slated to name a GOP senator if JFK wins.

Buttons from Ken Rudin's Collection

The only Native-American vice president.

Q: When was the last time that the top two finishers in the primaries became the party's presidential and vice-presidential nominees? A lot of folks talk about that regarding John Kerry and John Edwards, as if it were a natural occurrence. But in reality it doesn't happen all that often, correct? - Matthew Haag, Baltimore, Md.

A: Since 1972, when primaries became the deciding factor in arriving at a presidential nominee, the only time competing candidates wound up on the same ticket was in 1980. That year, Republican Ronald Reagan named George H.W. Bush as his running mate. In the old days -- before primaries superseded convention deals -- it was more common to see rivals for the nomination run together. Here are the other times in the past century when former opponents for the nomination joined to form a ticket:

1960 (D): John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson
1956 (D): Adlai Stevenson and Estes Kefauver
1948 (R): Thomas Dewey and Earl Warren (Warren was a favorite-son candidate)
1944 (R): Thomas Dewey and John Bricker
1936 (R): Alf Landon and Frank Knox
1932 (D): Franklin Roosevelt and John Nance Garner
1928 (R): Herbert Hoover and Charles Curtis
1916 (R): Charles Evans Hughes and Charles Fairbanks
1912 (D): Woodrow Wilson and Thomas Marshall (Marshall was a favorite-son candidate)

NOTE: The 1996 GOP ticket of Bob Dole and Jack Kemp marked the only time when two unsuccessful rivals from an earlier election -- 1988 -- joined forces to form a ticket.

Another footnote: For those of you who remember when this column used to run on Washingtonpost.com, you should know that questioner Matt Haag was the only person to correctly predict that Al Gore would pick Joe Lieberman in 2000.

Q: If John Kerry wins the presidency, what happens to his Senate seat? Does the governor of Massachusetts, a Republican, name a replacement to serve out the rest of Kerry's term? Is Gov. Mitt Romney required to name a Democrat? -- David Mularski, Tampa, Fla.

A: Romney would name a successor, and it would not be unusual to see him name a Republican to the seat. The last two senators to die in office were succeeded by appointees from a different party. Paul Wellstone (D-MN) perished in a plane crash in 2002; Gov. Jesse Ventura, a member of the Reform Party, appointed fellow Reform Party member Dean Barkley to fill the remaining weeks of Wellstone's term. Two years earlier, after Republican Paul Coverdell of Georgia died in office, Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes named fellow Democrat Zell Miller to the seat.

Though governors filling a Senate vacancy almost always pick someone from his or her own party, I can recall one time when that didn't happen. On March 9, 1960, Oregon Sen. Richard Neuberger, a Democrat, died in office. The governor at the time, Mark Hatfield, was a Republican. Yet, Hatfield named a Democrat, state Supreme Court Justice Hall Lusk, to fill the vacancy. (Lusk was a 76-year-old widely respected judge who never considered running for the full term.)

Some tried to make it mandatory that a vacancy be filled with someone of the same party. Following the 2000 elections, the Senate found itself in a 50-50 partisan deadlock. Until Vermont's Jim Jeffords bolted from the GOP in May 2001, Republicans controlled the Senate, thanks to Vice President Cheney's tie-breaking power. Everyone felt, however, that the GOP's hold was extremely fragile, that it was resting on the health of 98-year-old Strom Thurmond. Republicans in South Carolina, worried about that very thing, tried to push a bill through the state legislature mandating that any Senate vacancy be filled by someone from the same party of the departed senator. (By wild coincidence, the governor at the time, Jim Hodges, was a Democrat.) The bill didn't go far, but it illustrated how crucial a Senate vacancy would be in an evenly-divided Senate. Thurmond, as it turned out, survived his term and retired in 2003; he died six months later.

For the record, the last person appointed to a Senate seat in Massachusetts was Benjamin A. Smith II. For those who can't place the name, he was the fellow picked to fill John F. Kennedy's seat after JFK was elected president in 1960. Smith kept the seat warm for two years, until Ted Kennedy was old enough to run.

Q: When she was still in the running, Carol Moseley Braun referred to the presidency as a "white male-only club." I know that there has been one Native American vice president -- Charles Curtis of Kansas, elected in 1928 with Herbert Hoover. Have there been any other presidents or vice presidents who were not just white? As I recall, Bill Clinton said he might have some Cherokee heritage, but beyond that and Curtis I know of nothing else. -- Eric Martin, Native American Public Telecommunications (NAPT), Lincoln, Neb.

A: Me neither. In fact, there may be less of a Native-American heritage to Curtis than has been reported -- one source says he may have only been of one-eighth Indian ancestry -- but he identified himself as an American Indian and often spoke up for Native Americans.

Bill Clinton told someone during his "national conversation on race" that he considered himself part-Cherokee; I recall some conservatives responded by calling him "Chief Talking Bull." But I believe Curtis was the only one who fits the bill.

By the way, Curtis is one of only three American Indians ever elected to the Senate. The others were Robert Owen (D-OK), who was first elected in 1906, and Ben Nighthorse Campbell, a Colorado Republican who still serves.