The primary and caucus system that we use to nominate presidential candidates is always evolving and the present forms are relatively new even in the broadest view, so it’s never a clean thing to compare today’s contests to primaries from the fifties, sixties and seventies. Still, when we do look back one thing we can see is that there used to be favorite sons who lacked national stature but were easily able to carry their home states.
To give a few examples, the Republican contest in 1952 was primarily between Ohio Senator Robert Taft and Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, but Earl Warren got two-thirds of the vote in his home state of California and former Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen carried his state with a strong plurality.
The 1960 contest was pretty much an uncontested affair for sitting Vice-President Richard Nixon, but Gov. Cecil Underwood got all the delegates from his home state of West Virginia. In 1968, the same thing happened with Gov. Jim Rhodes of Ohio.
The 1964 Republican nominating contest is remembered as a battle between Barry Goldwater’s radicals and Nelson Rockefeller’s moderates, but Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. won New Hampshire and his neighboring home state of Massachusetts, and Gov. William Scranton won his home state of Pennsylvania while Rep. John Byrnes of Wisconsin received over 99% of the vote in the Badger State.
Even as recently as 1992, no one on the Democratic side seriously contended in Iowa against Sen. Tom Harkin.
I mention all this because something seems to have changed. No one thought that Bobby Jindal would have carried Louisiana had he stayed in the race. Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio aren’t leading in the polls in the Sunshine State. I don’t really see any evidence that any of the eleventy billion candidates who are (or were) seeking the presidency are going to carry their home states despite being far behind elsewhere.
I mean if Carly Fiorina were favored to win California, that’d be worth talking about.
But I can’t really find in the history books anything quite like the situation that Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is facing. He’s a sitting U.S. Senator who was recently reelected. Whatever you might think about his hawkishness, he isn’t bogged down in scandal or ethical clouds. He’s a controversial figure in his home state, but he’s not immensely unpopular like Chris Christie or (especially) Bobby Jindal. Yet, he’s getting one percent in the polls in his home state. And the state party is basically telling him to take his name off the ballot to avoid complete humiliation.
This reality presents a political conundrum for Graham. He’s widely respected in the state and won the GOP Senate primary in 2014 with 57 percent of the vote — a wider margin than many pundits expected considering he faced challenges from multiple tea party candidates.
But presidential primary polls in South Carolina show Graham with about 1 percent support, far behind a long list of other names: Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Jeb Bush among them. Even Carly Fiorina and Mike Huckabee are polling higher.
And Graham hasn’t gained traction in the other early states, either. If he stays in the race through early contests in Iowa and New Hampshire and loses — or waits until January to withdraw — he’d go into the South Carolina primary with his name printed on the ballot and risk a result that many Republicans in the state say could damage his brand in the long term.
When “many Republicans” in your state are blabbing to an NBC reporter about you damaging your brand if you appear on the state’s ballot, that’s a clear indication that your goose is cooked. Frankly, the party figures down there who are loyal to Sen. Graham are getting irritated that they haven’t been liberated to flirt with other candidacies.
Getting back to my point, though, it’s clear that Lindsey Graham is no Tom Harkin.
After all, no one thought Harkin could win the nomination. But they knew he’d win in Iowa so they didn’t even try to beat him.
Why couldn’t Graham get the same level of support and deference? And why don’t any other long-shot candidates have that kind of juice?
Maybe Scott Walker could have fit the bill if he had stayed in. Somehow I doubt it, though.
I think our politics somehow got completely nationalized since 1992, and I’m not sure precisely why that is.
What do you think?
One reason is tech. There are like minded peopke all over the country, I have more in common with you than some anti abortionist in Bachmanistan and I know it. With politics, for national electiobs we dont have to go for a local guy who is the only game in town.
So to, unity means better chances at victory so if you nationalize an election and the other guys are home staters you have a big advantage.
Bernie Sanders would definitely win Vermont, so he might be a modern example of a favorite son.
One hopes.
it will be interesting to see if he’s still in the race by then
Graham’s problem
World War 3
pro or anti ???
I thought Graham was a hawk and that was an advantage for a Republican.
Would like to know as well: pro or anti?
I have found the political demise of Graham’s presidential dreams of some minor interest, as he’s done so poorly in his own state. I’ve heard more commentary than I really wanted to hear about a great, all-around, upstanding guy Lindsay is, and how very very popular he is in SC.
And yet….???
Not sorry about it, but curious enough to ask. I thought everyone in the south (yeah, painting with ye olde broade brushe) was a huge War Hawk. Graham hangs onto the coat tails of crazed War Hawk el-supreme-o(probably ISIS money guy) McCain. What’s not to like from the perspective of southern whities??
Cable news. There it is.
Cable noise
The change from broadcasting to narrowcasting. Choice of information.
My SWAG is that the demise of conventions as actual decision-making bodies was what killed favorite son strategies. They were ways that state parties could get some of their pet agendas negotiated with whoever the winning nominee was in the convention. It would be fascinating to find out what Harold Stassen got for Minnesota in the delegate negotiations on the 23nd or 43rd vote (yes, an exaggeration of the process) at the conventions at which he was “perennial candidate”.
In 1992, two favorite sons managed to carry their home states in the general election. In 2000, neither of those states went for Gore. What happened in between was polarization and the Gingrich coup, which might be another explanation. Polarization cannot admit even the potential diviseness of favorite sons. It is ideological competition alone that becomes the dynamic, not horsetrading. War leadership, not political compromise. Common agendas, not local interests.
Good.
A weak tea version still exists. Somewhat more regional affinity than in the past.
For example, Bachmann expected to do well in Iowa b/c she was born there and the fundie affiliation between Iowa and MN. Walker expected the nearness of WI to work the same for him in Iows. It worked to Obama’s advantage in 2008. Would also put Dole’s 1988 Iowa caucus win in the same category.
MA politicians fare well in NH — Tsongas in 1992, Kerry, Romney.
Harkin was at the top of many Democratic voters outside Iowa lists in 1992.
Is that really being a Favorite Son, or just regional preferences?
Primaries happened.
In the 1964 GOP fight there were essentially 3 contested primaries: New Hampshire, Oregon and California. In that environment where caucuses dominated, it was much easier for a machine politician to get the delegates for himself.
The ’72 McGovern reforms killed that forever.
You can disregard the following as claptrap or whatever you’d like, but the reason our politics are more “national” is that as our Republic slides towards outright Empire-proper, both left and right are geared towards electing their preferred First Citizen and Lord Protector. You see it clearly on the left, but also on the right, even though it’s somewhat occluded by the right-wings ability to vote during midterms to elect non-First Citizens out of proportion to their actual electoral standing.
So, anymore, we focus on the First Citizen election for a good year and half before the actual election, and everything after that election and to the year and a half out of the next First Citizen election, it’s all about the First Citizen and how the legislature is hurting or helping.
Even now, we have to rely on the First Citizens ability to take executive action to do things that need to be done, because our legislature, i.e. the Republic portion of government, stands by and does nothing because they’re really only in it for the stature, benefits, and future earnings converting their previous political connections into money.
Seems like native sons could still exist even within that. My analysis is that they got something for Buncombe from their run.
Alternatively, the demographics of Presidential and Congressional elections diverge and with the parties more ideologically coherent there’s no incentive for the Big Endians to cooperate with the Little Endians, not when there’s a major hope of a black swan sweeping all of them in and allowing the Big Endians to mass murder all of the heretics.
I know a lot of fellow people of the Left like to cast the terms of the fight as a brave group of committed intellectuals trying to use the power of self-realization and inflicted insight to realize that the left’s agenda is what the public really wanted all along. And thus failures to do so are explained as bad luck (stagflation, Iranian hostage crisis), bad messaging (why did Dukakis get in that tank????), or political malfeasance (above post).
But seriously, cut me a break. A large portion of the American public is some combination of stupid, delusional, sadistic, selfish, or cowardly and the current status quo is much more preferable, even if it leads to the near or actual extinction of the human race, to a smoothly running leftist government where executive and legislative branches run hand in hand.
Our vile and hopeless dinosaur government isn’t the result of our politicians abandoning their responsibility. It’s the result of politicians accurately representing their vile and hopeless dinosaur constituents to an extent never before seen in American history.