Democratic nominee for president, Kamala Harris, announced her running mate as Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota, yesterday. The 60-year-old former school teacher, former U.S. Representative and former Army National Guard member is not associated with a typical Midwestern swing state, but is nevertheless expected to appeal to voters in the region that has become so important for campaigns trying to secure a victory in the presidential election.
Walz was born in another Midwestern state, Nebraska, and would be the third vice president from there after Dick Cheney and Gerald Ford – both of whom also entered Congress as representatives of other states.
Kamala Harris, who was born in Oakland, would actually only be the second president from the continental American West after Richard Nixon (also from California). The furthest west a president has ever been born outside of California (and Hawaii) was in Gillespie country near San Antonio, Texas – the home of Lyndon B. Johnson. According to The Economist, the dearth of Western presidents as well as vice presidents is historically tied to the Western states joining the union later, being less populous and until recently – with the exception of California – not offering many chances to Democrats.
Only 21 of the 50 states can claim to be birthplaces of at least one president. Florida and Michigan are the most populous states that have never sent a native-born son (or daughter) to the White House, followed by Washington, Arizona and Tennessee. Most presidents were born in Virginia (8), followed by Ohio (7), New York (5) and Massachusetts (4). Vice presidents’ home states are not spread out significantly more across in the U.S., covering 22 states and the District of Colombia, where Al Gore was born. J.D. Vance, the VP pick on Donald Trump’s Republican ticket, hails from a state that has been a common birthplace for presidents and vice presidents – Ohio.
While there have been 46 U.S. presidents to date, there have been 49 vice presidents. This is despite the fact that in the 19th century, four presidents including John Tyler and Andrew Johnson did not have a vice president at all as they were initially vice presidents themselves and acceded to the office after a president’s death.
Thomas Jefferson was the first U.S. president to switch vice presidents in 1805, as the law changed and the second-in-command became a running mate instead of the runner-up in the presidential election.
Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant also switched vice presidents with their second terms, while William KcKinley’s vice president Garret Hobart died in office and Richard Nixon’s first vice president, Spiro Agnew, resigned in 1973 ten months into Nixon second term. Franklin D. Roosevelt went through three vice presidents during this 12 years in office, encompassing the Great Depression and World War II.
Vice presidents becoming presidents have actually been very common throughout U.S. history: 15 made the switch, including 10 who were elected, the last being Joe Biden (not consecutive) in 2020 and George H.W. Bush in 1989.
A single-term, living president like Biden clearing the way for his second-in-command, however, has only happened once before in U.S. history when Lyndon B. Johnson did not seek re-election in 1968 after having served for around five years, including one full elected term. His vice president Hubert Humphrey was nominated but lost the election to Richard Nixon – another vice-president-turned-president.
Thomas Jefferson, the third U.S. president, won the presidency in 1801 after one term as vice president under John Adams, but he challenged his then-boss for the office in a time before running mates.
John C. Breckinridge served one term as vice president and ran in the next election, albeit for a different party, as the Democrats nominated Stephen A. Douglas when James Buchanan decided not to run a second time in 1860. That election went to Republican Abraham Lincoln in the end.
The most common way to become president as vice president has actually been the president dying, which has happened eight times. However, only half of these vice-presidents-turned-presidents were reelected, all between the beginning of the 20th century and the 1960s, which was the most recent occasion the president, John F. Kennedy, died in office.
Buchholz writes for Statista
