Pennsylvania has had plenty of would-be presidents
Courtesy of the Library of Congress
A campaign poster for James G. Blaine’s 1884 presidential campaign
Photos: Courtesy of the Library of Congress
Brownsville native and onetime Republican presidential candidate Philander Knox
Pennsylvania has always punched below its weight when it comes to presidential politics.
It’s a behemoth in the Electoral College, delivering as many as 38 electoral votes in the 1920 presidential election, and yielding 20 in the 2020 presidential contest. But despite its status as the second of the original 13 colonies to join the Union after ratifying the Constitution, it has only brought forth one president – the much-denigrated James Buchanan, who was chief executive just before the outbreak of the Civil War. Buchanan is a perennial last-place finisher when historians rank the presidents from the greatest to the worst.
In fact, Pennsylvania has only generated a single vice president: George Dallas, who had been mayor of Philadelphia, served as the second-in-command in the single term of James K. Polk from 1845 to 1849.
It should be noted, of course, that President Biden was born in Scranton, and lived in the commonwealth until he and his family moved to Delaware when he was 10. Should he count as a president from Pennsylvania? Not really, since he has long claimed the “First State” as his home.
Five presidents have come from New York. Eight came from Ohio in just an 80-year span, from 1840 to 1920. Why has Pennsylvania only managed one? Probably more a matter of luck and timing than anything else. There has certainly not been a lack of Pennsylvanians who have tried to be president, only to come up short. If fate had turned out differently, we might have been celebrating President Blaine, President Scranton or President Santorum on this Presidents Day.
Here are some of Pennsylvania’s would-be presidents:
1. James G. Blaine. When he was the Republican Party’s nominee for president in 1884, Blaine had served in the U.S. House and Senate representing Maine, and had also been secretary of state for nine months in 1881, across the presidencies of James Garfield and Chester Arthur. But Blaine was a son of Pennsylvania. Born in West Brownsville, he graduated from Washington & Jefferson College and his family had deep roots in the area – his paternal grandparents are buried in Washington Cemetery. Blaine moved to Maine after graduating from W&J to become a newspaper editor and then became involved in politics. A presidential candidate for the first time in 1876, his bid sank in a scandal over payments on railroad bonds that might have been bribes. Another bid in 1880 came to naught. He finally won the GOP nomination in 1884, and lost to Democrat Grover Cleveland in the popular tally by just 57,000 votes out of 9.7 million cast. The election was so close, in fact, that if Blaine had been able to overcome a 1,000-vote deficit in New York, the Pennsylvania native would have gone to Pennsylvania Avenue.
2. Winfield Scott Hancock. The native of the Philadelphia area became a national figure thanks to being a longtime Army general and a hero at Gettysburg in the Civil War. The Democratic Party nominated him for president in 1880, hoping to end what had been a streak of losses stretching back to 1856. Hancock came painfully close in the popular vote, losing by just 1,898 votes out of 8.8 million cast. The winner, Republican James Garfield, died six months into his term after being shot by a disgruntled office seeker.
3. Philander Knox. Hailing from Brownsville, Philander Knox had a distinguished career that included a stint as U.S. attorney general in the administration of William McKinley, and two separate tours of duty as a U.S. senator from Pennsylvania. He made a try for the 1908 Republican presidential nomination, and when GOP delegates met in Chicago in June 1908, Knox came in second – alas, a very distant second – to Ohio’s William Howard Taft. Knox was mentioned as a potential candidate in 1920, but the GOP chose yet another Ohioan, Warren Harding. If Knox had won the presidency in 1920, his tenure would have been painfully brief – he died in October 1921 at the age of 68.
4. Bill Scranton. As John F. Kennedy was captivating Americans in the early 1960s, Bill Scranton had all the ingredients to be a Republican counterpart – born just a little more than a month after Kennedy in 1917, Scranton had youth, an Ivy League education and an impressive pedigree on his side. After just a single term in Congress, Scranton was elected Pennsylvania’s governor in 1962. A little more than a year later, Scranton was being mentioned as being a potential GOP presidential candidate, and he jumped into the race in June 1964, following the collapse of the candidacy of Nelson Rockefeller, the New York governor and a fellow moderate. When delegates voted at the Republican National Convention in July, Scranton came in a very distant second behind U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona. Goldwater lost in a landslide a few months later to President Lyndon Johnson. Scranton never ran for elected office again after his single term as governor was up. He reportedly turned down an offer to be secretary of state in the administration of Richard Nixon, but did agree to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Gerald Ford.
5. Milton Shapp. Shapp was the first Pennsylvania governor to serve two full, four-year terms following a change in the commonwealth’s constitution in 1968. Having first won in 1970, Shapp was handily reelected in 1974. The following year, he declared his candidacy for the wide-open 1976 Democratic presidential contest. Shapp didn’t gain much traction, though – former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter started notching wins in primaries and caucuses, and left Shapp and the rest of the large field in the dust. Shapp withdrew after getting only 2% of the vote in Florida’s primary election. He served out the remainder of his term in Harrisburg, the first Jewish governor of Pennsylvania and the first to sign an executive order outlawing discrimination in state government based on sexual orientation.
6. Arlen Specter. A Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-Democrat, Arlen Specter was a U.S. senator for Pennsylvania for 30 years, the longest-serving senator the commonwealth has had. Little remembered now, Specter launched a quixotic bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 1996. A staunch moderate even as the Republican Party was moving to the right, Specter campaigned promising to be tough on crime and tough on the federal budget. He didn’t have much luck, though, and withdrew from the race in November 1995, before any votes were cast.
7. Rick Santorum. When Rick Santorum announced he was entering the 2012 contest to be the Republican presidential nominee, the whole idea seemed faintly absurd. After all, in 2006, he was buried in a 17-point landslide when he sought a third term as a U.S. senator against Democrat Bob Casey. But Santorum ended up narrowly winning the Iowa caucuses against GOP front-runner and eventual nominee Mitt Romney and then went on to win several additional states. Eventually, though, Santorum could not overcome Romney’s delegate lead, and he withdrew from the race in April 2012. Another presidential bid in 2016 failed to get off the ground. More recently, Santorum has been a commentator on CNN.