For one of the few times in the 21st century, no one from Vermont has staged a serious campaign for U.S. president this election cycle.
When you consider that the entire population of Vermont is roughly the same size as that of the city of Boston, it’s a little surprising that the state fields any presidential candidates at all. Yet Vermont has had a couple of attention-grabbing candidates since the 2000s began, and in centuries past native sons also aspired to the White House. Two Vermonters even reached the nation’s highest position.
With Election Day approaching Nov. 5, it’s the right time to look at past major-party presidential campaigns with a Vermont flavor, starting with the most recent (Did you feel the Bern?) and working our way back to the days of Honest Abe.
Bernie Sanders, 2016 and 2020
For a time in 2016 it appeared the U.S. senator and former Burlington mayor could be the Democratic nominee for president. His March upset win in the Michigan primary built a head of steam that carried Sanders’ campaign through the next several months. An independent who ran under the Democratic umbrella, Sanders fell just short of the nomination, coming in only percentage points behind Hillary Clinton. Sanders gave the presidency another shot in 2020 but lost the Democratic bid more handily to eventual nominee and president Joe Biden.
Howard Dean, 2004
The former Vermont governor made a serious charge for the Democratic nomination to oppose President George W. Bush. Polling and fundraising turned Dean into a surprisingly strong candidate heading into the primaries. The famous “Dean scream” said to have done in his campaign came after a third-place showing in the Iowa caucus that likely had already cemented his defeat to eventual nominee John Kerry. Dean’s presidential victory came four years later as the head of the Democratic National Committee that helped elect President Barack Obama.
Calvin Coolidge, 1920 and 1924
The native of Plymouth Notch ran successfully for vice president in 1920 on the Republican ticket with Warren G. Harding. The president died of a heart attack in 1923, elevating Coolidge to the job after he was sworn in by his father in the glow of lamplight at the family homestead in Vermont. Known for his fiscal conservativism, the taciturn man dubbed “Silent Cal” would be elected to a full term 100 years ago in 1924, making him the only Vermonter to win election to the U.S. presidency. His wife, First Lady Grace Goodhue Coolidge, grew up in Burlington and graduated from the University of Vermont.
Chester A. Arthur, 1880
Coolidge would be the second Vermonter to ascend to the presidency after the death of the top office holder. More than four decades earlier, Chester A. Arthur succeeded James A. Garfield after the president was shot in a Washington, D.C., train station and died two-and-a-half months later. Arthur, a Franklin County native, was initially unpopular because of his support for the spoils system of political patronage but earned respect for adhering to Garfield’s desire to pursue civil-service reform. Republicans displeased at his policy change snubbed him for the 1884 nomination for the presidency.
Stephen A. Douglas, 1860
Though he famously debated Abraham Lincoln in a U.S. Senate race in Illinois in 1858, Douglas was a native Vermonter. The Brandon-born-and-raised Douglas won that Senate race as a Democrat pitted against Lincoln, a Republican. Douglas would vie for the presidency two years later but fractures in the pre-Civil War Democratic party led to a bifurcated nomination between him and the sitting vice president, John C. Breckinridge. That division helped hand the presidency to their Republican counterpart – Abraham Lincoln.
Contact Brent Hallenbeck at bhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com.
This article originally appeared on Burlington Free Press: Vermont presidential candidates have included Sanders, Dean, Coolidge
