George P. Mahoney, building contractor, member (and for a while chairman) of the Maryland Racing Commission, and anti-open-housing crusader, was almost the definition of "perennial candidate." He ran for governor of Maryland in 1950, 1954, 1962, and 1966, and for the US Senate in 1952, 1956, 1958, 1968, and 1970. He lost every time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_P._Mahoney Yet he probably changed the results of at least six--maybe eight--elections for statewide office (governor or senator) in Maryland. Much more important, he was responsible for Gerald Ford becoming President of the United States.
We'll start with the Democratic gubernatorial primary of 1966. US Representative Carlton R. Sickles was Congressman-at-large and therefore known to voters throughout Maryland. (Why was there a Congressman-at- arge? Because Maryland had gained an eighth House seat after the 1960 census but was unable to reapportion to create an eighth congressional district until 1966.) He was favored to win the Democratic nomination for the governorship. He would certainly have prevailed in a one-on-one race over Mahoney, who was basically a one-issue man (Mahoney's slogan "Your Home Is Your Castle--Protect It!" indicated his opposition to open housing legislation). Unfortunately for Sickles, though, it was a multi-candidate primary, in which the "respectable" Democratic vote was split between Sickles and Maryland Attorney General Thomas B. Finian. So Mahoney, with only 30.21 percent of the vote, managed to squeeze out a very narrow victory, thanks to his support among rural Marylanders. (And unlike states further to the south, Maryland did not have a runoff system for primaries where no candidate got a majority.) Here are the results (which really should not have been a surprise, given George Wallace's strong showing in the 1964 Maryland presidential primary):
George P. Mahoney 148,446 30.21%
Carlton R. Sickles 146,607 29.84%
Thomas B. Finian 134,216 27.32%
Clarence W. Miles 42,304 8.61%
Charles J. Luthardt 7,336 1.49%
Morgan L. Amaino 6,048 1.23%
Ross Z. Pierpont 4,311 0.88%
http://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=110881
Moderate and liberal Maryland Democrats were of course appalled, and in the general election rallied behind the Republican gubernatorial candidate, Baltimore County Executive Spiro Agnew. (Baltimore County is an entirely suburban county; it does not include the city of Baltimore.) As Geoffrey Kabaservice notes in *Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party*, p. 191:
"Despite his later reputation as a hero of the right, in 1966 Agnew styled himself a progressive. He called for a modernized state government and increased funding for education, and promised the Ripon Society that if elected 'I shall attempt to make Maryland a showcase of what progressive Republicanism can do to cope with the problems that are facing all states floundering with the results of significant population and social changes. Agnew called the civil rights movement 'one of the greatest moral issues of our times,' and won an astonishing 70 percent of the black vote."
Could Agnew have won against Sickles? I doubt it. Maryland was still basically a Democratic state--it had gone for JFK in 1960 and would go for Humphrey in 1968 (even with Agnew on Nixon's ticket). Even many conservative rural Democrats would probably have supported Sickles against Agnew, who would not of course get the massive African American and white liberal vote he did in OTL. The result is that someone else--John Volpe, Charles Percy, Howard Baker--would become Nixon's running mate in 1968, and assuming that Nixon still wins and that Watergate takes place on schedule, president of the United States in 1974. (I wouldn't totally rule out even John Lindsay. Not just liberals but some middle-of-the-roaders like Ohio Governor James Rhodes wanted Nixon to choose Lindsay to appeal to urban and minority voters. But Lindsay would have been unacceptable to conservative southern Republicans like Strom Thurmond, who, having assured Nixon a first-ballot victory by backing him over Reagan at the convention, felt that they should have a veto over his choice of running mate. They found Agnew acceptable because he had moved to the right after the Baltimore riots of 1968, while moderates grudgingly accepted him because of his progressive record before that time.)
This is obviously the most important impact of Mahoney on history. Yet it is also arguable that he decided the results of *five* US Senate races in Maryland!
(1) 1952--Republican J. Glenn Beall, Sr. defeated Mahoney for the US Senate by 52-47 percent. This is a sufficiently narrow margin that it is plausible that some other Democrat could have defeated Beall (though I don't know enough about Maryland politics of that era to suggest a name here, unless incumbent Democratic senator Herbert O'Conor hadn't retired).
(2) 1956--Mahoney did not win the Democratic senatorial primary this year; he lost it to former US Senator Millard Tydings, who was seeking a rematch with Republican John Marshall Butler, who had defeated him for re-election in 1950. (Butler's 1950 campaign had featured a notorious faked--the polite word is "composite"--photograph showing Tydings with former US Communist leader Earl Browder.) Tydings narrowly defeated Mahoney in the primary, 47.50 percent to 44.83 percent. http://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=113577 However, Tydings had to withdraw during the general election campaign due to poor health. Mahoney was named Democratic candidate against Butler, the state Democratic committee choosing him by a 97-55 vote over Eleanor Tydings, Millard Tydings' wife: http://tinyurl.com/7l8zglb
Butler went on to defeat Mahoney by 53-47 percent. This was not an impressive margin, given the Eisenhower landslide in Maryland that year, and it is certainly conceivable that a stronger Democratic candidate might have defeated Butler. Maybe Mrs. Tydings could win out of sympathy for her slandered, "martyred," ailing husband.
(3) 1958--Beall was narrowly re-elected, defeating Democratic candidate Thomas D'Alesandro, Jr., mayor of Baltimore (and father of future Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi). D'Alesandro might have won, had he not been weakened by a divisive Democratic primary, in which he was opposed by--you guessed it--George P. Mahoney.
(4) 1968--incumbent senator Daniel Brewster (D) lost to progressive Republican candidate Charles Mathias 48%-39% with 13 percent going to independent candidate, George P. Mahoney. Mathias, who opposed the war policies of the Johnson administration, soundly defeated Brewster (who supported them) in high-income socially liberal areas like Montgomery County. In spite of this, Brewster might have won if Mahoney hadn't cut into the socially conservative Democratic vote in the rural counties and among white working-class voters in Baltimore. (Brewster was later indicted for bribery, acquitted on the most serious charges, and allowed to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor--accepting an illegal gratuity "without corrupt intent." He was fined, kept his law license, and lived until 2007.)
(Brewster had defeated Butler in 1962. Brewster was lucky that Mahoney had run for governor rather than senator that year...)
(5) 1970--Instead of running as an independent, Mahoney returned to the Democratic Party and challenged senator Joseph D. Tydings in the primary. Tydings (son of Millard Tydings) was in trouble with conservatives because of his support for gun-control legislation. He was in trouble with liberals because he supported the District of Columbia crime bill with its no-knock provision. Perhaps surprisingly, Mahoney was against no-knock; as he explained, if your home is your castle, it should be free from warrantless searches. Despite this stance, socially conservative Marylanders supported Mahoney in the Democratic primary. Tydings won the four-candidate primary with 53 percent to 37 percent for Mahoney. This was not a good showing for an incumbent senator in a primary, and Tydings went on to lose the general election to J. Glenn Beall, Jr. (the son of the J. Glenn Beall, Sr. whom Tydings had defeated in 1964) by a narrow 51-48 percent margin. Had he not been weakened by Mahoney's primary challenge, Tydings might well have won.
These five Senate races, and--far more important from the viewpoint of national and world history--the 1966 gubernatorial race are the six races where I think it may be said that Mahoney changed the result. Two other possibilities:
(1) The 1950 gubernatorial race. Incumbent Democratic governor William Preston Lane, Jr. was challenged by Mahoney. The primary, held on September 18, 1950, "was close and bruising, and left the Lane campaign weakened for the general election against Theodore McKeldin, his opponent in the 1946 election. Additionally, his unpopular sales tax to fund road improvements had caused significant dissent in the state and was used by McKeldin to pull votes away from Lane. On November 7, 1950, Lane was defeated in the general election by 94,000 votes, 57% to 42%. At that point, it was the largest margin of defeat in Maryland history."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Preston_Lane,_Jr.
Given the margin of Lane's defeat in the general election, I think it likely that he would have lost even had Mahoney not challenged him in the primary. But the challenge certainly didn't help Lane.
(2) The 1954 gubernatorial race: Harry Clifton "Curley" Byrd very narrowly defeated Mahoney in the Democratic primary--50.64% to 49.37%.
http://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=113574 Byrd went on to lose the general election to Republican incumbent Theodore McKeldin. "Byrd campaigned on his stance of separate but equal. McKeldin won comfortable majorities in Baltimore's black, Jewish, and upper-middle class white districts, while Byrd took all of the blue-collar white South and East Baltimore neighborhoods, including McKeldin's boyhood home along Eutaw Street.[38] Elsewhere in the state, however, middle-class white voters did not support Byrd." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_C._Byrd
While it is tempting to suggest that the close primary with Mahoney led to Byrd's general election defeat, McKeldin's margin was pretty decisive-- 54.46%-45.54%. Byrd had been controversial as a coach and university
president (as the Wikipedia article on him notes, "Opponents in The Baltimore Sun alleged that Byrd emphasized athletics over academics and belittled him as the only college football coach to rise to the position of university president"), his defense of educational segregation turned off black, Jewish, and many other voters (though no doubt it attracted some traditional Maryland white Democrats) and with or without Mahoney he would probably have lost to McKeldin.
Maybe Thomas D'Alesandro, Jr. could have defeated McKeldin, but he "was forced to drop out due to being implicated in receiving undeclared money from Dominic Piracci, a parking garage owner convicted of fraud, conspiracy, and conspiracy to obstruct justice." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_D'Alesandro,_Jr. I assume that this would have forced him out of the race whether Mahoney was running or not, so I can't say Mahoney was responsible for the Democrats' loss of the governorship race in 1954.
Anyway, in conclusion, let us pay tribute to J. Millard Tawes, the *only* Maryland Democrat who faced George Mahoney as an opponent and not only defeated him in the primary but *actually went on to win the general election* (for governor in 1962). Clearly, Tawes was either a political genius or very, very lucky... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Millard_Tawes
We'll start with the Democratic gubernatorial primary of 1966. US Representative Carlton R. Sickles was Congressman-at-large and therefore known to voters throughout Maryland. (Why was there a Congressman-at- arge? Because Maryland had gained an eighth House seat after the 1960 census but was unable to reapportion to create an eighth congressional district until 1966.) He was favored to win the Democratic nomination for the governorship. He would certainly have prevailed in a one-on-one race over Mahoney, who was basically a one-issue man (Mahoney's slogan "Your Home Is Your Castle--Protect It!" indicated his opposition to open housing legislation). Unfortunately for Sickles, though, it was a multi-candidate primary, in which the "respectable" Democratic vote was split between Sickles and Maryland Attorney General Thomas B. Finian. So Mahoney, with only 30.21 percent of the vote, managed to squeeze out a very narrow victory, thanks to his support among rural Marylanders. (And unlike states further to the south, Maryland did not have a runoff system for primaries where no candidate got a majority.) Here are the results (which really should not have been a surprise, given George Wallace's strong showing in the 1964 Maryland presidential primary):
George P. Mahoney 148,446 30.21%
Carlton R. Sickles 146,607 29.84%
Thomas B. Finian 134,216 27.32%
Clarence W. Miles 42,304 8.61%
Charles J. Luthardt 7,336 1.49%
Morgan L. Amaino 6,048 1.23%
Ross Z. Pierpont 4,311 0.88%
http://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=110881
Moderate and liberal Maryland Democrats were of course appalled, and in the general election rallied behind the Republican gubernatorial candidate, Baltimore County Executive Spiro Agnew. (Baltimore County is an entirely suburban county; it does not include the city of Baltimore.) As Geoffrey Kabaservice notes in *Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, from Eisenhower to the Tea Party*, p. 191:
"Despite his later reputation as a hero of the right, in 1966 Agnew styled himself a progressive. He called for a modernized state government and increased funding for education, and promised the Ripon Society that if elected 'I shall attempt to make Maryland a showcase of what progressive Republicanism can do to cope with the problems that are facing all states floundering with the results of significant population and social changes. Agnew called the civil rights movement 'one of the greatest moral issues of our times,' and won an astonishing 70 percent of the black vote."
Could Agnew have won against Sickles? I doubt it. Maryland was still basically a Democratic state--it had gone for JFK in 1960 and would go for Humphrey in 1968 (even with Agnew on Nixon's ticket). Even many conservative rural Democrats would probably have supported Sickles against Agnew, who would not of course get the massive African American and white liberal vote he did in OTL. The result is that someone else--John Volpe, Charles Percy, Howard Baker--would become Nixon's running mate in 1968, and assuming that Nixon still wins and that Watergate takes place on schedule, president of the United States in 1974. (I wouldn't totally rule out even John Lindsay. Not just liberals but some middle-of-the-roaders like Ohio Governor James Rhodes wanted Nixon to choose Lindsay to appeal to urban and minority voters. But Lindsay would have been unacceptable to conservative southern Republicans like Strom Thurmond, who, having assured Nixon a first-ballot victory by backing him over Reagan at the convention, felt that they should have a veto over his choice of running mate. They found Agnew acceptable because he had moved to the right after the Baltimore riots of 1968, while moderates grudgingly accepted him because of his progressive record before that time.)
This is obviously the most important impact of Mahoney on history. Yet it is also arguable that he decided the results of *five* US Senate races in Maryland!
(1) 1952--Republican J. Glenn Beall, Sr. defeated Mahoney for the US Senate by 52-47 percent. This is a sufficiently narrow margin that it is plausible that some other Democrat could have defeated Beall (though I don't know enough about Maryland politics of that era to suggest a name here, unless incumbent Democratic senator Herbert O'Conor hadn't retired).
(2) 1956--Mahoney did not win the Democratic senatorial primary this year; he lost it to former US Senator Millard Tydings, who was seeking a rematch with Republican John Marshall Butler, who had defeated him for re-election in 1950. (Butler's 1950 campaign had featured a notorious faked--the polite word is "composite"--photograph showing Tydings with former US Communist leader Earl Browder.) Tydings narrowly defeated Mahoney in the primary, 47.50 percent to 44.83 percent. http://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=113577 However, Tydings had to withdraw during the general election campaign due to poor health. Mahoney was named Democratic candidate against Butler, the state Democratic committee choosing him by a 97-55 vote over Eleanor Tydings, Millard Tydings' wife: http://tinyurl.com/7l8zglb
Butler went on to defeat Mahoney by 53-47 percent. This was not an impressive margin, given the Eisenhower landslide in Maryland that year, and it is certainly conceivable that a stronger Democratic candidate might have defeated Butler. Maybe Mrs. Tydings could win out of sympathy for her slandered, "martyred," ailing husband.
(3) 1958--Beall was narrowly re-elected, defeating Democratic candidate Thomas D'Alesandro, Jr., mayor of Baltimore (and father of future Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi). D'Alesandro might have won, had he not been weakened by a divisive Democratic primary, in which he was opposed by--you guessed it--George P. Mahoney.
(4) 1968--incumbent senator Daniel Brewster (D) lost to progressive Republican candidate Charles Mathias 48%-39% with 13 percent going to independent candidate, George P. Mahoney. Mathias, who opposed the war policies of the Johnson administration, soundly defeated Brewster (who supported them) in high-income socially liberal areas like Montgomery County. In spite of this, Brewster might have won if Mahoney hadn't cut into the socially conservative Democratic vote in the rural counties and among white working-class voters in Baltimore. (Brewster was later indicted for bribery, acquitted on the most serious charges, and allowed to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor--accepting an illegal gratuity "without corrupt intent." He was fined, kept his law license, and lived until 2007.)
(Brewster had defeated Butler in 1962. Brewster was lucky that Mahoney had run for governor rather than senator that year...)
(5) 1970--Instead of running as an independent, Mahoney returned to the Democratic Party and challenged senator Joseph D. Tydings in the primary. Tydings (son of Millard Tydings) was in trouble with conservatives because of his support for gun-control legislation. He was in trouble with liberals because he supported the District of Columbia crime bill with its no-knock provision. Perhaps surprisingly, Mahoney was against no-knock; as he explained, if your home is your castle, it should be free from warrantless searches. Despite this stance, socially conservative Marylanders supported Mahoney in the Democratic primary. Tydings won the four-candidate primary with 53 percent to 37 percent for Mahoney. This was not a good showing for an incumbent senator in a primary, and Tydings went on to lose the general election to J. Glenn Beall, Jr. (the son of the J. Glenn Beall, Sr. whom Tydings had defeated in 1964) by a narrow 51-48 percent margin. Had he not been weakened by Mahoney's primary challenge, Tydings might well have won.
These five Senate races, and--far more important from the viewpoint of national and world history--the 1966 gubernatorial race are the six races where I think it may be said that Mahoney changed the result. Two other possibilities:
(1) The 1950 gubernatorial race. Incumbent Democratic governor William Preston Lane, Jr. was challenged by Mahoney. The primary, held on September 18, 1950, "was close and bruising, and left the Lane campaign weakened for the general election against Theodore McKeldin, his opponent in the 1946 election. Additionally, his unpopular sales tax to fund road improvements had caused significant dissent in the state and was used by McKeldin to pull votes away from Lane. On November 7, 1950, Lane was defeated in the general election by 94,000 votes, 57% to 42%. At that point, it was the largest margin of defeat in Maryland history."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Preston_Lane,_Jr.
Given the margin of Lane's defeat in the general election, I think it likely that he would have lost even had Mahoney not challenged him in the primary. But the challenge certainly didn't help Lane.
(2) The 1954 gubernatorial race: Harry Clifton "Curley" Byrd very narrowly defeated Mahoney in the Democratic primary--50.64% to 49.37%.
http://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=113574 Byrd went on to lose the general election to Republican incumbent Theodore McKeldin. "Byrd campaigned on his stance of separate but equal. McKeldin won comfortable majorities in Baltimore's black, Jewish, and upper-middle class white districts, while Byrd took all of the blue-collar white South and East Baltimore neighborhoods, including McKeldin's boyhood home along Eutaw Street.[38] Elsewhere in the state, however, middle-class white voters did not support Byrd." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_C._Byrd
While it is tempting to suggest that the close primary with Mahoney led to Byrd's general election defeat, McKeldin's margin was pretty decisive-- 54.46%-45.54%. Byrd had been controversial as a coach and university
president (as the Wikipedia article on him notes, "Opponents in The Baltimore Sun alleged that Byrd emphasized athletics over academics and belittled him as the only college football coach to rise to the position of university president"), his defense of educational segregation turned off black, Jewish, and many other voters (though no doubt it attracted some traditional Maryland white Democrats) and with or without Mahoney he would probably have lost to McKeldin.
Maybe Thomas D'Alesandro, Jr. could have defeated McKeldin, but he "was forced to drop out due to being implicated in receiving undeclared money from Dominic Piracci, a parking garage owner convicted of fraud, conspiracy, and conspiracy to obstruct justice." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_D'Alesandro,_Jr. I assume that this would have forced him out of the race whether Mahoney was running or not, so I can't say Mahoney was responsible for the Democrats' loss of the governorship race in 1954.
Anyway, in conclusion, let us pay tribute to J. Millard Tawes, the *only* Maryland Democrat who faced George Mahoney as an opponent and not only defeated him in the primary but *actually went on to win the general election* (for governor in 1962). Clearly, Tawes was either a political genius or very, very lucky... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Millard_Tawes
