AH Challenge: President Presley

Tennessee seems more plausible, but Mississippi would be more interesting.

I picked Mississippi because he was born there. Maybe he could come home to Mississippi in '67 for a run at the governorship, rather than a renewed political career? It's possible he could've won the crowded Democratic primary that year using name recognition, beating out John Bell Williams and Ross Barnett, among others; alternatively, he could've most likely won the GOP nomination with ease, though that would make the election rather more difficult.

Maybe have John Stennis die in 1973? Elvis might have had a better shot running in '73 than in '67, and in a special election rather than a gubernatorial election.

Regardless, he would've been anti-segregationist - Elvis Presley, contrary to the myth that he wanted African-Americans to "buy my records and shine my shoes" (which he never actually said), was not a racist by any means.
 
I picked Mississippi because he was born there. Maybe he could come home to Mississippi in '67 for a run at the governorship, rather than a renewed political career? It's possible he could've won the crowded Democratic primary that year using name recognition, beating out John Bell Williams and Ross Barnett, among others; alternatively, he could've most likely won the GOP nomination with ease, though that would make the election rather more difficult.

Maybe have John Stennis die in 1973? Elvis might have had a better shot running in '73 than in '67, and in a special election rather than a gubernatorial election.

Regardless, he would've been anti-segregationist - Elvis Presley, contrary to the myth that he wanted African-Americans to "buy my records and shine my shoes" (which he never actually said), was not a racist by any means.
Could Mississippi governors serve consecutive terms at the time?
 
No, they couldn't, as was the case throughout most of the South. Many of those states still had 2-year terms, for some reason the ex-Confederate states have always had a fetish for term limits, which dates back to the CS Constitution itself. Oh, and any Republican winning office in Mississippi in 1967 is downright ASB. It has only elected 2 Republicans to the governorship in its history: Kirk Fordice in 1992 and Haley Barbour. The Deep South's Republican conversion on the local level really only began in the 1990s and became ruby-red during George W. Bush's presidency.
 
No, they couldn't, as was the case throughout most of the South. Many of those states still had 2-year terms, for some reason the ex-Confederate states have always had a fetish for term limits, which dates back to the CS Constitution itself. Oh, and any Republican winning office in Mississippi in 1967 is downright ASB. It has only elected 2 Republicans to the governorship in its history: Kirk Fordice in 1992 and Haley Barbour. The Deep South's Republican conversion on the local level really only began in the 1990s and became ruby-red during George W. Bush's presidency.

I assumed Presley would stand as a Democrat.
 
Wendell: I was talking more to anon_user than you. In any case he would try to be one of the New Southerners, whose governing mantra was, to paraphrase James Carville, "it's developing a late-20th century economy stupid" rather than George Wallace's.
 
Wendell: I was talking more to anon_user than you. In any case he would try to be one of the New Southerners, whose governing mantra was, to paraphrase James Carville, "it's developing a late-20th century economy stupid" rather than George Wallace's.

That seems about right. So, something of a Clinton before Clinton.
 
Clinton wasn't part of that generation politically or otherwise, the first generation was Sanford/Sanders/McKeithen/Carter, who campaigned as racial moderates, not liberals. But I'm being a pedant, Presley would be part of that group and do a good job. Tennessee is a border state, the others were all running ex-Confederate states where detoxification was much harder.
 
Clinton wasn't part of that generation politically or otherwise, the first generation was Sanford/Sanders/McKeithen/Carter, who campaigned as racial moderates, not liberals. But I'm being a pedant, Presley would be part of that group and do a good job. Tennessee is a border state, the others were all running ex-Confederate states where detoxification was much harder.

Right, that does make sense, actually. I suppose the Clinton generation was more of a post-Reagan, post-Carter phenomenon.
 
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