People from different ethnic groups for POTUS

Joshua Ben Ari

Mr_Fanboy said:
Does President Morgenthau guarantee that the Morgenthau Plan happens in Germany?
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Potentially, though Churchill and Anthony Eden were vehemently opposed to the plan. So were a lot of people in the War Department, and Secretaries Hull (State) and Stimson (War). The political boundaries of Germany might change, but I doubt the economic policies of the Morgenthau Plan will take effect or they'll be repealed quickly.
 
MuricanTauri1776

MuricanTauri1776

David T said:
Well, maybe if Dr. Oz decided to go into politics:

"Oz was born in 1960 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Suna and Mustafa Öz, who had emigrated from Konya Province, Turkey.[11][12] Mustafa, born in Bozkır, a small town in southern Turkey, earned scholarships that allowed him to emigrate to the United States as a medical resident in 1955. Suna (née Atabay), who comes from a wealthy Istanbul family, is the daughter of a pharmacist with Circassian (Shapsug) descent on her mother's side."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehmet_Oz

Otherwise, it sees pretty unlikely. According to the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups (1980) there were only 500 North Caucasian families--of any North Caucasian ethnic group--in the US.
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Any Iranians?
 

David T

MuricanTauri1776 said:
Any Iranians?
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Probably too recent--most Iranian immigrants (many of them Jewish) arrived in the wake of the 1979 revolution. Only in 2012 were two Iranian-Americans elected to state legislatures: "In November 2012, Cyrus Habib of Washington state and Adrin Nazarian of California became the first Iranian-Americans elected to state legislatures. Habib is now the Lieutenant Governor of Washington and the first Iranian-American elected to any statewide office." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Americans#Notable_people
 

David T

David T said:
Paul Simon. "Simon was born in Eugene, Oregon. He was the son of Martin Simon, a Lutheran minister and missionary to China,[1] and Ruth (née Tolzmann), a Lutheran missionary as well. His family was of German descent.[2] Simon attended Concordia University, a Lutheran school in Portland.[3]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Simon_(politician)

Fritz Hollings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Hollings

I'm not sure Hubert Humphrey would count: "Hubert Humphrey was baptized and raised as Lutheran. He attended a Methodist church while growing up because there was no Lutheran church in his town. He was reportedly a Congregationalist as an adult." https://www.adherents.com/people/ph/Hubert_Humphrey.html
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One other Lutheran possibility but this is current politics: Sherrod Brown.
 

Thomas Jefferson

MuricanTauri1776 said:
Any Iranians?
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There are actually a few Iranian-Americans born before the 1979 revolution, most of whose parents were students. For potential Presidential candidates, you have:

Alan Khazei: Founder of the nonprofit City Year and 2X unsuccessful candidate for Senate in Massachussets, born in Pittsburgh in 1961 to "an Iranian-American surgeon and an Italian-American nurse," so would also count as the first Italian-American president.

Ross Mirkarimi: Former sheriff of San Francisco and a founding member of the CA Green Party. His career was upended by a domestic violence scandal which you'd need to butterfly away for him to be a national candidate.

Michael Benjamin: Born in NYC to a Jewish Iranian father and a Honduran mother, which would also make him the first Hispanic president; unsuccessful Republican candidate for Senate from New York in 2004.
 

David T

David T said:
Despite the varying ethnic origins of the American people, presidents of the US (before Barack Obama--and so far after him) seem overwhelmingly to have had ancestors from only a few lands--the British isles, the Netherlands, and Germany. We have discussed the possibility of African American presidents before Obama (Colin Powell being the most frequently mentioned) and of Jewish presidents (Joe Lieberman being the most obvious possibility before Bernie Sanders), but here are some other ethnic groups that might have been represented in the presidency. My choices range from obviously plausible to very long shots. In some cases, the only likely way for them to become president is to be elected vice-president and for the president then to die or resign. Anyway, here's my list:

(6) Chinese: Well, of course Andrew Yang is running, but any earlier possibilities? Hiram Fong "twice ran favorite son campaigns for the Republican presidential nomination, in 1964 and 1968.[9] In 1964, he became the first Asian-American to receive votes for president at a major party convention, receiving the votes of the Hawaii and Alaska delegations..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiram_Fong but I doubt that he ever had a serious chance of being on a national GOP ticket. OTOH, someone here once suggested the following:

"The simplest way is for Nixon to appoint Fong to replace Agnew, and then resign as in OTL. The 25th Amendment would have permitted that, and the House and Senate would not have rebelled against the choice.

"The POD is a train of thought that creeps into Nixon's head and lays paranoid eggs. He is already considering the possibility that he will be impeached, and he fears that Ford is too much of a goo-goo to issue a pardon, and might screw old Nixon in order to win himself a second full term. Conversely, a man like Fong would be a perfect caretaker president. In the first place, he's been a solid ally on Vietnam and Watergate. And since he would have an [expletive deleted]'s chance of being elected president in his own right, he would be free to make unpopular decisions while president. As a bonus, Nixon would enhance his legacy by appointing a Chinese-American to the vice-presidency." https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/ahc-president-hiram-fong.302053/#post-8559230

Elaine Chao is out because she was born in Taiwan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaine_Chao

Maybe if Mike Woo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Woo had been elected mayor of Los Angeles in 1993, he could eventually have been on a national Democratic ticket?
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One possibility I was not aware of at the time: Harry Lee, a flamboyant Chinese-American Democrat who kept getting re-elected in an area that voted for David Duke! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Lee_(sheriff) If he had managed to win statewide office in Louisiana, maybe he gets on a Demcoratic national ticket?

It would be interesting to have a president with a Playmate of the Month as a sister and Mort Sahl as a brother-in-law... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Lee

(Maybe i should simply have started a new thread about this but I don't think I am violating any rules here: It says "Do not reply to old threads unless you started the thread and are continuing your own work." and that's what I'm doing here. Anyway, my thanks to dcharleos https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...the-united-states.507793/page-2#post-21783325 for drawing my attention to Lee.)
 
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Red_Neptune

John Shalikashvili was a Georgian-American general (and a direct descendant of a notable Georgian noble family) who was Supreme Allied Commander Europe and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Perhaps he could enter politics on a national level (of course, this might require him to become more popular as well...)?
 
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