(Pre/Post 1900)AHC: Concurrently Serving Senators run against each other as President

Basically, how can we get two Senators from the same state, serving at the same time, be nominated as President's for their respective parties. We've had instances of people who've served as Governors of the same state run against each other (FDR vs. Tom Dewey), and we've had a race of two Senators run against each other (Illinoisan Barack Obama and Arizonan John McCain), we've even had two Senate candidates run against each other for President (Lincoln and Douglas), but never two Senators serving from the same state.

Example: Ohio Senators Robert Portman and Sherrod Brown are nominated by the Republican and Democratic Parties, respectively, in 2016 for President.
 
Senators (and representatives) tend not to be nominated for candidacy because they lack executive experience. There was a forty-eight year gap between sitting senators elected straight to the Presidency, and one can argue that 2008 was a fluke, in that all three major candidates were senators.
 
Senators (and representatives) tend not to be nominated for candidacy because they lack executive experience. There was a forty-eight year gap between sitting senators elected straight to the Presidency, and one can argue that 2008 was a fluke, in that all three major candidates were senators.

I think this is very dubious. Barry Goldwater, George McGovern, Bob Dole, and John Kerry were all sitting senators nominated for president during those forty-eight years. Yes, they all lost, but this has very little to do with their being senators. There is no reason to think that if they were governors they would have done any better. (Kerry after all came a lot closer in 2004 than Dukakis had in 1988...) Besides, saying that 2008 was a fluke because the top three candidates were all senators ignores that nobody knew in advance that McCain would be the GOP candidate--he had to win the GOP nomination over such non-senators as Giuliani, Romney, and Huckabee.
 
I think this is very dubious. Barry Goldwater, George McGovern, Bob Dole, and John Kerry were all sitting senators nominated for president during those forty-eight years. Yes, they all lost, but this has very little to do with their being senators. There is no reason to think that if they were governors they would have done any better. (Kerry after all came a lot closer in 2004 than Dukakis had in 1988...) Besides, saying that 2008 was a fluke because the top three candidates were all senators ignores that nobody knew in advance that McCain would be the GOP candidate--he had to win the GOP nomination over such non-senators as Giuliani, Romney, and Huckabee.

Let me rephrase. It is unlikely for senators to get elected, which influences the nomination process. All else being equal, one would expect senators to be elected President twice as often as governors, and representatives elected eight times as often.
 
This is listed as pre-post-1900 in the pre-1900 forum. OK, for the Future Forum? I'd say two VERY ambitious senators from a state in which neither faced senatorial re-election, the state is EC rich, AND is Purple.

Ohio, Florida, or Virginia?:confused:
 
Basically, how can we get two Senators from the same state, serving at the same time, be nominated as President's for their respective parties. We've had instances of people who've served as Governors of the same state run against each other (FDR vs. Tom Dewey), and we've had a race of two Senators run against each other (Illinoisan Barack Obama and Arizonan John McCain), we've even had two Senate candidates run against each other for President (Lincoln and Douglas), but never two Senators serving from the same state.

Example: Ohio Senators Robert Portman and Sherrod Brown are nominated by the Republican and Democratic Parties, respectively, in 2016 for President.

If Lincoln had won the Senate seat that went to Trumbull in 1855, he could have run against Douglas in 1860, and they would both be sitting senators. Likewise, if in OTL Lincoln were to die in some accident in (say) 1859, the 1860 presidential race might be between Senator Trumbull and Senator Douglas.

One reason it's hard to find modern examples is that there have been few truly "open" presidential elections in recent decades--i.e. , ones in which there is neither an incumbent president running nor a vice-president seen by the party establishment as his logical successor (Nixon in 1960, Humphrey in 1968, GHW Bush in 1988, Gore in 2000).
 
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If Lincoln had won the Senate seat that went to Trumbull in 1855, he could have run against Douglas in 1860, and they would both be sitting senators. Likewise, if in OTL Lincoln were to die in some accident in (say) 1859, the 1860 presidential race might be between Senator Trumbull and Senator Douglas.

One reason it's hard to find modern examples is that there have been few truly "open" presidential elections in recent decades--i.e. , ones in which there is neither an incumbent president running nor a vice-president seen by the party establishment as his logical successor (Nixon in 1960, Humphrey in 1968, GHW Bush in 1988, Gore in 2000).

I know it might seem contradictory, but would getting Lincoln a seat as Senator in 1853 hurt him? It was a perfect storm that got him the 1860 nomination, what's to say he would get renominated in 1858, or Douglas does something and isn't the nominee?

That is a good point. Since the turn of the turn of the previous century, only 1908, 1920, 1928, 1952, and 2008 have featured no Presidents or VP's running for POTUS.
 
I think this is very dubious. Barry Goldwater, George McGovern, Bob Dole, and John Kerry were all sitting senators nominated for president during those forty-eight years. Yes, they all lost, but this has very little to do with their being senators. There is no reason to think that if they were governors they would have done any better. (Kerry after all came a lot closer in 2004 than Dukakis had in 1988...) Besides, saying that 2008 was a fluke because the top three candidates were all senators ignores that nobody knew in advance that McCain would be the GOP candidate--he had to win the GOP nomination over such non-senators as Giuliani, Romney, and Huckabee.

Also, there was a forty-four year gap between governors getting elected president (1932 to 1976) and a sixty-year gap between *sitting* governors getting elected president (1932 to 1992).

The truth is it's hard to discern an actual pattern because there aren't that many presidential elections and political patterns change. Insofar as you can discern one, it seems to me that big-state governors may have a leg up in the nomination system because of tighter control of their own state parties and greater on-paper appeal, both because their job is superficially more like the presidency and because their absence from the national scene makes them a "new face."

Many senators, especially those who have been in office for a long time, may not have run a competitive race for years and are therefore rustier and have weaker connections with major campaign consultants. They also have a weaker in-state network of supporters. If they can overcome that - which they generally can, provided they are prominent, have run some tough races, are relatively appealing, etc. - and if they can get the nomination, there doesn't seem to be any actual hit in the general election.

I don't buy alternative explanations, like the argument that their voting record can be used against them. That's true of plenty of governors (who often served in state legislatures or Congress beforehand), and in any event, governors have to sign every bill that comes before them, many of which can prove controversial, as Michael Dukakis found out during his campaign.
 
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