WI: Gore-Dean Ticket

This is a question that has burned in the back of my mind for years. What if Vice President Al Gore selected Governor Howard Dean of Vermont as his vice presidential nominee, instead of OTL's Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut? In OTL, Dean was never considered for vice president in 2000. Dean was more charismatic than Lieberman and was governor of a state with proximity to New Hampshire. Would Dean have been able to swing the pendulum in New Hampshire?

Even if the Ticket still lost, would the national attention Dean gained have helped him four years later during the Democratic Party Presidential Primaries of 2004? Would Al Gore still endorse Dean in December 2003, if Dean had been his running mate, rather than Lieberman?
 
If Gore wanted a running mate who would help the ticket carry NH, surely Jeanne Shaheen would be the person:

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Kopko: Our data indicate that vice presidential home-state advantages are highly conditional – they occur when a candidate hails from a state with a small population and the candidate has significant elected experience within that state.

Because the 2000 election was so close, had any state switched from George W. Bush to Al Gore, Gore would have won the election. That year, Al Gore’s campaign leaked his shortlist in advance of announcing Joe Lieberman’s selection. Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire’s then-governor (and now U.S. senator), was on Gore’s shortlist.

Shaheen fit the profile of a running mate who could deliver a home-state advantage: Her state was one of the least populous in the U.S., and she had served its people for many years in elected office. Moreover, New Hampshire was the only state in New England carried by the Bush campaign, and in that same election, Shaheen won a third term as governor of New Hampshire.

By our estimates, had Gore selected Shaheen instead of Lieberman, Gore would have carried New Hampshire by at least one point. New Hampshire would have secured a majority of Electoral College votes for Al Gore. This assumes, of course, that the dynamics of the national election would not have dramatically changed if Shaheen would have been Gore’s running mates instead of Lieberman.

https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pol-vice-president-qa-20160702-snap-htmlstory.html

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I don't think there's much evidence that running mates help a ticket carry a state that is merely adjacent to their own. (Indeed, whether they normally even help the ticket in their own state has been debated.)
 

raharris1973

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What if Gore just picks Dean because of better personal chemistry, but the election goes on to the same result as OTL. How are the dynamics for '04 changed?

Of course endorsements are way overrated too.
 
If Gore wanted a running mate who would help the ticket carry NH, surely Jeanne Shaheen would be the person:

***


Kopko: Our data indicate that vice presidential home-state advantages are highly conditional – they occur when a candidate hails from a state with a small population and the candidate has significant elected experience within that state.

Because the 2000 election was so close, had any state switched from George W. Bush to Al Gore, Gore would have won the election. That year, Al Gore’s campaign leaked his shortlist in advance of announcing Joe Lieberman’s selection. Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire’s then-governor (and now U.S. senator), was on Gore’s shortlist.

Shaheen fit the profile of a running mate who could deliver a home-state advantage: Her state was one of the least populous in the U.S., and she had served its people for many years in elected office. Moreover, New Hampshire was the only state in New England carried by the Bush campaign, and in that same election, Shaheen won a third term as governor of New Hampshire.

By our estimates, had Gore selected Shaheen instead of Lieberman, Gore would have carried New Hampshire by at least one point. New Hampshire would have secured a majority of Electoral College votes for Al Gore. This assumes, of course, that the dynamics of the national election would not have dramatically changed if Shaheen would have been Gore’s running mates instead of Lieberman.

https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pol-vice-president-qa-20160702-snap-htmlstory.html

***

I don't think there's much evidence that running mates help a ticket carry a state that is merely adjacent to their own. (Indeed, whether they normally even help the ticket in their own state has been debated.)

If Gore won New Hampshire, the Bush campaign wouldn't have dropped the recount effort in New Mexico.

Gore only won NM by 366 votes.
 
If Gore won New Hampshire, the Bush campaign wouldn't have dropped the recount effort in New Mexico.

Gore only won NM by 366 votes.

There is no reason to think the recount would have changed the result in NM, however. Recounts rarely change results, even in very close races. Moreover, 366 votes out of 598,605, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election_in_New_Mexico though a very narrow margin, is not quite as close as a 366-vote victory would be in a larger state. Thus, for example, while the final recount in the 2008 Minnesota US Senate race changed an initial 215 vote Coleman lead to a 312 vote Franken lead, remember that this was out of 2,887,646 votes--almost five times NM's 2000 presidential vote. Likewise, in WA's 2004 governorship contest, an initial 261 vote Rossi lead ultimately became a 133 vote Gergoire victor--but again, there were more than 2,800,000 votes cast.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_States_Senate_election_in_Minnesota
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Washington_gubernatorial_election
 
I don't know where to go with this thread. If Gore had picked someone who he wasn't going to pick, would things have transpired differently... well, yes. But it's not that profitable a line of enquiry.

As noted by Dave, if you're looking for a divergence in New Hampshire which is realistic, then Shaheen is the way to go. The choice of Lieberman was a mildly outside-the-box choice designed to shake up a campaign which wasn't in a winning position, and that sort of selection logic, from that sort of position, has lead to female running mates being selected IOTL.

Not only was Gore not interested in Dean, there's little reason why a rationale for his candidacy would take hold.
 
His charisma was largely a function of public reaction to W’s presidency, which doesn’t play nearly as well in the context of a waning Clinton presidency.

Now, a situation where Gore runs again in 2004, Dean could definitely be a strong contender for VP.
 
Yeah, Bob Graham would have been a good choice, methinks (Graham was reportedly Clinton's second choice for VP, an interesting WI in and of itself)...
 
I don't think there's much evidence that running mates help a ticket carry a state that is merely adjacent to their own. (Indeed, whether they normally even help the ticket in their own state has been debated.)
I don't know where to go with this thread. If Gore had picked someone who he wasn't going to pick, would things have transpired differently... well, yes. But it's not that profitable a line of inquiry.

As noted by Dave, if you're looking for a divergence in New Hampshire which is realistic, then Shaheen is the way to go.
Well just like with the Romney-Cantor Ticket thread, what I am mainly inquiring of when I post these threads regarding alternate VP nominees is what hypothetically comes after the presidential election. In the Romney-Cantor Ticket thread, another user confirmed my belief that Cantor would have survived Dave Brat's Primary Challenge in 2014, simply because of the national attention he would have received in ATL 2012. I personally believe that if Gore selected Shaheen as his VP nominee in 2000 and still lost, she might have won the US Senate Election in New Hampshire of 2002.

So by posting this thread, I was wondering how well Howard Dean would perform in ATL 2004 after having served as Gore's running mate. This probably butterflies Lieberman's presidential campaign entirely.
 
I can't see Dean flipping NH. They'd likely do worse in VT as well although probably not enough to flip. Consider Dean signed the civil union law in 2000 and along with the state wide property tax shenanigans the Republicans captured the VT House that year and Dwyer gave Dean the governor race during his tenure. NH was also going thru the state wide property tax thing around that time too. (Claremont Decision). I think nationwide the civil unions would hurt as well, 2000 was different than now, I mean it wasn't 1950 but it wasn't 2020 either.
 
There is no reason to think the recount would have changed the result in NM, however. Recounts rarely change results, even in very close races. Moreover, 366 votes out of 598,605, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_United_States_presidential_election_in_New_Mexico though a very narrow margin, is not quite as close as a 366-vote victory would be in a larger state. Thus, for example, while the final recount in the 2008 Minnesota US Senate race changed an initial 215 vote Coleman lead to a 312 vote Franken lead, remember that this was out of 2,887,646 votes--almost five times NM's 2000 presidential vote. Likewise, in WA's 2004 governorship contest, an initial 261 vote Rossi lead ultimately became a 133 vote Gergoire victor--but again, there were more than 2,800,000 votes cast.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_States_Senate_election_in_Minnesota
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Washington_gubernatorial_election

I suppose the state GOP could have tried some shenanigans to grab the election, although the Governor of NM was the only GOP governor not to endorse Bush in the primary.
 
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