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| Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY) |
So, suffice it to say, Rep. Chris Collins' quitting his race wasn't a given, but now that he has, it opens up a very rare look into races where the candidate dropped out of the election prior to the actual general election. Under New York state law, it is very difficult for Republicans to remove Collins from the ballot. Essentially he'd have to die, forfeit his residency, or run for another office. While Collins reportedly owns homes in both DC and Florida (making a change in residency possible) and he could run for a random office where the Republicans have no shot (say, a judgeship in the Bronx), it's entirely possible that Collins will remain on the ballot, giving the Democrats a shot at a seat that they'd have absolutely no chance in otherwise. As CNN political analyst Harry Enten said on Twitter this morning, "waves tend to get an assist from stuff like this."
I wanted to take a look at five cases similar to Collins where, either because of death or scandal, a candidate was forced off of the ballot and how the party reacted, as well as what the end result was for the election in question. While it's quite common for a candidate to end their campaign and still be on the ballot in the primary (for example, State Sen. Bobby Joe Champion will appear on the MN-5 ballot this Tuesday in Minneapolis despite having suspended his campaign in June), general elections are rarer, particularly competitive ones (or ones that would become competitive as a result of the drop-out), but I do have five that fall under this umbrella in somewhat recent history. As you can see, things tend to get wild when these sorts of situations occur.
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| Gov. Mel Carnahan (D-MO) |
The Candidates: Sen. John Ashcroft (R), who won in a landslide during the Republican Revolution of 1994, was facing off against popular sitting Gov. Mel Carnahan (D), in one of the tightest elections in the country.
The Drop-Out: On October 16th, while headed to a presidential debate in St. Louis, Carnahan died in a plane crash along with his son and a campaign advisor. At that point in the campaign, it was too late for Carnahan to be replaced on the ballot. Ashcroft suspended his campaign and George W. Bush & Al Gore paid respects to Carnahan at the beginning of the debate, but eventually it was announced by the new governor (Roger Wilson) that he would appoint Carnahan's widow Jean, who ran on a campaign of "I'm Still with Mel" and Ashcroft resumed his campaigning.
The Result: In a very close election (in a year famous for them), Mel Carnahan defeated John Ashcroft, becoming the first deceased person ever to be elected to the Senate, by just two points. Despite this being legally questionable at the time, Ashcroft didn't contest the results, instead becoming President Bush's Attorney General and Carnahan's wife Jean took the Senate seat.
And Then What Happened...: With all of these races, it's worth asking the question of how long the accidental win or loss actually held, and from the human aspect-what happened to the key players? In this case for the former question, not particularly long. Sen. Jean Carnahan voted against John Ashcroft's nomination as AG (a move that was not well-received by Missouri's public), and subsequently lost in the 2002 midterms to Rep. Jim Talent, who would also fall in a wave four years later to Claire McCaskill, Missouri's first elected female senator. Carnahan's children would also be political players, but both Robin and Russ would eventually lose in waves and redistricting. And John Ashcroft would have one of the most controversial tenures in American history as AG, putting his stamp on the Patriot Act and becoming forever intertwined with the Abu-Ghraib torture scandal.
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| Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-NJ) |
The Candidates: First-term Senator Robert Torricelli (D), a longtime Democratic political player and relative neophyte Mayor Doug Forrester (R)
The Drop-Out: Torricelli had been dogged by scandal most of his tenure in the Senate. It had been revealed that six of his donations to his 1996 election campaign had been made illegally, and he had received admonishment from the US Senate Ethics Committee for his involvement with donor David Chang. Faced with scandal and terrible poll numbers, Torricelli dropped out of the race on September 30th, not wanting to cost the Democrats their one-seat majority in the Senate.
The Result: Democrats quickly tried to get a replacement for Torricelli, initially wanting former Sen. Bill Bradley (who declined), and considered Reps. Robert Menendez, Robert Andrews, and Frank Pallone, as well as former Gov. Brendan Byrne. They settled upon former Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who had retired just two years earlier and had thus been Torricelli's colleague. Despite being from the state and party, the two men famously detested each other (during a particularly infamous row, Torricelli once yelled at Lautenberg at a Senate luncheon "I'm going to cut off your balls!"), which surely added salt to the wound for Torricelli. Forrester sued, saying the deadline had passed (it had), but the Supreme Court ruled that Lautenberg could be on the ballot (a questionable decision in hindsight, though it did favor the public good to have a choice in the election even if the law was pretty clearly on Forrester's side). Lautenberg bested Forrester by nine points and rejoined the Senate.
And Then What Happened...: Nothing, really. Lautenberg had regretted retiring in the first place, disliking life outside public office, and won reelection in 2008, dying in 2013 while still a sitting senator. Forrester became the Republican nominee for governor in 2005, but lost by a similar margin to Sen. Jon Corzine, and then retreated into public life. And despite spending a good chunk of last year threatening to primary Sen. Bob Menendez (who was Corzine's replacement in the Senate and who also faced his own series of ethics issues), Torricelli has also never gone back into public life.
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| Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-MN) |
The Candidates: Two-term Sen. Paul Wellstone (D) and St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman (R), who were running in a nail-biter election that Wellstone was starting to gain ground in according to polls at the time.
The Drop-Out: Paul Wellstone, along with seven other people including his wife Sheila, died in a plane crash on October 25, 2002, less than two weeks before the election (like Carnahan, he was also headed to a debate at the time). Despite the closeness to the election, Minnesota was more prepared for such an event than New Jersey and Missouri (perhaps because in 1990 the Republicans had to replace Jon Grunseth with Arne Carlson with an even shorter window period), and so Wellstone was quickly replaced on the ballot by former Vice President Walter Mondale, who pledged to only serve one term.
The Result: Mondale probably would have won had it not been for Rick Kahn turning Wellstone's memorial into a political spectacle. As someone who was in the room for it (I was in high school at the time), I can tell you there was a lot of nervous energy emanating from the Williams Arena, and Republicans probably knew by the end of the night that this wasn't going to be a repeat of the Carnahan loss, where it became impossible to run against a dead man. The GOP lambasted Democrats for trying to gain points off of Wellstone's death, and it worked-despite leading in most polls, Mondale lost the general election, becoming the only person in history to have lost an election in all fifty states.
And Then What Happened...: Mondale kept to his word, never running for public office again though he continues to be active in the party. Coleman would serve only one term in the Senate, six years later losing by just 312 votes to Al Franken in one of the closest elections in American history. Despite pledging to replace Wellstone with a Democrat (the rumor at the time was that it would be Housing Executive Rebecca Yanisch), Gov. Jesse Ventura, never one to turn down a chance to grandstand, announced his disgust with the Wellstone Memorial (he, along with Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, were booed at the event), and appointed Dean Barkley to finish out Wellstone's term, an 8-week tenure he's been milking ever since. And Rick Kahn disappeared into obscurity, a swear word that DFLers (myself included) can't say without anger and sadness over what might have been.
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| House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) |
The Candidates: Rep. Tom DeLay (R), former House Majority Leader, and former Rep. Nick Lampson (D), the latter of whom lost his first seat thanks to DeLay's controversial mid-decade redistricting plan in 2004.
The Drop-Out: Tom DeLay's fall as one of the most powerful men in America is so long-and-drawn out it's hard to remember all of the details. By 2006, after he'd won the primary, he'd already been forced to resign as House Majority Leader and had been indicted on conspiracy charges. It was in June, though, after the primaries (which he won quite handily), that he was forced to drop off of the ballot (his former aide Tony Rudy had just pled guilty in the Jack Abramoff scandal, which would take down several House Republicans before the year was out). Texas law was very clear that you could only be replaced on the ballot if you were ineligible, and though Republicans appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, the judiciary said that declaring DeLay ineligible to run would be a violation of the Constitution (in a chapter I hadn't remembered from this saga, it was oddly Antonin Scalia who put the final stake in the coffin of replacing DeLay). As a result, the Republicans mounted a write-in candidacy with Houston City Councilor Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, who was also running in the special election; Lampson shrewdly declined to run in the special election, making it look as if they were completely different races on the ballot since they shared no major party candidates.
The Results: Lampson pulled off an 8-point victory, with Sekula-Gibbs' write-in campaign getting her 42% of the vote, delivering the Democrats arguably their most conservative seat in the country. Lampson's decision to forego the special election assured victory for Sekula-Gibbs, who served seven weeks in the House.
And Then What Happened...: Lampson lost his 2008 race, as this was clearly a one-and-done situation (this was seat that was an impossible hold for Democrats), though thanks to the Democrats' great turnout that year, he only lost by seven points. He would go on to lose another single-digit race in conservative territory in 2012, though to date he has yet to serve in Congress again. Sekula-Gibbs would be lambasted as a joke in Washington, eaten alive for her overzealousness by the DC press; one memorable quote of what she wanted to accomplish in her short tenure were "tax cuts...immigration reform...and a good solution for the war in Iraq," and pledged to get to know every single member of the House despite being there as long as most people keep sour cream in their fridge. She would run for the seat again in 2008, but lose in a landslide to Pete Olson (still an incumbent). And DeLay would go from being one of the most important men in Washington to being a sequin-bedecked loser on Dancing with the Stars.
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| Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) |
The Candidates: Six-term Rep. Mark Foley (R) and businessman Tim Mahoney (D)
The Drop-Out: While I think that the Collins comparison is more apt if you make it to DeLay (a similar scandal in a comparably-partisan district), most people will more easily recall the Mark Foley scandal, considering it rocked DC at the time. Foley, a conservative Florida legislator long-rumored to be gay, resigned on September 29th, seemingly out-of-the-blue (I remember following a political blog at the time and seeing the real-time internet reactions to this story), when later that day ABC News reported that he had exchanged sexually explicit IM's with multiple teenage House pages. Dennis Hastert had demanded Foley resign immediately (ten years later we'd understand the disgusting irony of Hastert trying to claim the moral high ground), which he got, but that left him with no candidate to run in the race to replace Foley, which was a problem as Hastert's majority was very much up-for-grabs and he couldn't afford to be surrendering seats. Republicans were stuck with Foley's name on the ballot, and chose State Rep. Joe Negron as their nominee (who adopted the clever phrase "Punch Foley for Joe!" as his election slogan).
The Results: In a tight race, Mahoney triumphed over Foley/Negron, besting them by 2-points in a closer-than-expected election. The Republicans had not lost the seat since 1973. Foley's scandal came very close to also taking down two members of the House GOP leadership (NRCC Chair Tom Reynolds and House Republican Conference Chair Deborah Pryce), both of whom retired soon after, and Hastert lost his Speaker's gavel and quickly retired.
And Then What Happened...: Mahoney would be the definition of an accidental congressman, eventually succumbing to his own sex scandal (he was accused of paying one of his mistresses a bribe to be quiet), and losing in a landslide election to Rep. Tom Rooney in 2008, one of the few incumbent Democrats to lose that cycle (he would three years later be arrested for a DUI). Foley came out publicly as a gay man and entered the Palm Beach real estate market, most recently making news for his appearance at a Trump rally in 2016. Joe Negron, who nearly went to Congress, ended up having a long career in the Florida legislature, eventually becoming the Florida Senate President (an office he currently holds). And of course Dennis Hastert, after resigning shortly into the next Congress, would ten years later be sentenced to jail for a "structuring" felony when it was revealed that he had abused teenage boys when he was a wrestling coach in Yorkville, Illinois.
So what does this mean for NY-27 circa 2018? As you can see, things are likely to get weird here. Unless Republicans can find a loophole, it's entirely possible that the Democrats could get a one-term congressman out of this (in this case Green Island Town Supervisor Nick McMurray), though you have to assume that they are wishing they'd convinced former Congresswoman and current-Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul to run for this seat as was the rumor for a while (considering what a thankless job LG of NY is, Hochul is probably wishing that too) as she'd be a stronger candidate than a complete unknown. With the math looking tight for the House majority in November, losing a generally safe seat due to scandal would help Nancy Pelosi out tremendously, particularly considering the elections of Nick Lampson & Tim Mahoney in 2006 were (in part) what got her the Speaker's gavel in the first place.
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