Pete McCloskey

Joe Shell was the ultimate political trivia question: who was the only living person to challenge Richard Nixon in a Republican primary in California?  Shell, who passed away last week at the age of 89, was the Minority Leader of the California State Assembly in 1962 when he ran for Governor against Nixon, then the former Vice President of the United States.  Nixon won the primary by 2-1 margin, and went on to lose the general election to incumbent Pat Brown. Nixon’s loss in the 1962 gubernatorial race was his only electoral defeat in California.