Richard Nixon

Would history have taken a different path if Hubert Humphrey had chosen San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto as his running mate? In late August 1968, just days before the Democratic National Convention opened in Chicago, Humphrey aides leaked the names of the leading candidates for the Vice Presidential nomination: Edmund Muskie, the Senator from Maine who was eventually picked ; Senator Fred Harris of Oklahoma; former Ambassador to France Sargent Shriver, the father of First Lady Maria Shriver; and Alioto.

The last time Republicans won a Bay Area House seat was in 1972, when William Mailliard won re-election to an eleventh term. Mailliard resigned his seat in Congress in 1974 when Richard Nixon appointed him to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS).  Democrat John Burton, then a State Assemblyman and Democratic Party Chairman – and the brother of powerful Rep. Phil Burton – captured the seat in a June Special Election over Republican Thomas Claylor by a margin of more than 2-1.

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. 

Would history have taken a different path if Hubert Humphrey had chosen San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto as his running mate? In late August 1968, just days before the Democratic National Convention opened in Chicago, Humphrey aides leaked the names of the leading candidates for the Vice Presidential nomination: Edmund Muskie, the Senator from Maine who was eventually picked ; Senator Fred Harris of Oklahoma; former Ambassador to France Sargent Shriver, the father of First Lady Maria Shriver; and Alioto.