Just a reminder why (temporary?) disability should not be a bar to office:
http://deadsenator.com/
First Dead Guy Elected to U.S. Senate
On November 7, 2000, voters in Missouri elected Mel Carnahan to the U.S. Senate. The unusual part of this is that he died in October in a plane crash.
Was this a vote of sympathy for the former state governor or was it a show of discontent for both candidates?
Current Governor Roger Wilson is expected to appoint Carnahan's widow to the Senate seat. She has said she will accept and carry out her late husband's vision.
The Republican candidate, John Ashcroft, suspended his campaign assuming he would easily win the Senate seat with no opposition. But, it appears the voters did not want him to remain in office. They showed in their vote they would rather have their state represented by a dead man than the current incumbent.
However, the Republican party is trying to overturn this decision, saying that the elected candidate is not an "inhabitant" of the state.
Although Carnahan is the first deceased candidate to win a U.S. Senate seat, there have been several deceased people elected to the U.S. House. This includes Hale Boggs and Nick Begich who were presumed dead in an airplane crash in 1972. Also, in 1962, Clement Miller narrowly beat out Don Claussen a few weeks after Miller died in a plane crash.
http://www.rightpundits.com/?p=6061
Dead Man Elected Mayor on Anti-Obama Message?
The electorate is getting desperate in the Obama recession as news of a dead man elected mayor hits our editorial desk. Meet Carl Robin Geary Sr. of Tracy, Tennessee who won the mayor’s race after passing into the afterlife on March 10th, 2010.
The very dead Geary was elected by a whopping 268-85 vote margin in the small rural town, defeating a progressive incumbent mayor named Barbara Brock who became more and more unpopular as her term progressed.
She was a typical big spending politician in the mold of Obama himself who saw her role as mayor as an opportunity to spend freely in the small town. Her idea of “beautifying” Tracy Tennessee with bloated local government spending programs prompted a visceral reaction among the town’s people.
Like many small towns around America, the residents are seeing their jobs and prospects disappear under onerous federal government programs that tax the life out of the community they knew. The last straw for them was seeing their own locally elected leader following a reckless spending scheme.
Enough is enough, they said, and installed a dead guy as their new mayor. Apparently Carl Robin Geary could do no more harm as an elected official so they took their chances with the corpse. He won with 75% of the vote.
You can read about this interesting story here and here and here.
Curious as to reader thoughts about Carl Robin Geary, the dead man elected mayor of Tracy Tennessee in the Age of Obama. What does this story say about the political climate heading into the mid-term elections?
https://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/72801
4 Dead Politicians Who Still Got Elected
by Colin Perkins - November 3, 2010 - 5:11 PM
California State Senator Jenny Oropeza easily won re-election yesterday – despite having passed away back on October 20th from complications caused by a blood clot. Although the illness left her largely absent from the campaign trail, Oropeza still managed to claim victory by a 58%-36% margin.
Oropeza’s story is rare, but certainly not unprecedented in the history of American elections. Here are a few recent examples of people who refused to let death stand in the way of electoral victory:
1. Missouri Senator Mel Carnahan
Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan famously won election to the Senate in Missouri in 2000 – 38 days after passing away in a plane crash that also claimed the lives of his son and a campaign advisor. Carnahan beat incumbent Senator John Ashcroft – who would soon move on to serve as U.S. Attorney General for President George W. Bush. Carnahan’s wife filled his spot in the Senate until a 2002 special election.
2. Tracy City Mayor Carl Geary
Earlier this year, voters in the small town of Tracy City, Tennessee, handed Carl Geary an overwhelming 285-85 victory in the city’s mayoral race – ousting incumbent Barbara Brock in the process. Geary was unable to accept, of course, because he’d passed away of a heart attack a month before the election.
To some voters, Geary’s victory seemed to be a tribute of sorts; to others, it was a lesser-of-two-evils decision. In a Telegraph story on the vote, Geary’s wife Susan is quoted as saying “The day he passed away, people were calling with condolences and saying, ‘We’re still voting for him.’”
“I knew he was deceased,” said another voter. “I know that sounds stupid, but we wanted someone other than [Brock].” Interestingly, Brock had been appointed mayor less than two years earlier, when the sitting mayor died of a heart attack.
3. Winfield Mayor Harry Stonebraker
Missouri voters were at it again in 2009 when the town of Winfield’s recently deceased incumbent mayor Harry Stonebraker won a 4th term with a staggering 90% of the vote. According to the NY Daily News, Stonebraker’s death from a heart attack only seemed to bolster the popularity he’d garnered, in part, by helping citizens recover from a flood that had ravaged the town the year before.
For his part, Stonebraker’s opponent, Bernie Panther, was completely unable to convince people that he was a better option than their dearly-departed hero – and received only 23 total votes as a result.
4. U.S. Representative Patsy Mink
Patsy Mink was a trailblazing politician who served the state of Hawaii for 12 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. According to the National Women’s Hall of Fame, in 1964 Mink became “the first woman of color elected to the national legislature and the first Asian-American congresswoman.” After a stint serving in the President Carter’s administration and as a member of the Honolulu City Council, Mink returned to the U.S House of Representatives in 1990 – serving until she died of pneumonia weeks before election day in 2002. A few weeks after receiving a state funeral, Mink was honored once again when the voters of Hawaii re-elected her to Congress – a seat that was re-assigned a few months later after a special election.
BRAINS
MORE BRAINS!
-t
ps: anyone notice a trend here, as to how often politicians die in plane crashes? Totally blows the curve as to how often citizens or even members of the military die in plane crashes.
