Can a presidential candidate (Kerry, in this case) nominate anyone he wishes as his running mate (if they are willing to accept the nomination), or are there are legal stipulations on his choice?
Does he have to pick someone affiliated with the Democratic Party? Does he have to pick someone from a political career? Of course these things (and many other considerations) may be prudent and wise to consider, but what is the actual strict position?
I would assume that the only existing legal necessity is that the VP is over 35 and US born? (to qualify for presidential duties should Kerry die). Is this the case?
As a purely hypothetical scenario, could Kerry name other standing presidential candidates (i.e. *could * he name Ralph Nader as VP) if this arrangement was considered to offer better chance of winning?
Good question. I don’t know the answer, but it’d be interesting to know if he could just choose some random bozo off the street and say “Hey, you’re the next VP!”
The VP can be anyone who is eligible to be president under the constitution: over 35, a natural born citizen, etc.
There is no stipulation he belong to the same party as the presidential candidate (Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, ran with Andrew Johnson, a lifelong Democrat, though one who supported Lincoln’s policies). IIRC, if the president and VP come from the same state, there’s an electoral vote issue (that’s why Cheney changed his residence to Wyoming in 2000), but that’s about it.
Kerry doesn’t have to pick a Democrat, though he undoubtedly will. As Chuck mentioned, Abe Lincoln had a Democrat as his Vice President in his second term. Lincoln was trying to show, by picking a Southern Democrat as his running mate, that he bore the South no ill will, and that they could hope for decent treatment if and when the Union won the Civil War.
I don’t THINK there’d be any similar symbolic value for Kerry if he chose a Republican, and I’m pretty sure it would never happen… but he COULD pick a Republican or Independent or Socialist if he wanted to.
Nor is there any requirement that the person selected must have any background or experience in government. Kerry will amost certainly pick someone who’s served in Congress or as a governor, but if he wanted to pick Barbra Streisand or Michael Moore, he could. (Richard Nixon, apparently, WANTED to pick football coach Vince Lombardi as his running mate, and was crushed to learn that, like most blue-collar New York Italians, Vince was a Democrat).
The snag is, he’d have to get his choice confiremd by the delegates at the Democratic convention. While that’s always been a rubber-stamp process up til now, the delegates MIGHT reject someone who was regarded as a flaky choice.
And, as Chuck noted, electoral rules would not allow a ticket with a President and a Veep from the same state. Or, more precisely, Kerry COULD pick Ted Kennedy as his running mate, but that ticket wouldn’t be able to claim the electoral votes of Massachusetts (unless Kennedy pulled a Cheney and declared that his ski lodge in Colorado was now his legal residence).
Thus, assuming that you don’t want to punt the votes for vice-president of whatever state the candidate calls home, you have to make sure the candidate for President and the candidate for Vice-President inhabit different states.
In 2000, had Mr. Cheney not taken up residence in Wyoming, then the electors from Texas would have had to vote for someone else for Vice-President, assuming they went ahead and voted for Mr. Bush for President. This would have resulted in Mr. Lieberman becoming the Vice-President.
Technically, of course, the party nominates both the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates. Normally the nomination of the Vice President is strictly a rubber-stamping of the Presidential candidate’s choice.
In 1944, Henry Wallace was Roosevelt’s first choice to be VP, but the party bosees pushed Harry Truman.
In 1956, Adlai Stevenson left the Vice Presidential selection process to the convention delegates, and they eventually settled on Estes Kefauver.
In 1980 there was a push at the Republican convention to nominate Gerald Ford to run with Ronald Reagan. However, neither Ford nor Reagan was what you’d call excited about the prospect, and the delegates wound up ratifying Reagan’s choice, GHW Bush.
Not quite the same thing, but in the election of 1808, the sitting Vice-President ran for re-election as Veep, and also got himself nominated for President. He collected some Electoral votes for both positions, and was re-elected Vice-President.
George Clinton of New York was Jeffererson’s veep in his second term, after Jefferson dumped Burr. When Jefferson’s second term ended, Madison got the nod to be the Democratic-Republican candidate for President, with Clinton as the veep candidate. However, Clinton also got himself nominated for President in at least one state, his home state of New York.
On the President ballot, Madison got 122 votes for President, Pinckney of South Carolina, his main opponent, got 47, and Clinton got 6 votes for President, all from New York.
On the veep ballot, Clinton got 113 votes, edging out Pinckney’s running mate Rufus King, who got 47 votes. Of the 6 New York electors who voted for Clinton for President, 3 voted for Madison for veep, and 3 voted for Monroe.
As far as I know, this was the only time since the passage of Amendment XII that the same person ran for both positions with the nomination of a major party for one of the positions.
In fact, a few (not entirely serious) persons have suggested that John Kerry select Bill Clinton as his running mate. Even though Bill Clinton is not eligible to be elected President again (that pesky post-FDR Constitutional amendment), he could still become President if he were chosen as VP and something then happened to the sitting President.
I don’t see any likelihood of this happening (what candidate wants to be less charismatic and get less attention than his running mate), but it makes for some interesting “what ifs”!
If the VP selection in 2000 had gone to the Senate, that would have been a real mess as the Senate was split 50-50 in 2000.
And I don’t know if there is any provision for the VP to cast a deciding vote in that situation. If so, the VP at the time of the vote counting would have been Al Gore. Who would have been in the unique position to set up the first time that the President and VP were from opposing parties and hostile to each other’s interests since 1800.
The 12th A. states that no one ineligible for the office of President can be VP. There’s nothing in the Constitution that states Clinton is ineligible for the office of president, just that he’s not eligible to be elected president again. It’s in the 22d Amendment, Section 1:
But that amendment speaks only to elections, not actual service in office. I don’t see anything in there to suggest that Clinton is ineligible to be president as long as he gets there by one of the handful of routes other than election. Therefore, he’s eligible for the office, therefore he’s eligible to be VP. And since the VP has no term-limit restrictions, anyone who is eligible to serve as VP is eligible to run.
I’ll go so far as to admit this is an open question, although I think the answer is rather clear. However, if it were ever to come to pass, the courts would never hear it – this is the type of political question that they think is best left to the electorate to decide.
In many states, the electors are not required to vote for the person they were pledged to represent. What if Lieberman didn’t want to be in a Republican Administration, largely a figure head, or Cheney knew he couldn’t win in the Senate. Then you might have had one or both parties getting their electors to vote for another person, to get their choice in the top two slots.
Possibly, this could have resulted in a cross-double cross situation where neither Lieberman or Cheney were possible VPs candidates in the Senate. Democrat electors choose the most liberal Republican and vice versa
When Victoria Woodhull made her mostly symbolic Presidential run in 1872, she chose Frederick Douglass as her Vice Presidential candidate. However, she had not discussed this with Douglass before hand and when he found out he was on the ballot, he was opposed to the idea. So apparently it’s not necessary to agree to, or even be aware of, your name being put forth to become a candidate for the Vice Presidency.