In 1970, there was a three way race for the US Senate from New York. The candidates were Richard Ottinger, the Democrat,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Ottinger a liberal congressman who had shown an interest in the environment before it became fashionable; Charles Goodell, the nominal Republican candidate (he had been a moderate conservative in the House of Representatives but had moved steadily to the left after Governor Rockefeller appointed him to the Senate to fill Robert Kennedy's seat) who also had the backing of the Liberal Party; and James Buckley, the Conservative candidate, who the Nixon-Agnew administration clearly regarded as the
real Republican candidate. (Even Rockefeller thought Goodell had moved too far to the left, and tacitly supported Buckley.) Anyway, Spiro Agnew's baiting of Goodell had exactly the intended effect: it not only rallied Republicans behind Buckley but led some liberals to support Goodell, resulting in a narrow Buckley plurality victory--38.95% Buckley, 36.96% Ottinger, 23.91% Goodell.
http://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=6551Suppose the liberals hadn't foolishly divided their vote and Ottinger had won? (This is one of the rare cases where a
New York Times editorial--they endorsed Goodell--may actually have changed history. [1]) Here's my thought--if he wanted to, he could still be US Senator today! I'm serious about that. He would almost certainly have been re-elected in 1976 (when FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD doomed Republicans in New York). 1982 was a Democratic year, in New York and nationally. In 1988, New York was one of the few states Dukakis carried. 1994 would have been the most difficult year, but Senator Moynihan was easily re-elected in OTL
http://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=3459 and even Governor Cuomo, for all the wear and tear he had accumulated, *almost* won.
http://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=7207 So it's at least conceivable Ottinger could have been re-elected in 1994, and if he had, he could have won in 2000, 2006, and 2012, all good years for Democrats in New York.
So--no Senator Buckley, no Senator Moynihan, no Senator Clinton, no Senator Gillibrand? (And he might even decide to run again in 2018, despite being 89...)
[1] In the first--1972--edition of the
Almanac of American Politics, Michael Barone, who was then still a liberal, made clear his disgust with the
Times on this: 'As a matter of tradition, New York liberals have been very much taken by aloof WASP politicians like Adlai Stevenson; the tradition was bred in the Tammany years, years of cigar-chomping Democratic machine candidates. The New York liberal press works out of this heritage. Its columnists, therefore, plowed through Goodell's conservative House record to find evidence of the man's liberalism and then scanned Ottinger's liberal record to find, as one writer put, 'feet of clay.' The
New York Times editorialized that voters should not be swayed by the polls in which Goodell, whom they had endorsed, was doing badly; as if the right of franchise obliges one to vote for a loser and against somebody who shares his views on the issues. In Manhattan, Goodell won 30% of the vote, as against 14% city-wide. If that 16% had gone for Ottinger, he would have won the election.' p. 509
