Perennial candidates that eventually won

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Bernie Sanders lost 4 elections before his first win and lost 6 statewide elections before his first win statewide. If he hadn't lost elections, he'd have become Senator before Biden and would be the longest serving Senator ever.

[Open Source Intelligence]

The most successful might be Bernie.

Part of the typical definition of perennial candidates is that they do really poorly at some point. He got under five percent in multiple elections for statewide office before he was elected Mayor of Burlington.

Another one is Joe Hogsett, the mayor of Indianapolis. He was elected Secretary of State in 1990, and would then lost a Senate race in 1992, a House race in 1994 and the race for Attorney General in 2004.

After serving as US Attorney in the Obama administration, he would be elected mayor with more than 60 percent in 2015, and reelected with higher numbers four years later.

The pejorative "perennial candidate" term never gets tagged to people the establishment supports. Hogsett was Evan Bayh's protege and kept getting tabbed because that's who the party supported to win. It wasn't a deal like Hogsett was gamely trying in races he thought he had a small to no chance of winning.

[JMT]

Surprised nobody mentioned Mike Schaefer. He was a San Diego City Councilor and then he ran for 33 offices and won the California State Board of Equalization in a upset in 2018.

With Schaefer, his residence where he ran went as follows: San Diego, CA -> Las Vegas, NV -> San Diego, CA -> Baltimore, MD -> San Diego, CA -> Los Angeles, CA -> San Diego, CA -> Las Vegas, NV -> San Francisco, CA -> Los Angeles, CA -> Las Vegas, NV -> Arizona -> Las Vegas, NV -> Baltimore, MD -> Las Vegas, NV -> Los Angeles, CA -> Palm Springs, CA -> Las Vegas, NV -> Los Angeles, CA -> San Diego, CA.

Holy s**t.

And his residence may be changing again?? Looks like Schaefer has filed to run for U.S. Senate in Nevada… this is especially odd, because he’s a current officeholder in CA. Can he hold office in CA if he lives/is running for office in Nevada?

https://twitter.com/politics1com/status/1755246598374740351?s=46&t=-r8JGlJno...

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

Across the pond, Gordon Birtwistle, the Lib Dem MP for Burnley in the coalition years. He had previously run in 1992, 1997 and 2005, and ran in both elections following his defeat in 2015.

At 80, he’s still a councillor, and may yet run for Parliament (and lose) again one more time.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

No one’s mentioned Althea Garrison, whose a fascinating figure;

From Wikipedia

Political party
Independent (1988, 2000, 2008; since 2012)
Democratic (1982–1986, 1998–1999, 2010–2012)
Republican (1990–1996, 2002–2006)

She has run for the Boston City Council 17 times, Massachusetts house 13 times, Massachusetts Senate 2 times, and just once for the Suffolk County Probate, Mayor of Boston, and Republican Commiteewoman

She won one election, serving one term in the MA House from 1993-1995, during which she was outed as trans and thus subsequently lost re-election. She would later serve on the Boston City Council at-large after Ayanna Pressley became a congresswoman from 2019-2020 due to quirk of election laws, she lost re-election again.

Interesting, despite being trans and having been outed, she invited a notably homophobic pastor to speak at the city council.

[Crumpets]

Kerry Bentivolio. Elected to a suburban MI seat after the incumbent had a 5-minute Presidential campaign, withdrew, then submitted fraudulent signatures for his re-election. The seat was so titanium red that the no-name other Republican still won the seat despite no public profile, only to then serve one term, have the seat rocket leftward in just a few cycles and now be pretty safely Democratic.

Granted, I think Bentivolio only ran in three elections total, but he is very much the profile of a perennial candidate who happened to get lucky.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

No one’s mentioned Althea Garrison, whose a fascinating figure;

Huh a pro-trump Black Trans Conservative in the real-world. Reality is truly stranger than fiction sometimes.

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

No one’s mentioned Althea Garrison, whose a fascinating figure;

Huh a pro-trump Black Trans Conservative in the real-world. Reality is truly stranger than fiction sometimes.

She’s run for office 35 times which might be a record for lowest times won/times run; 3%

[JMT]

Kerry Bentivolio. Elected to a suburban MI seat after the incumbent had a 5-minute Presidential campaign, withdrew, then submitted fraudulent signatures for his re-election. The seat was so titanium red that the no-name other Republican still won the seat despite no public profile, only to then serve one term, have the seat rocket leftward in just a few cycles and now be pretty safely Democratic.

Granted, I think Bentivolio only ran in three elections total, but he is very much the profile of a perennial candidate who happened to get lucky.

Ah, I forgot about Bentivolio! Yeah it looks like he ran unsuccessfully for State Senate in 2010 before being elected to Congress in 2012. But then, after his victory in 2012, he ran unsuccessfully for Congress four times (2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020).

[satsuma]

No one’s mentioned Althea Garrison, whose a fascinating figure;

Huh a pro-trump Black Trans Conservative in the real-world. Reality is truly stranger than fiction sometimes.

She’s run for office 35 times which might be a record for lowest times won/times run; 3%

Wikipedia has dug up 44 runs for office, which would round it down to 2%, not including primary wins that resulted in losses in the general. It's pretty low for a non-zero win %, but many candidates are never elected! Rocky de la Fuente may be elected to something at some point, who knows? With low-level elections, it's never entirely doomed because perennial candidates can gain name recognition, and some offices may be a bit neglected in terms of attracting good candidates.

The quirk in question is that Garrison was 5th place in the at-large seat election which elects 4 city councillors, and then Ayanna Pressley was elected to Congress. I'm not sure how many offices there are in which vacancies can be filled by a runner-up.

In the 1992 state leg election, she defeated Gunnar Hexum in the Republican primary (possibly the brother of an actor who died tragically on-set, and/or a Taunton, MA, business owner, unless other Americans have the same name) and Irene L. Roman in the general, who had in other years lost the Democratic primary for the same office. Perhaps 5th Suffolk was seen as boringly safe-D due to being based in minority neighborhoods, so I wonder how Garrison won it once, but her record in office was apparently non-partisan in a #populist way (pro-union and socially conservative).

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

No one’s mentioned Althea Garrison, whose a fascinating figure;

Huh a pro-trump Black Trans Conservative in the real-world. Reality is truly stranger than fiction sometimes.

She’s run for office 35 times which might be a record for lowest times won/times run; 3%

Wikipedia has dug up 44 runs for office, which would round it down to 2%, not including primary wins that resulted in losses in the general. It's pretty low for a non-zero win %, but many candidates are never elected! Rocky de la Fuente may be elected to something at some point, who knows? With low-level elections, it's never entirely doomed because perennial candidates can gain name recognition, and some offices may be a bit neglected in terms of attracting good candidates.

The quirk in question is that Garrison was 5th place in the at-large seat election which elects 4 city councillors, and then Ayanna Pressley was elected to Congress. I'm not sure how many offices there are in which vacancies can be filled by a runner-up.

In the 1992 state leg election, she defeated Gunnar Hexum in the Republican primary (possibly the brother of an actor who died tragically on-set, and/or a Taunton, MA, business owner, unless other Americans have the same name) and Irene L. Roman in the general, who had in other years lost the Democratic primary for the same office. Perhaps 5th Suffolk was seen as boringly safe-D due to being based in minority neighborhoods, so I wonder how Garrison won it once, but her record in office was apparently non-partisan in a #populist way (pro-union and socially conservative).

Maybe I miscounted, I will admit I had to recount a few times cause I lost count (which says a lot in itself), but as I pointed out she switched parties like a normal person would change clothes, so it doesn’t surprise me she didn’t feel strongly to one party.

[Brittain33]

No one’s mentioned Althea Garrison, whose a fascinating figure;

Huh a pro-trump Black Trans Conservative in the real-world. Reality is truly stranger than fiction sometimes.

It may help to know she never acknowledged being trans but was only outed by the Boston Herald; she identified only a Black Woman (although I think she may have recently finally claimed a trans identity.)

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

No one’s mentioned Althea Garrison, whose a fascinating figure;

Huh a pro-trump Black Trans Conservative in the real-world. Reality is truly stranger than fiction sometimes.

It may help to know she never acknowledged being trans but was only outed by the Boston Herald; she identified only a Black Woman (although I think she may have recently finally claimed a trans identity.)

She did an interview last year where she acknowledges her trans identity, and gives some more biography, like that she transitioned starting the 1960s. 

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Ah yes, Althea Garrison. She's a fascinating person. Posters familiar with South Park will note her surname as particularly on-the-nose. Garrison is of course not entirely unique either among black women or among trans women in being a right-wing #populist , but the sheer concentration of not-exactly-Trumpy identity categories definitely stands out, especially for someone of her generation. She was the first openly (even though not by choice) trans state legislator in the nation's history!

[JMT]

Speaking of Althea Garrison, it looks she’s running for the State House now:

https://twitter.com/gintautasd/status/1757839936873545905?s=46&t=-r8JGlJno4t...