January 2017

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There has been much talk in recent months about the possibility of a contested Presidential nominating convention. But commentators seem to be quite unaware that candidates have often not been decided until later ballots -- sometimes with happy results. Twelve of the Presidential conventions convened over the years by major parties failed to produce a winner on the first ballot. For example, only 22% of the delegates voted for Abraham Lincoln on the first ballot at the Republican convention in 1860. Lincoln eventually won because supporters of William Seward and Salmon Chase adamantly refused to vote for their rival, while delegates who had supported nine other candidates eventually coalesced around Lincoln as the compromise.

This blog was posted Friday January 5, 2007 07:00 AM EST

By Jack Kelly

Congressman Johnson and Mrs. Mattie Malone examine an electric light fixture in May 1941.

(LBJ Library, Photo by Austin Statesman)

We remember Lyndon Johnson as forceful in pushing through his Great Society and civil rights legislation and as beleaguered by the tragedy of Vietnam. We remember him as the master manipulator of the Senate during the 1950s. Another Johnson is less familiar—the young schoolteacher from a humble central Texas background who was elected to Congress when he was 29. That Johnson is the focus of a current exhibit at the LBJ Library and Museum in Austin.