Nixon's Early Resignation

On November 3, 1973 President Nixon's two principal lawyers, Fred Buzhardt and Leonard Garment, flew to Key Biscayne, Florida, to recommend that he should resign. Nixon guessed what their mission was and chose not to see them, they debated if they should force their way in to see the President and demand his resignation, but decided not to.

WHAT IF?

Buzhardt and Garment were able to get Nixon meet with them and so convinced him to resign, and as Spiro Agnew resigned just weeks before on October 10 there was no sitting Vice President in office. After President Nixon resigned on noon of November 5, 1973, the presidency passed to the Speaker of the House Democrat Carl Albert of Oklahoma. President Albert refused to effectively reverse the mandate of the Republican landslide victory of 1972, so he announced in a televised address to the nation that he would only serve for one year and would request for Congress to pass a bill to hold a special presidential election on tuesday November 5, 1974. A bill was passed just weeks later, and a presidential election was set for that date.

He also announced that he did not intend to seek the Democratic nomination for the Presidency in the 1974 Presidential election and that he would support Nixon's choice for Vice President, the Minority Leader in the House of Representatives, Republican Congressman Gerald Ford of Michigan.

In the 1974 Primary elections Vice President Ford narrowly outpaced his major Republican opponents California Governor Ronald Reagan and former Texas Governor and Treasury Secretary John Connally. The Democrats finally chose former Vice President and 1968 candidate Hubert Humphrey as their candidate, however in the election Eugene McCarthy and George Wallace chose to run for president as independents. This fractured the Democrat vote and enabled Congressman Ford and his running mate Ronald Reagan to not only win a plurality in the popular vote, but a majority in the Electoral College and therefore the presidency.

As a result of the 1974 presidential election, the four-year cycle of presidential elections in the United States was shifted.

President Ford chose to only serve one term and in 1978, Vice-President Ronald Reagan won the Republican nomination. He defeated the Democrat candidate Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy in the presidential election and went on to serve from 1979 to 1987, defeating Colorado Senator Gary W. Hart in the 1982 election.

In 1986, Democrat Senator John Glenn of Ohio defeated Vice-President Bob Dole. However, President Glenn was defeated in his bid for re-election in 1990 by Republican Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee. President Baker served from 1991 to 1999, defeating former California Governor Jerry Brown in the 1994 election. Vice-President Carroll Campbell was defeated in the 1998 Election by Democrat Governor of West Virginia Gaston Caperton, however Campbell did win the popular vote. President Caperton was re-elected in 2002, defeating Governor Bill Owens of Colorado by a very narrow margin.

The next presidential election will occur on November 7, 2006. The frontrunners to receive the Democratic nomination are Oklahoma Senator Brad Carson, Vice-President Evan Bayh, Pennsylvania Governor Bob Casey Jr. and Mississippi Congressman Gene Taylor. The frontrunners to receive the Republican nomination include 2002 candidate Bill Owens, Florida Governor Katherine Harris, Virginia Senator George Allen and South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds.

The following table summarizes U.S. presidents starting since 1969.