In 1988, Illinois politicians were scrambling to work out a last-minute deal that would provide public financing for a new Chicago White Sox stadium to keep the team from moving to Tampa. The deal needed to be finished by midnight, though, or the legislative session would officially end and the deal could not be passed.

But come the final minutes of the day, the last bits of the deal were still being hammered out. Come midnight, the White Sox would be on their way to Tampa. To avoid that, governor Big Jim Thompson simply unplugged the official state clock to give lawmakers extra time. An official state document logging the time of passage as 12:03 AM had white-out administered to change it to 11:59.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3918551&forum_id=2#35604450)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentucky_gubernatorial_election,_1899

The 1899 election in Kentucky was an extremely bitter one. Democratic nominee William Goebel alienated much of his party with his political tactics, causing a party split and large-scale defections to Republican William Taylor. As a result, despite the heavily Democratic skew of the state, Taylor won the election by just over 2,000 votes and was inaugurated.

In response, Goebel cried voter fraud and appealed to a state election board he had created and filled with loyalists. Even this board supported Taylor's win, though.

But Goebel wouldn't give up. He had the Democrat-dominated Kentucky legislature launch a special committee to investigate "voter fraud" and potentially reverse the results. Amid the tumult, hundreds of Democratic and Republican militia started to pour into Frankfort. Eventually, Goebel was shot by an unknown assailant. As he lay on his deathbed, the state legislature nullified thousands of Taylor votes and named him governor. He was sworn in but died a few days later.

To avoid being charged as a conspirator in Goebel's assassination, Taylor fled to Indiana. Indiana's Republican governor refused to extradite him.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3918551&forum_id=2#35604585)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Blanton

Blanton was a classic corrupt patronage politician. He sold criminal pardons and liquor licenses and exploited his position to provide lavish experiences for himself and his friends. He even openly set up city-level "patronage committees" staffed by his allies.

Blanton's behavior was blatant, and he showed no signs of slowing down after Republican Lamar Alexander was elected to replace him. Instead, with just a few days left in office, Blanton began handing out dozens of corrupt pardsons. Most infamously, Blanton pardoned the son of a political ally who had murdered his ex-wife and her "male companion" by shooting them 18 times with a Derringer he reloaded at least 8 times.

Even Tennessee Democrats were aghast. The Lt. Governor and state house speaker (both Democrats) decided to act after they noticed the Tennessee Constitution was vague about when a newly-elected governor took office. To stop Blanton from selling more pardons (or even pardoning himself), they simply moved up Alexander's inauguration by three days and kicked him out of office.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3918551&forum_id=2#35604716)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Langer

First off, Langer graduated at the top of his class at Columbia Law, but instead of doing BIGLAW decided to go back and be a small-town lawyer in Mandan, North Dakota. In the 30s, he got elected governor, but made ONE WRONG MOVE by ordering state employees to donate to his political party, the Non-Partisan League. This brought about a federal criminal conviction, but Langer went down swinging. After the state supreme court ordered his removal, Langer met at his home with a few friends, declared martial law, and announced that North Dakota was seceding from the United States.

Langer was later convinced to stand down, but he didn't give up. He managed to appeal and BEAT his original conviction, then got elected governor again. He later became a senator, and was seated despite the Senate finding him guilty of "moral turpitude."

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3918551&forum_id=2#35604967)

lmao

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3918551&forum_id=2#35608427)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Court_%E2%80%93_New_Court_controversy

During a depression, the Kentucky legislature passed some extremely pro-debtor economic legislation, but it was nullified by the state Court of Appeals. So, the legislature simply ABOLISHED the Court of Appeals and created a new court filled with more sympathetic justices. The Old Court refused to recognize the New Court, and it kept to convene as usual with the support of pro-Old Court partisans. The crisis grew so severe that civil war was a possibility, and one lawmaker proposed the desperate solution of resetting the entire government by having all appointed and elected officeholders resign.

Eventually, the Old Court supporters won out politically by retaking the legislature, and eventually the New Court wasn't just abolished, but all its decisions were nullified and struck from the record.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3918551&forum_id=2#35605111)

http://www.cobbles.com/simpp_archive/linkbackups/ellis-arnall_threegovernors.htm

Following the 1946 election, Georgia's governor-elect, Eugene Talmadge, died before taking office. State law was unclear about what should happen in that case. Georgia had just passed a new law creating a Lt. Governor position, but the law didn't explicitly cover the period between election and inauguration. Did the lt. governor-elect become governor, or did the state legislature pick from among the losing candidates? And should one of them be sworn in immediately, or should the outgoing governor remain until the crisis was resolved?

Ultimately, the whole mess got mixed up with dynastic politics, because the dead governor-elect's son, Herman, had arranged for himself to receive write-in votes, anticipating his selection by the legislature following his father's death (he was very sick even during the race).

Partisans for Herman Talmadge dominated the legislature, and named him the governor. But sitting Gov. Ellis Arnall refused to yield power, calling Talmadge a "pretender." Both of them showed up at the capitol claiming to be governor. So, Talmadge had the National Guard seize the governor's office and changed the locks.

Eventually, though, Lt. Governor Melvin Thompson won out in the Supreme Court, and became governor. Herman Talmadge wouldn't be denied, though, and he won the 1948 gubernatorial election.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3918551&forum_id=2#35606921)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorr_Rebellion

Rhode Island had an ultra-shitcon constitution that prioritized rural representation and only gave property-owning white men the vote. This guy named Thomas Dorr initially tried peaceful political change, but finally he got fed up, so he and some allies went and drafted a new constitution and held an unofficial referendum approving it. Dorr declared himself the state's governor under the constitution, and for a spell there were two rival governments in Rhode Island. Eventually, Dorr and his supporters tried to capture the state's arsenal in Providence, but retreated after there cannon failed to fire. Dorr was later arrested and sent to prison along with several supporters, but was pardoned a short time later. He did get his wish, though; the Rhode Island legislature was spooked and passed a new constitution of its own that granted near-universal white male suffrage for native-born residents (immigrants were still restricted).

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3918551&forum_id=2#35607396)

Shortly after the downfall of Wild Bill Langer, reporter Thomas Moodie ran as a Democrat and won, beating out Langer's wife Lydia. But right after his inauguration, it was discovered that Moodie had been voting in Minnesota elections and therefore didn't meet constitutional residency requirements. He was removed after a month in office.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3918551&forum_id=2#35607857)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Frazier

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3918551&forum_id=2#35607960)

Also a farmer MAF about a parking ticket got a referendum passed banning parking meters which remains in force today.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3918551&forum_id=2#35608003)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnburners_and_Hunkers

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3918551&forum_id=2#35608655)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_gubernatorial_election,_1966

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3918551&forum_id=2#35608668)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleman_Livingston_Blease

Blease began his tenure by denouncing soft drinks at his inauguration.

"I also, in this connection, beg leave to call your attention to the evil of the habitual drinking of Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, and such like mixtures, as I fully believe they are injurious. It would be better for our people if they had nice, respectable places where they could go and buy a good, pure glass of cold beer, than to drink such concoctions."

As governor, Blease pardoned more than 1,500 criminals, including several murderers, on the grounds that he wanted to "give the poor devils a chance." He was a major supporter of former lt. governor James Tillman, who had murdered a hostile newspaper editor in broad daylight and been acquitted; Blease argued that editors who published politicians' speeches should be imprisoned. That was less of a concern for him, as his speeches were so vulgar they were frequently censored in print, and in one case a veto message was so inflammatory state lawmakers had it purged from state records.

Blease's actual policies were regarded as erratic and were extremely shitcon. Among other things, he vetoed mandatory school attendance bills and opposed workplace safety legislation on liberty of contract grounds. When South Carolina elected a progressive to replace him, he was so MAF he resigned early to avoid attending the inauguration.

South Carolina later sent him to the Senate, where he denounced President Hoover for inviting a black woman to the White House, because it was the "White House" after all.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3918551&forum_id=2#35608827)

http://www.bluejersey.com/tag/9175/

The 1838 election was closely contested between the Whigs and Democrats. On election day, Whigs took all six congressional seats (all were elected on a statewide vote), but five won by just a handful of votes.

After the voting, though, it emerged that two Whig county clerks had nullified the results from two Democratic towns; if they'd been counted five of the six Whigs would have lost.

But there was more kookiness. Officially, election results were only certified through the use of the Great (or Broad) Seal of New Jersey, signed by the Governor. Well, NJ had a Whig governor, and he used a technicality to declare he couldn't restore the missing Democratic votes, and provided a signed Seal to the Whig delegation. But the Democrats were MAF, so they simply created their OWN copy of the Great Seal and placed it on their own election certificates.

When Congress met in 1839, two New Jersey delegations arrived, both of them bearing a certificate with the Great Seal. Not only that, but the House was almost evenly split, so the victorious delegation would decide control of Congress, and until a resolution was reached no Speaker could be chosen. This resulted in total deadlock, until former president John Quincy Adams was chosen as a compromise "chairman" to deal with the crisis. Eventually, strong evidence of the Whig electoral fraud came out, and the Democratic delegation was seated in summer 1840...only to promptly lose their seats to the same set of six Whigs in the landslide of 1840.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3918551&forum_id=2#35610891)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_gubernatorial_election,_1986

Big Jim Thompson (who hadn't pulled his clock stunt yet) was running for a fourth term as Illinois's governor, and Democrats had good reason to think he was beatable. Four years before, Adlai Stevenson III had lost by just 5,000 votes, and he was back for a rematch.

But then something bizarre happened. Like several states, Illinois didn't have a shared ticket for governor and lt. governor, and instead had separate primaries for both. In a bizarre twist, the Democratic primaries for lt. governor and secretary of state were both won by followers of Lyndon LaRouche, a political eccentric and conspiracy theorist known for alleging that an "Anglo-Dutch" imperialist plot controls the world.

Rather than run alongside the LaRouchians, Stevenson disavowed his own party and ran under the third-party "Solidarity" label, borrowed from the Polish labor movement that was very popular in Illinois's large Polish community. He lost by 12 points.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3918551&forum_id=2#35611106)

Gray Davis, a Democrat, won reelection by a healthy margin in 2002, but that was despite having low job approval and being deeply disliked by voters; he simply defeated relatively weak conservative Republican Bill Simon.

In early 2003, Davis was still really unpopular, so his haters decided to launch a recall effort. With more than $2 million in support from Darrell Issa, the campaign managed to gather more than 1.3 million signatures, triggering a special election.

Making things even funnier was California's recall process. First, Davis would be subject to an up-or-down recall vote. Then, a second question on the ballot would ask who should replace him. But instead of having an ordinary primary process for the second vote, California law allowed ANYBODY to run, under any party label, as long as they hit a very low requirement (65 signatures + $3,500 for a major party, or 150 signatures and NO fee for a third party). Ultimately, 135 candidates entered the race, including actor Gary Coleman and porn star Mary Carey (who vowed to make lap dances tax deductible).

The top candidates, though, were actor-turned-politician Arnold Schwarzenegger for the Republicans and Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante for the Democrats. Bustamante argued that voters should vote "no" on recalling Davis but "yes" on Bustamante, putting himself in the awkward position of trying to drum up votes while saying he should NOT be governor.

The recall ultimately succeeded, and despite being hindered by fellow Republican Tom McClintock (who himself had 13% of the vote), Schwarzenegger won and became a two-term governor of California. It wouldn't be the first time Republicans found unlikely success by running a novice celebrity for high office.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3918551&forum_id=2#35611223)

Bilbo, who was nicknamed "The Man" because he frequently referring to himself in the third person, believed Mississippi's colleges were full of liberal punks who didn't respect him. He was also annoyed that his effort to move Ole Miss from Oxford to Jackson had failed. So in 1932, Bilbo fired 179 professors from Ole Miss and three other colleges, mostly based on their perceived political offenses. Three college presidents were fired, to be replaced by a realtor, a press agent, and a recent college graduate. The state medical school was taken over by some guy who had once taken a course in dentistry. In response, all four colleges lost accreditation for two years. Bilbo didn't care, and showed his general attitude by holding a press conference while smoking a cigar in his bathtub.

As a side note, Bilbo could conceivably be the most racist person to hold high office in the United States. He once criticized a political opponent for trying to halt a lynching, on the grounds that black people did not warrant protection from the National Guard. He also helped Al Smith carry Mississippi in 1928 (despite his Catholicism) by spreading a rumor that Herbert Hoover once socialized with a black woman. During the Great Depression, Bilbo wrote a book calling for 12 million blacks to be resettled in Liberia as a means of fixing unemployment.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3918551&forum_id=2#35612823)

The two Dakotas were originally incorporated together as Dakota territory, and presumably would have joined as a single large state, especially since they were never particularly populous. But much as the greater United States was divided over north-south sectionalism, so was the land of Dakota. The southern half received the first capital, in Yankton, and generally had more people, close to 90,000 by the 1880 census. The northern half, on the other hand, had only about 35,000.

But the northern half had something the south didn't: A transcontinental railway. Northern Pacific Railway officials colluded with the sheriff of Burleigh County and Dakota governor Nehemiah Ordway to have the capital moved from Yankton to Bismarck, which was relatively isolated from all other population centers but sat right on Northern Pacific's rail line. Ordway bribed state officials with promises of colleges and prisons to get them on board with the move, while the Burleigh sheriff used the more blunt mechanism of just handing out bribes. Eventually, a commission voted to move the capital from Yankton to Bismarck. Southern residents were so irate, though, that they got President Chester Arthur to have Ordway arrested and fired.

In response, the territory's southern half demanded to become its own state, though they were only able to pull it off when national Republican interests realized it would be advantageous to create two Republican states rather than one. South Dakota wanted to just enter as "Dakota," while forcing the northern half to become "Lincoln" or "Pembina," but by the 1880s "Dakota" had become a powerful brand name and neither state would give it up.

So instead, there are two Dakotas.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3918551&forum_id=2#35613279)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Henry_Chamberlain

The 1876 gubernatorial campaign in South Carolina was an extremely bitter contest. Daniel Chamberlain, the sitting Republican governor, was a full-blown carpetbagger from Massachusetts, who had served in the Union army and settled in South Carolina after the Civil War. That said, he was actually pretty committed to reform; at one point a senator criticized his anti-corruption efforts by saying "there are five years of good stealing in South Carolina yet."

Democrats waged the 1876 campaign like a military campaign rather than a political one. White militias actively terrorized black voters, while offering bribes and other enticements to those who would consider backing Democratic candidate Wade Hampton. They also showed up at Republican meetings and would troll by demanding equal time.

On election day, Wade Hampton had a narrow lead, but only because in two counties the total Democratic vote count exceeded the number of registered voters; in Edgefield County, the Democratic total exceeded the voting-age population by several thousand. The republican election board refused to certify the results and instead declared Chamberlain the winner. Chamberlain deployed federal troops to keep himself in office (with President Grant's support) while Hampton declared himself governor as well and called on citizens to refuse to pay taxes to Chamberlain. This call was pretty successful, and the Chamberlain government reduced to little more than an armed camp of federal troops.

The standoff might have ended in a small-scale war if not for the 1876 presidential election. Democrats agreed to concede 20 disputed electoral votes to Rutherford Hayes, but only if he agreed to withdraw federal troops from South Carolina and Louisiana. Hayes did so, and consequently forced Chamberlain to flee South Carolina entirely. He moved to New York and became a biglawyer.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3918551&forum_id=2#35622548)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Long#Eccentricity_and_hospitalization

Earl Long was the younger brother of the more famous Huey Long, and was governor of the state three separate times. He was, if anything, even more unusual than his brother, and was famous for his ability to connect with voters through various eccentricities. He carried on a long-running public affair with a stripper, would buy tremendous amounts of random stuff (peanuts, Dr. Pepper, etc.) because it was "on sale," and would go on extended bouts of betting on horse races in neighboring states.

Eventually, his wife became fed up, and alleged that Long was insane, resulting in him being confined to a mental institution. But Long's opponents, who likely helped orchestrate the move, didn't count on one thing: Nothing in Louisiana law removed a governor from power just because he was confined to an asylum. So long continued to run the government by telephone until he fired the head of the state hospital system, appointed a replacement, and had that replacement release him from confinement.

(I've been reading The Earl of Louisiana lately. Fascinating book.)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3918551&forum_id=2#38094449)