It’s easy to keep track of sons of politicians – they generally keep the last names they’re born with. I can think of numerous famous men named Kennedy, Rockefeller, Bush, Taft, or Udall, to name just a few political dynasties. The first Adlai Stevenson was a Vice President of the U.S. way back in the 1890s and, in 1994, Adlai Stevenson V (the fifth!) was born.
Sometimes we don’t notice the daughters of politicians, especially if they change their names after getting married. Let’s look at a few below the fold. You might even say, "Wow, I didn't know she was the daughter of him."
1936: Alf and Nancy
Alfred "Alf" Landon was born in 1887. He supported Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive (Bull Moose) Party in 1912, fought in WWI, and came home to Kansas. He went into the oil business, which made him a millionaire. He got involved in Republican party politics, where he was a leader of the liberal wing of Kansas Republicans in the 1920s. Yes, in the old days, liberal Republicans actually existed.
Landon was elected Governor of Kansas in 1932 and re-elected in 1934. He was the only Republican Governor in the whole country to be re-elected that year.
In 1936, FDR was finishing his first term and was easily renominated. The two major candidates for the Republican nomination were Alf Landon (considered a centrist) and William Borah of Idaho (a liberal). Landon was nominated and then, according to Wikipedia:
Landon proved to be an ineffective campaigner who rarely traveled. Most of the attacks on FDR and social security were developed by Republican campaigners rather than Landon himself. In the two months after his nomination he made no campaign appearances.
No campaign appearances? No wonder Landon lost in a landslide. He received a total of 8 electoral votes from two states (Vermont and Maine).
Alf’s daughter Nancy was born in 1932. She went to college and earned a bachelor’s degree (Kansas) and a master’s (Michigan). She married her college sweetheart, Philip Kassebaum, and she became Nancy Kassebaum.
Kansas elected Kassebaum to the U.S. Senate in 1978 and she was re-elected in ’84 and ’90. She declined to run again in 1996, after 18 years in the Senate. Before leaving, in 1996, she co-sponsored, with Sen. Edward Kennedy, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. She also remarried in 1996, to Sen. Howard Baker of Tennessee.
Here’s a picture of Alf and Nancy:
I don’t know when the picture was taken, but it’s probably after he ran for President but before she ran for Senate.
1940: Hale and Mary
Thomas Hale Boggs was born in 1914. He went to Tulane, where he got a bachelor’s in journalism and a law degree. He practiced law in New Orleans for a few years. In 1940, at the age of 26, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat from Louisiana’s second district. He didn’t get re-elected, so he joined the Navy and fought in WWII.
After the war, in 1946, Hale Boggs ran for Congress again and won in the third district. He would be re-elected 13 times. Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia:
During his tenure in Congress, Boggs was an influential player in the government. After Brown v. Board of Education he signed the Southern Manifesto condemning desegregation in the 1950s and opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Yet unlike most Southern Congressmen of his era, he supported the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Open Housing Act of 1968. He was instrumental in passage of the interstate highway program in 1956 and was a member of the Warren Commission in 1963–1964.
He served as Majority Whip from 1961 to 1970 and as majority leader (from January 1971). As majority whip, he ushered much of President Johnson's Great Society legislation through Congress.
In October, 1972, Hale Boggs was a passenger in a Cessna 310 with a pilot, an Alaska congressman, and an aide. They took off from Anchorage but never arrived in Juneau. The Coast Guard, Navy, and Air Force searched for 39 days, but never found the wreckage. In January, 1973, Hale Boggs was officially declared dead by an act of congress. Boggs had been on the Warren Commission and he had expressed some doubt about the single bullet theory, so his death has led to various speculations by conspiracy theorists. His wife, Lindy Boggs, won the election to replace him, followed by eight successful re-elections.
The fourth child of Hale and Lindy Boggs, Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborne Boggs, was born in 1943. Her brother had trouble pronouncing "Corinne," so he called her "Cokie" and the nickname stuck.
You’ve probably guessed that I’m talking about Cokie Roberts. Incidentally, Cokie’s sister (Barbara Boggs Sigmund) was elected mayor of Princeton, NJ, and also ran for the U.S. Senate.
Cokie Roberts has been a journalist and political commentator on NPR, PBS, ABC, and CBS and has won numerous awards over the years. She’s a regular on the Sunday morning talk shows. She has also authored several books. Also, you might have heard her daughter, Rebecca Roberts, who is a journalist on NPR and satellite radio.
Here’s a young Cokie in her father’s congressional office:
They have similar faces -- look at their eyes and chins.
1946: Urban and Greta
We will begin with two guys named Urban and Joe. (I won’t mention their last names yet.) They became best friends at Marquette University Law School in the 1930s. When Urban got married, he asked Joe to be his best man. When Joe returned to Wisconsin after WWII, he decided to run for U.S. Senate in the 1946 election. His friend Urban became his campaign manager.
The Senate seat was currently held by Robert M. La Follette, Jr., who had taken over the seat after the death of his father, Robert M. "Fighting Bob" La Follette, Sr. Together, the father and son had represented Wisconsin in the Senate for 40 years. Fighting Bob La Follette had run for President in 1924 under the banner of the Progressive Party. He received 17% of the vote and even won the electoral votes from Wisconsin. Remember, in the 1910s and 20s, the Progressives were an offshoot of the Republican Party. According to the Wikipedia article about Fighting Bob La Follette, here’s a list of what he accomplished:
As governor, La Follette championed numerous progressive reforms, including the first workers' compensation system, railroad rate reform, direct legislation, municipal home rule, open government, the minimum wage, non-partisan elections, the open primary system, direct election of U.S. Senators, women's suffrage, and progressive taxation.
...snip...
While in the Senate, he strongly opposed American involvement in World War I and campaigned for child labor laws, social security, women's suffrage, and other progressive reforms. He opposed the prosecution of Eugene V. Debs and other opponents of the war and played a key role in initiating the investigation of the Teapot Dome Scandal during the Harding Administration.
...snip...
A 1982 survey of historians that asked them to rank the "ten greatest Senators in the nation's history" based on "accomplishments in office" and "long range impact on American history," placed La Follette first, tied with Henry Clay.
There’s no doubt that La Follette was one of the good guys of the 20th Century. After he died in 1925, his son Bob Jr. held the Senate seat for 22 years – originally as a Republican, but re-elected twice as a member of the Wisconsin Progressive Party. After the Progressives disbanded, he returned to the Republican Party.
Joe was running for the La Follette Senate seat, with the help of his campaign manager, Urban.
Their full names? Joseph McCarthy and Urban Van Susteren. Here’s a blog with a little more information about Joe and Urban.
The 1946 primary election was nasty. McCarthy attacked La Follette for not enlisting (at the age of 46) and accused him of war profiteering. "Tail Gunner" Joe McCarthy won the Republican primary by only 5,000 votes out of 410,000 and went on to win the general election. And you know where it ended up, with McCarthyism, witchhunts, and blacklists.
I’m sure you’ve guessed by now that Urban was the father of Greta Van Susteren. She first became famous on CNN during the O.J. Simpson trial and then moved to Fox News. She and her husband (a paid advisor to Sarah Palin) are Scientologists. Greta has a sister Lise, a psychiatrist (not a Scientologist) who has been involved in Democratic politics in Maryland.
Here’s a picture from Urban Van Susteren’s wedding (with Joe McCarthy, his best man), with an inset of Greta.
You can see the resemblance, especially in the jaw and the mouth.
1964: William and Stephanie
William Miller got a law degree and then went off to WWII. Afterwards, he spent some time as a staff lawyer at the Nuremberg Trials. He returned to his home, a little north of Buffalo, NY, where he served as a Republican congressman from 1951 to 1965. He also headed the RNC from 1961 to 1964.
Then, in 1964, Barry Goldwater picked Miller as his running mate, in part because he "drove Lyndon Johnson nuts." After their disastrous defeat, Miller returned to New York to practice law. He also appeared in some American Express "Do you know me?" commercials.
His daughter is Stephanie Miller. She started out as a stand-up comic, then got involved in radio. She had a short-lived TV show. She now hosts a syndicated morning radio show that’s available on various progressive talk stations around the country (Stephanie Miller Show). Last week I was listening to her show on KPTK (Seattle) and she mentioned that her father was Goldwater’s running mate – which gave me the idea for this diary.
There's a bit of resemblance in the eyes, I think.
1972: Sargent and Maria
Robert Sargent Shriver, Jr., is probably most famous for being McGovern’s (second) running mate in 1972. McGovern first selected Thomas Eagleton, but Eagleton had failed to disclose some psychiatric issues and resigned from the ticket.
Sargent Shriver had a political pedigree; one of his ancestors signed the Maryland state constitution in 1776. But then he married Eunice Kennedy, the sister of John, Robert, and Edward. He became a Kennedy-in-law.
According to his Wikipedia page, he has done a lot of good things:
Shriver founded numerous social programs and organizations, including Head Start, VISTA, Job Corps, Community Action, Upward Bound, Foster Grandparents, Special Olympics, Legal Services, the National Clearinghouse for Legal Services (now the Shriver Center), Indian and Migrant Opportunities and Neighborhood Health Services, and directed the Peace Corps. Shriver also ran the War on Poverty during Johnson's tenure as president.
Sargent’s daughter, of course, is Maria Shriver – a TV journalist who worked for CBS and NBC. She has also written several books. Sometime after her husband, Arnold Schwarzenegger, became Governor of California, she resigned from her position at NBC. In 2008, Arnold Schwarzenegger declared his support for McCain. Three days later, his wife announced that she supported Obama.
She's got her dad's eyes and smile.
Daughters of Presidents
President’s kids (first children?) are going to be famous no matter what they do. Here are a few DOPOTUS’s. Sorry, no pictures.
Grover Cleveland had a daughter named Ruth. Supposedly, the Baby Ruth candy bar was named after Ruth Cleveland, although it may be more likely that the candy company just wanted to avoid paying a license fee to Babe Ruth, the baseball player.
Harry Truman was the father of Margaret Truman, a professional singer. She also wrote two dozen mystery novels with names such as "Murder in the White House" and "Murder at the Library of Congress."
Richard Nixon’s daughter Julie Nixon married David Eisenhower, the grandson of Dwight Eisenhower, which seems odd to me (almost, but not quite, politically incestuous). I discovered while I was doing the research that Julie Nixon Eisenhower supported Barack Obama in 2008 and donated the maximum amount.
Ronald and Nancy Reagan had a daughter named Patricia (Patti Davis) who has done both acting and writing. Patti and her younger brother Ron both grew up to be liberal Democrats.
That’s it for now. I know that I missed a bunch of famous daughters of famous politicians. Feel free to add more names in the comments below.