When the Vice Presidency Was a Job for New Yorkers

If Virginia used to be the mother of presidents, as schoolchildren there were taught for generations, New York used to be the mother of vice presidents. But what happened in the 20th century? There has not been an elected vice president from New York in nearly 100 years.

Those decidedly New York-centric thoughts came to mind as the Republican National Convention prepared to make Mitt Romney’s choice of a running mate official this week by nominating Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin.

New York has produced 11 vice presidents, and two figure in important footnotes: Nelson A. Rockefeller, a former governor of New York, was vice president for 25 months in the 1970s — but he was appointed, not elected. And in 1984, Geraldine A. Ferraro, a congresswoman from Queens, became the first woman to run for vice president. She and Walter F. Mondale, the Democratic nominee for president, lost to Ronald W. Reagan in a landslide.

Here is another footnote: The last New Yorker before Ms. Ferraro to seek the office also lost big. That was William E. Miller, a congressman from upstate New York who was Barry Goldwater’s running mate in 1964.

All those footnotes demand another: Ms. Ferraro was not the last New Yorker to run for vice president. Jack F. Kemp, a former congressman from western New York, ran on the Republican ticket headed by Senator Bob Dole in 1996.

Aside from Rockefeller, the last New Yorker who was actually a heartbeat away was James S. Sherman, elected vice president under William H. Taft in 1908. But Sherman died in office, less than a month before the election of 1912. (Yet another footnote: If Taft had won the three-way race against Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, New York might have held onto the vice presidency. The Republican Party designated Nicholas Murray Butler, the president of Columbia University, as the candidate to receive Sherman’s votes in the Electoral College.)

Has New York been in a kind of vice-presidential eclipse since then? Some historians say that as other states grew and political power shifted toward the south, New York’s importance waned.

“In the 19th century, New York was especially attractive because upstate New York was the Silicon Valley of America,” said Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban policy at New York University. “It was the heartland of industrial America. The great American companies were located along the tier where General Electric was, and Carrier and Kodak. And upstate New York was an incubator for Republican nominees in the 19th century. Teddy Roosevelt was the last vice president who was born and raised in New York City.”

And then there are those who wonder why anyone would want to be No. 2. In the beginning, vice presidents were candidates who wanted to be No. 1 but lost. The vice presidency was, according to the vice-presidential historian Steve W. Tally, “a consolation prize” And the first New Yorker to win it was Aaron Burr, who lost to Thomas Jefferson in 1800.

David O. Stewart, in his biography of Burr, “American Emperor,” argued that Burr had too little to do as vice president. That may or may not explain why he went to Weehawken, N.J., one morning in the summer of 1804 and shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel that all but ended Burr’s political career. (Burr’s problems continued after he left office in 1805. He was tried for treason in 1807 but was acquitted.)

George Clinton, who had been a governor of New York, followed Burr as vice president. Clinton was the first vice president elected under the 12th Amendment, which separated the mandate for president and vice president. “The vice presidency became a second-rate office, something to which only second-rate men would aspire,” Mr. Tally wrote in “Bland Ambition: From Adams to Quayle,” and he said that Clinton led the parade of mediocrity.

New York also gave the nation one vice president who was a drunkard with financial problems and another who, according to Mr. Tally, was so out of touch with the Gilded Age that he lacked “any conspicuous connections to the railroad robber barons.” Yet another New Yorker pounded the ceremonial first rivet into the Statue of Liberty. And Mr. Tally quotes Woodrow Wilson describing still another New York vice president, Chester A. Arthur, as “a nonentity with side-whiskers.” (The nonentity moved into the White House, side whiskers and all, after President James Garfield was assassinated in 1881.)

The New Yorkers who served as No. 2 all followed Clinton, who served during Jefferson’s second term and again in James Madison’s first term.

Clinton, according to the historians Evan Cornog and Richard Whelan, “had been one of the national leaders of opposition to the Constitution in 1788.” By the time Madison was elected 20 years later, Clinton had been on the political stage for so long, he felt he deserved high office. “Clinton didn’t want elected officials,” Mr. Tally wrote. “As the most powerful man in the most powerful state of the original 13, Clinton hoped that New York would become its own country — and, of course, he would be king.”

When that did not happen, Mr. Tally wrote, “impending senility and failing health didn’t mean that he should quit politics.” And so Clinton became vice president.

He did not like the job and was renominated even though he did not want to be, so he voted against renewing the Bank of the United States. “As a result of this final fit of pique,” Mr. Tally wrote, “the United States had no means to finance the War of 1812.”

Clinton did not live to see the rockets’ red glare. He died in office before the war began. And the bank debacle contributed to the problems that engulfed the next New Yorker to serve as vice president, Daniel D. Tompkins, the Scarsdale-born vice president under James Monroe. Tompkins had raised money for the war — some $4 million, by Mr. Tally’s tally.

When bankers were reluctant to extend any more credit to the government, Tompkins guaranteed the loans himself. And when that was still not enough, Tompkins self-financed the war: “He mixed his own funds into the pot,” Mr. Tally wrote.

Monroe’s “era of good feelings” was not that good for Tompkins. He was uncomfortable in Washington and was often preoccupied with straightening out his financial headaches. That, among other troubles, kept him in New York so much that some historians refer to him as an absentee vice president.

As for his money troubles, the State Assembly — led by Martin Van Buren, himself a future vice president — eventually approved what would now be called a reimbursement package. Tompkins said it was not enough. Congress eventually voted a more generous settlement. Tompkins got $95,000, equivalent to roughly $1.79 million in today’s dollars.