Eye On Illinois: Stevenson, Dawes only two VPs elected as Prairie Staters

Monday’s announcement of a new vice presidential candidate offers an opportunity to look at our own history in the matter, thin though it may be.

Out of 49 total vice presidents, only two were politically affiliated with Illinois at the time of their election – Democrat Adlai Stevenson served with Grover Cleveland from 1893 to 1897 and Republican Charles Dawes held the post for Calvin Coolidge from 1925 to 1929 – but neither are native sons.

A Kentuckian, Stevenson was 16 when his family moved to the Bloomington area and 24 when he became state’s attorney in Woodford County. He won his first seat in Congress in 1874 and served two nonconsecutive terms, fitting because Cleveland is the only president to serve nonconsecutively (his first VP was Thomas Hendricks of Indiana).

Dawes was a native Ohioan. He moved from Nebraska to Chicago in 1893, became the president of Northwestern Gas Light and Coke Co. in Evanston and managed William McKinley’s successful 1896 presidential campaign in Illinois. Although he held positions in the federal government, along with becoming a war hero and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Dawes failed to win a Senate seat and didn’t win elected office until landing on the Coolidge ticket.

Last week I coached a baseball game in the shadow of Evanston’s Dawes Elementary School, a few days after my column on the anniversary of the 1896 Democratic National Convention in Chicago where William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech led him to the presidential nomination. Among those he eclipsed was Stevenson, who might’ve expected a boost in his then-home state. Among those who might not have been surprised was Dawes, whose law office in Lincoln, Nebraska, was in the same building as Bryan’s.

Stevenson was Bryan’s running mate in his failed 1900 presidential bid. Republican Frank Knox – a Bostonian who became Chicago Daily News publisher in 1931 – lost with Alf Landon in 1936.

Only two native Illinoisans ran for vice president on a major party ticket. One was Charles Bryan, running mate of John Davis in losing the 1924 election to Coolidge and Dawes. Bryan, like his older brother William Jennings Bryan, was born in Salem.

The other, John Logan, born near Murphysboro, was a loser on James Blaine’s GOP ticket in 1884, barely a footnote in a decorated military and political career that included being the lead creator of Memorial Day.

As a state, Illinois hasn’t contributed much more to presidential statistics. Ulysses S. Grant came from Ohio, Barack Obama is Hawaiian and Abraham Lincon is a Kentuckian by birth. That makes Ronald Regan’s Tampico roots stand alone.

But Illinois at least has Stevenson and Dawes – 28 other states have never had a claim to the vice presidency.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. Follow him on X @sth749. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.