Bumpy Road to the White House Trivia Quiz

Answer: Bobby Rush

In 2000, Barack Obama was a State Senator from the south side of Chicago. He sought to move up to the House of Representatives, but was running against civil rights icon Bobby Rush. Rush had been a leader of the Black Panther Party in the 1960s.

Rush attacked Obama as being over-educated and out of touch with average voters due to his Harvard Law degree. Rush defeated Obama 61 to 30 in the Democratic primary.

In 2004, Obama would run for the United States Senate and soundly defeated Alan Keyes, Four years later, he would defeat John McCain to become president. Rush was still a member of Congress in 2019, serving his tenth term.

Answer: Kent Hance

In 1978, George W Bush took his Harvard MBA to west Texas to work in the oil business. Seeking to follow in his father's footsteps, Bush ran for Congress in 1978. He was defeated by State Senator Kent Hance, who portrayed Bush an East Coast elitist who was out of touch with ordinary Texans. Hence defeated Bush 53 to 47 in the November election.

Hance served in the House from 1979 to 1985. He changed his party registration to Republican in 1985.

Bush was elected Governor of Texas in 1994, defeating Ann Richards. He ran for President in 2000, and narrowly defeated Vice President Al Gore in the electoral college, in one of the most contentious elections in US history.

Answer: John Paul Hammerschmidt

In 1974, Bill Clinton had returned to his home state of Arkansas after graduating from Yale Law School. Unafraid of a challenge, Clinton took on incumbent Republican congressman John Paul Hammerschidt, who was first elected in 1966. Clinton attacked Hammerschmidt for supporting then disgraced former President Richard Nixon. It was a close election, with Hammerschmidt winning 52 to 48, a difference of only 6400 votes.

Hammerschmidt served in the House from 1967 to 1993, leaving Congress just as Clinton was starting his first term as President.

Two years after his loss, Clinton was elected Attorney General of Arkansas. He went on to serve six terms as Governor of Arkansas before being elected President, defeating George Herbert Walker Bush in 1992.

Answer: Lloyd Bentsen

George Herbert Walker Bush actually had two electoral defeats under his belt. In 1964, Texas oilman Bush ran for the US Senate and was defeated by incumbent Senator Ralph Yarborough. Remarkably progressive for a Texas Democrat, Yarborough served from 1957 to 1971. He defeated Bush 56 to 44.

Bush would get elected to the House in 1966, and ran for Senate again in 1970. This time he faced off against Lloyd Bentsen. It was slightly closer, but Bentsen still won 53 to 47. Bentsen served four terms in the Senate (1971-1993). Bill Clinton made him Secretary of the Treasury in 1993.


Bush served as Ambassador to China and head of the Central Intelligence Agency before Ronald Reagan chose him for Vice President in 1980. After eight years as VP, Bush defeated Michael Dukakis in 1988 to become President. Ironically, Dukakis' running mate was Texas Senator Lloyd Bentsen.

Answer: Lester Maddox

Jimmy Carter's sole electoral defeat before seeking the presidency was in the 1966 race for Governor of Georgia. Carter was a State Senator at the time, and ran as a progressive. He actually finished in third, behind Ellis Arnall (29.4%) and Lester Maddox (23.56%), with 20.89 percent of the vote.

Maddox defeat Arnall in the run-off election 54 to 46. In one of the craziest elections in US history, splits within the Democratic party led Republican Bo Callaway to defeat Maddox by 3000 votes - 46.53 percent to 46.22 percent. Because neither candidate won over 50 percent, the Georgia Assembly chose the Governor. The overwhelmingly Democratic legislature went with Maddox.

Carter ran for Governor in 1970, and Maddox ran for Lieutenant Governor because he was term limited. Carter ran for President in 1976, defeating Gerald Ford.

Answer: Edmund "Pat" Brown

While Richard Nixon obviously lost the 1960 presidential election to John Kennedy, that one seemed a little too easy. The former Vice President tried to make a political comeback in 1962, running for Governor in his home state of California.

Nixon ran against incumbent Governor Edmund Brown, who had been elected in 1958. Brown played a major role in turning California into an economic powerhouse. In 1962, California became the most populous state. Nixon, after a decade long absence from California, badly misread the state's politics. Brown defeated Nixon 52 to 47, with 1 percent for the candidate from the Prohibition Party.

Nixon held his famous "last press conference" after losing. After five years in the private sector, he ran in 1968 and narrowly defeated Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Nixon was the first president to resign from office, in August 1974.

Answer: Wilbert "Pappy" O'Daniel

Johnson's sole electoral defeat was an extremely narrow loss in the 1941 race for US Senate, where he lost by Pappy O'Daniel by 1300 votes out of 350,000 between them -- the final margin was 30.49 to 30.26 percent. O'Daniel served 7 years, retiring in 1948.

Ironically, Johnson succeeded O'Daniel. While Coke Stevenson narrowly beat Johnson in the 1948 primary. Johnson came back and won the runoff by 87 votes. The razor thin win earned Johnson the nickname "Landslide Lyndon."

Johnson made his first bid for the presidency in 1960, after 12 years in the Senate. Finishing second in the primaries, John F Kennedy selected him as his running mate. Johnson became president when Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963.

Answer: James Gerard

In 1914, FDR was working as Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He had served as a State Senator from 1911 to 1913, where he had been a powerful opponent of Tammany Hall, the Democratic machine than ran New York City.

Roosevelt decided to run for the US Senate in 1914, the first year Senators were directly elected by voters after the 17th Amendment passed. The Tammany forces aligned against Roosevelt and he was defeated by James Gerard by 62 to 30 percent in the Democratic primary. Gerard would lose the election to Republican James Wadsworth. Remarkably, Gerard was serving as Woodrow Wilson's ambassador to Germany during the election.

Roosevelt ran for Vice President with James Cox in 1920, but they lost to Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge. FDR would overcome polio to become the two-term Governor of New York and the longest serving President in US history (1933 to 1945).

Answer: Judson Harmon

Warren Harding had been in Ohio politics for about a decade when he decided to run for Governor in 1910. He had served as both State Senator and Lieutenant Governor.

Harding lost to incumbent Governor Judson Harmon, 51 to 41 percent. Earlier in his career, Harmon had been Attorney General in the Cleveland administration.

Harding would bounce back, winning the US Senate election in 1914 and using that as a platform for the presidency. He would defeat newspaper publisher James Cox by a sizeable margin. It was the first time that two presidential candidates with a journalism background would face off against each other.

Answer: Stephen Douglas

While Lincoln would defeat Douglas in the 1860 election, things were different two years earlier. Lincoln and Douglas campaigned against each for the Illinois Senate seat.

Douglas was the incumbent, having first been elected to the US Senate in 1847 and re-elected in 1852. At the time, Senators were elected by the state legislature, which was controlled by Democrats by a margin of 54 to 46 after the 1858 election. Douglas died in June 1861, only weeks after the start of the Civil War.

Lincoln served in the House of Representatives for one term (1847-49) where he was a prominent critic of the war with Mexico. Lincoln was a strong contender for US Senator in 1854, but ultimately lost to Lyman Trumbull. Lincoln solidly won the electoral college in a four way race in 1860, and earned the right to govern the United States during the most divisive conflict in the nation's history.