United States Presidential Election (2006)

☜ 2002 • • 2010 ☞
UNITED STATES PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 7 NOVEMBER 2006
	Matthew Santos	Arnold Vinick
	Democratic Party	Republican Party
STATE
	Texas	California
RUNNING MATE
	Leo McGarry	Ray Sullivan
VOTES
electoral
	272	266
states carried
	23 + D.C.	27
popular
	N/A	N/A
PERCENTAGE
	49.99%	50.01%
Presidential election results map. Red denotes states won by Vinick/Sullivan, Blue denotes those won by Santos/McGarry. Each number represents the electoral votes a state gave to one candidate.
PRESIDENTS
☜ Josiah Bartlet (D) | n/a ☞

The 2006 United States Presidential Election was a contest between Congressman Matthew Santos of Texas, and U.S. Senator Arnold Vinick of California. Matthew Santos was elected with 272 electoral votes. This was the first race ever where a Latino was elected President. It was also the first election where a major candidate's vice presidential running mate (Leo McGarry) died on election night.

Background

Under the provisions of the Twenty-second Amendment, two-term incumbent President Josiah Bartlet was disqualified from running. As the primary season began, the three clear frontrunners for the Democrat's presidential nomination were Eric Baker, Bob Russell, and John Hoynes, with Baker leading in the polls in both Iowa and New Hampshire. Baker took himself out of the race in what was supposed to be his announcement speech in November 2005, saying that his reasons involved his family.

With Baker no longer in the running, many saw the race as a two-way battle between Russell and Hoynes, with the former taking the lead due to his incumbency as Vice President and the memories of the sex scandal that had forced Hoynes to resign the Vice Presidency. Bartlet's Deputy Chief of Staff, Josh Lyman, was unsatisfied with this matchup.

Lyman had been courted by both Hoynes and Russell to join their respective campaigns. However, despite previously working for Hoynes when he had been a Senator, their relationship soured dramatically during Hoynes' tenure as Vice President. Lyman doubted whether Russell could win the general election or make a good president even if he did. So he began fishing around for a candidate that he could run against Russell and Hoynes. Eventually, he settled on Democratic Representative Matt Santos of Texas after witnessing Santos' legislative prowess in getting a bipartisan Patients' Bill of Rights passed by the House of Representatives. Despite the fact that the three-term congressman had previously told Lyman that he was retiring from both Congress and politics, he was eventually persuaded to run.

Early preparations after retaining the House and Senate in the 2004 mid-term elections, and President Bartlet's revelation of his MS, Republicans saw a opportunity to regain the White House. Walken and Reed were considered early front-runners, with Allard and Vinick being candidates with momentum. Vinick told Josh Lyman that he would announce to run in November 2005, when Josh gave him an offer to serve as UN Ambassador.

Democratic Party

Nominees

2006 DEMOCRATIC PARTY TICKET
Matthew Santos	Leo McGarry
for President	for Vice President
U.S. Representative from Texas (2001-2007)	White House Chief of Staff (1999-2005) Counselor to the President (2005–2006)
Campaign

Withdrawn candidates

Robert Russell	John Hoynes	Eric Baker	Ricky Rafferty
Vice President from Colorado (2003-2007)	Vice President from Texas (1999-2003)	Governor of Pennsylvania (???)	United States Senator (???)

Primaries

Main Article: Democratic Presidential Primary Election (2006)

The campaign's start was hardly a good omen for success. Headquartered in a run-down boating supply store, Santos soon found himself dead last in the polls out of a field of seven candidates in both Iowa and New Hampshire, due mainly to his prior opposition to ethanol subsidies and several disparaging remarks that he had made in years past about the Granite State resembling a "Mayflower reunion." Not helping matters in the least was Santos' campaign style, which called for an issues-oriented campaign in a state which has long been known as the "grip-and-grin capital of the world."

Although he lost the Iowa caucus by a wide margin, Santos was able to pull off a moral victory in the New Hampshire primary when he broadcast a live one minute ad in which he promised not to use negative campaigning against his opponents and to always speak for himself in his commercials, instead of trying to distance himself from them as the other candidates had. These promises apparently struck a chord with voters, as Santos managed to take third-place, behind Russell and Hoynes, with 19% of the vote.

His celebration, however, was short-lived, as Senator Ricky Rafferty, a newly-declared candidate, managed to steal both media attention and the "insurgency candidate" image from Santos. Foremost in Rafferty's left-wing campaign was a plan for single-payer universal health care, which was secretly supplied to her by White House Communications Director Toby Ziegler. Although it was never specifically stated on the show, it appears that Senator Rafferty stayed in the race until the South Carolina primary before dropping out. Hoynes won the South Carolina primary, due to his popularity among southerners and moderates.

During the time between the New Hampshire primary and Super Tuesday, Santos had managed to win primaries in Arizona and New Mexico, but he had come in third in most of the others. In fact, his prospects were so bad that his fundraising had dried-up and he would have been forced to mortgage his house in order to continue until the Texas Primary if he did not at least come in second in California.

In the leadup to Super Tuesday, a former staffer for Hoynes revealed that the then-Senator had made improper sexual advances towards her. Hoynes had been leading the polls in California, and had received the endorsement of California Governor Gabriel Tillman. After Hoynes "suspended" his presidential campaign due to the reports of his sexual impropriety, Santos was able to maneuver into receiving the implicit endorsement of Governor Tillman, allowing him to win the California primary in an upset victory.

With the California victory came new-found momentum, allowing Santos to win primaries in many more states, including Florida, Pennsylvania, Texas, Illinois, and New Jersey. Once all the primaries were called, the primary map was split largely along geographical lines. Russell had large parts of the West, Midwest and Northeast. Santos had primarily taken most of the delegate-rich "big states" and a scattering of smaller states. Hoynes had taken most of the southern states and a handful of others. By the time of the Democratic National Convention, Santos had won enough delegates to leave Hoynes in the dust and virtually tie with Russell, deadlocking the convention on the first ballot.

Convention

Main Article: Democratic National Convention (2006)

The Democratic Convention was held in July in San Diego, California. The contested convention produced three deadlocked ballots. On the fourth ballot, Matthew Santos won the presidential nomination. He then chose Leo McGarry to be his running mate.

Republican Party

Nominees

2006 REPUBLICAN PARTY TICKET
Arnold Vinick	Ray Sullivan
for President	for Vice President
U.S. Senator from California (1983-2007)	Governor of West Virginia (2002-2006)
Campaign

Withdrawn candidates

Don Butler	Glen Allen Walken	Mike Reed	Darren Gibson
Televangelist from Virginia	Speaker of the House from Missouri (2003) Acting President of the United States (2003)	Governor of Ohio (1999-2007)	U.S. Representative from Michigan (2000-)

Primaries

Main Article: Republican Presidential Primary Election (2006)

Former Governor Robert Ritchie who had lost devastatingly to Bartlet in 2002, had been expected to run but ultimately decided against it and endorsed Vinick.

Allard came second in Iowa, and lost momentum when Vinick won, New Hampshire, Arizona and Nevada. Governor Mike Reed dropped out after losing New Mexico a place he expected to gain momentum in. Gibson lost his home state, falling to sixth place and withdrew. Johnson withdrew after losing in Iowa, but did not endorse any candidates in the field. Butler won South Carolina and several other southern states on Super Tuesday. Walken won his home state, Missouri, Iowa, North Dakota, Colorado and Minnesota. The winner at the end was Vinick after the Florida Primary. He selected Ray Sullivan as his running mate.

General Election

The general election campaign would prove to be a most unconventional affair, even by West Wing standards, with the Republican nominee attempting to run on his Democratic predecessor's legacy, and the Democratic nominee being seen as stronger on defense because of his military service. Vinick initially enjoyed an early lead in the polls, owing to his popularity among moderate voters, but suffered among his base, especially when it was revealed he seldom if ever attended church services. Don Butler seizes upon Vinick's perceived weakness among evangelical voters by attempting to strong-arm him into pledging to appoint only pro-life judges, but is outplayed when Vinick makes a deceptively noncommittal stance on litmus-testing, and Governor Sullivan pays Butler a visit and threatens him against making Vinick's pro-choice views an issue in the campaign.

Santos, meanwhile, falling behind in the polls, makes a somewhat desperate play for moderate votes when his National Guard unit is called up over the weekend and he decides to report for duty. The photo opportunity does earn him some favorable press, but he is soon hit by the Vinick campaign for being soft on illegal immigration. Santos narrowly avoids a sex scandal when he leaves his briefcase behind in hotel room, only to have the Vinick campaign discover it. When documents in the briefcase reveal that Santos has been making regular payments to an unknown woman, Vinick and his aides debate whether to release the information, but ultimately decide to take the high road. Vinick privately returns the briefcase to Santos, but after learning the reasons for the payments (Santos secretly was paying child support to the mother of his nephew), warns him that his secret will not stay buried forever.

A couple "October surprises" make the campaign exceedingly unpredictable, as an emergency at a nuclear plant in California puts Vinick on the spot for pressing for the plant's construction decades earlier. Nuclear technicians avoid a meltdown, but Vinick suffers in the polls, making the election too close to call. Additionally, both campaigns are worried over the Bartlet Administration's decision to deploy troops to Kazakhstan to ward off an invasion by China or Russia.

On Election Night, both campaigns are forced to disregard exit polling, when it is revealed to be deeply flawed. The nature of the two candidates also leads to unpredictable cross-cutting factors and unusual states being close or changing hands: Vinick simultaneously won over many moderate voters in traditional 'blue' areas while struggling to turn out pro-life base conservatives, while for Santos being a Latino and military veteran helped him mobilise these constituencies, but some voters who indicated comfort voting for a Latino in polls were in practice voting Republican.

Both candidates receive pleasant surprises when the actual results come in: Vinick is encouraged by narrow wins in the independent-minded and historically moderate Republican New England states of Vermont and Maine, while Santos narrowly takes conservative South Carolina (likely due to a supportive Democratic governor, the large military presence in the state, and depressed social conservative turnout). Vinick sweeps the rest of the South outside of Texas (including Ray Sullivan's historically Democratic state of West Virginia, the blue-trending state of Virginia, and the major state of Florida, due to insufficient Latino turnout there for Santos and potentially the residual backlash Republicans predicted to Bartlet's overtures to the Castro regime earlier in the year). Vijnick also takes the red states of the Great Plains and Inner Mountain West and the Midwest swing states of Ohio and Iowa (despite having famouly broken with Santos on taking the ethanol pledge). Santos meanwhile takes the rest of the North East (including Vinick's birth state of New York, the critical state of Pennsylvania and the Bartlet home state of New Hampshire), the Upper Midwest, the Latino-heavy South Western swing states of New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado, and tellingly, the then-bellwether state of Missouri in the Lower Midwest. The election then hinges on returns from the West, and Santos' and Vinick's home states of Texas and California.

Vinick wins California by some 80,000 votes, but loses in Santos' Texas by a decidedly narrower margin, leaving Vinick on 266 Electoral Votes and Santos on 260. Leo McGarry was discovered dead in his hotel bathroom, prompting the Vinick campaign to consider challenging the results if they don't turn their way. The election ultimately comes down to the states of Oregon (7 EVs) and Nevada (5 EVs). Santos is eventually declared the winner in both states, clinching the required 270 electoral votes (272 to 266 total).

Aftermath

Santos was confirmed as President and inaugurated on January 20, 2007. In a rare move, he picked Senator Vinick from the rival Republican party as his nominee for U.S. Secretary of State. This was done instead of Vinick running for president in 2010, and on the basis that he could act as Secretary of State without any partisan interference.