17. Although brave enough to challenge Franklin Roosevelt in the 1936 presidential election, Republican nominee Alfred Landon lost by more than ten million votes and won just eight electoral college votes
An oil producer prior to entering politics, Alfred Mossman Landon rose to prominence as a liberal Republican in Kansas following the Great Depression. Elected as the twenty-sixth Governor of Kansas in 1932, Landon supported many aspects of the New Deal despite building a platform on tax reduction and budget balancing. Seeking his party’s nomination whilst still in his first term as an elected official, Landon’s team successfully outmaneuvered former president Herbert Hoover and mobilized the younger wings of the Republican party in his favor. Winning their nomination at the 1936 Republican National Convention, Landon, atypically for the age, won on the first ballot.
However, once forced to campaign on a national scale, Landon’s weakness as a candidate was revealed. An ineffective campaigner who traveled infrequently, in the two months following his nomination Landon made zero campaign appearances. Newspapers began lampooning the nominee for his bizarre absence, with a recurring joke involving the “Missing Persons Bureau” searching for the Republican. Losing the popular vote by more than ten million votes, Landon was defeated in his own state of Kansas, winning just Maine and Vermont, to achieve an appalling eight electoral votes to Roosevelt’s 523. On the same day, Landon was also voted out of office as Governor of Kansas.