Grover Cleveland is the one president to win non-consecutive phrases : NPR

If Trump wins reelection, he could be the second president in U.S. historical past to serve non-consecutive phrases.

The primary was Grover Cleveland, who did two stints within the White Home from 1885-1889 and 1893-1897.

How did that occur?

A primer on the nation’s twenty second and twenty fourth president

Cleveland, a lawyer, entered politics in his forties as an anti-corruption reformer. He was elected mayor of Buffalo, N.Y., in 1881 and the state’s governor three brief years later.

Cleveland was nominated because the Democratic Occasion’s presidential candidate in 1884 and overcame a sex scandal to narrowly defeat his Republican opponent, Sen. James Blaine of Maine. He was the primary Democrat elected after the Civil Conflict, which led to 1865.

His first time period was marked by a number of main moments, together with the lethal Haymarket Riot of 1886 in Chicago, which turned a logo of the battle for staff’ rights, and the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act in 1887, which established federal regulation of an business (railroads) for the primary time.

Cleveland, elected as a bachelor, additionally received married throughout his presidency, the only president to do so within the White Home.

However he additionally made some selections that angered his critics, like vetoing non-public pension payments for Civil Conflict veterans and cash to distribute seed grain to drought-stricken farmers.

He ran for reelection in 1888 however misplaced to Republican candidate Benjamin Harrison — a Union Military colonel in the course of the Civil Conflict, and the grandson of former President William Henry Harrison.

Cleveland’s reelection marketing campaign was poorly run on many ranges, presidential historian Troy Senik told History.com.

“He started the race with out a marketing campaign supervisor; delegated many of the electioneering tasks to his operating mate, Allen Thurman, who, on the age of 74, was not wholesome sufficient to resist the trials of campaigning; and primarily based the complete race round his proposal to cut back tariffs, which divided his personal Democratic Occasion and unified the Republicans in opposition,” Senik mentioned.

Cleveland received the favored vote — 48.6% to 47.9% — however misplaced the Electoral Faculty vote. He moved to New York Metropolis and practiced regulation.

So what lured him again to the marketing campaign path?

Barbara Perry, co-chair of the College of Virginia Miller Middle’s Presidential Oral Historical past Program, informed Historical past.com that Cleveland did not intend to run once more after his first time period, however was more and more dissatisfied along with his get together’s populist drift and anxious that one other nominee would “draw the get together in the direction of the form of cronyism that he had fought so laborious towards.”

Notably, she mentioned, his determination to run once more predates the fashionable main system — so did not contain voters the identical manner it could in the present day. He was nominated in 1892 and ran towards Harrison as soon as once more.

This time, with the nation getting ready to an financial disaster and newly receptive to his place on decreasing tariffs, Cleveland received in a landslide.

His second time period was additionally dominated by financial and labor points, from the financial despair often called the Panic of 1893 to the Pullman Strike, which disrupted rail site visitors all through the Midwest and marked the primary time the federal authorities used an injunction to interrupt a strike (it additionally led to the creation of Labor Day as a conciliatory gesture).

Help for Cleveland from his personal get together dwindled all through his time period. After leaving the White Home he retired to Princeton, N.J., the place he lived till his dying in 1908.

Whereas Cleveland was the one president who succeeded in successful non-consecutive phrases, he wasn’t the one one who tried.

Martin Van Buren, who served from 1837 to 1841, tried operating as a third-party candidate in 1848. Millard Fillmore, who served from 1850 to 1853, ran once more in 1856. Theodore Roosevelt, who left the White Home in 1909, ran unsuccessfully for a 3rd time period in 1912.

Over a century later, Cleveland stays in a membership of 1 — and Trump is angling to hitch.