Commentary: Brokered conventions almost always surprise

Three candidates come into the Republican convention seeking their party's presidential nomination, but none has enough delegate support to win on the first ballot.

The result?

A contested convention, with all the wheeling and dealing that high-stakes politics can generate, and in the end, a compromise candidate.

A preview of this year's convention in Cleveland? Maybe, but also the scenario for the 1880 GOP convention in Chicago.

The three candidates who couldn't get over the top that year were former President Ulysses S. Grant, back after four years out of office and seeking an unprecedented third term; Sen. James G. Blaine, who would be pilloried in a later presidential campaign as "the continental liar from the state of Maine"; and Secretary of the Treasury John Sherman, brother of Civil War hero William T. Sherman.

Other names, including that of Rep. James Garfield of Ohio, were offered but none got more than a scattering of votes - until the 36th ballot, when the convention suddenly swung to Garfield, giving him 399 votes and the nomination.

That is what a contested convention - one that takes two ballots or more to decide - looks like. That's the way both Republicans and Democrats often chose their standard-bearers in the days before primary elections became the primary way of selecting a nominee. And that's the way Republicans may do it again this year, staging a spectacle that America hasn't seen in more than half a century.

The last contested convention (or brokered, or open; pick your adjective) was in 1952, when the Democrats needed three ballots to nominate Adlai Stevenson. The last time the Republicans held a contested convention was 1948, when the GOP conclave took three ballots to nominate Thomas Dewey.

In the era of the primary, party members have been picking their nominees at the polls, before the delegates ever assemble for a convention that has become effectively a coronation. This year, though, the candidate in the lead is both adored and abhorred, and could go into the convention without enough delegates for a first-ballot win, even if he has more than his rivals. And what will happen then, nobody knows.

If Donald Trump's enemies are hoping that a contested convention will derail the juggernaut, they may have history on their side. Of the 10 Republican conventions that have been contested since the first Republican convention met in Philadelphia in 1856, only four have settled on presidential candidates who were in the lead after the first ballot. And all four - John Fremont in 1856, Blaine in 1884, Charles Evans Hughes in 1916, and Dewey in '48 - lost in the general election. Of the six nominees who trailed on the first ballot but went on to get the nomination, five were elected president: Abraham Lincoln in 1860, Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, Garfield in 1880, Benjamin Harrison in 1888, and Warren G. Harding in 1920. Only Wendell Willkie failed, in 1940.

In the first Republican convention, there was an informal ballot and then a formal one, thus two ballots even though there was no real opposition to Fremont. Some consider the 1952 GOP conclave a contested convention, but there was only one ballot. It looked at first as if Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower wouldn't have enough votes to get past Sen. Robert Taft on the first ballot, but nine delegates from Minnesota changed their votes at the end of roll call, putting Ike over the top, the New York Times reported. Other delegates joined the switch and the convention eventually declared the vote unanimous.

Of course, having history on your side might not count for a whole lot, since the conditions around a contested convention in 2016 would be vastly different from anything that participants in past conventions, even as recent as Stevenson and Dewey, could have imagined. Social-media play would likely have a huge impact when the wheeling and dealing starts. That alone would add a new twist. On the other hand, human nature hasn't changed; arm-twisting and cajoling are still arm-twisting and cajoling, even if done digitally, so looking back at a few of the more interesting contested conventions may be instructive. Besides, it's fun.

In 2016, the goal of many Republicans as the convention approaches is simple: Stop Trump! It was simple for many Republicans in 1880, too: Stop Grant! A lot of the delegates didn't like the idea of a third presidential term.

As the balloting opened, Grant had the support of 304 delegates, more than any other candidate, but well short of the 379 needed to win. Ballot after ballot, Grant remained stuck at just over 300 votes. Garfield, another Civil War hero and general, got no votes at all on the first ballot, and only one or two - or sometimes none - on each of the next 32 ballots. Then he got 17 votes on the 34th ballot and 50 on the 35th.

"When the roll was called for the 36th ballot, the Blaine and Sherman states began to cast their votes for General Garfield from the beginning of the call," the New York Tribune reported in its June 9 edition. "It soon became plain that the contest was between Grant and Garfield." When the roll call ended, Garfield had 399 votes to Grant's 306.

"All the while, Garfield sat quietly in his seat among the Ohio delegation," the Tribune related. "He was in fact going through one of the most extraordinary experiences ever given to an American citizen. He was being struck by presidential lightning while sitting in the body which was to nominate him. . . . There has been no such dramatic incident in American politics, for a great many years at least." (Garfield's good luck would run out the following year, when he was assassinated.)

Democrats have had their share of contested conventions. In 1844, a three-way race among former President Martin Van Buren, Sen. James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, and former Secretary of War Lewis Cass produced a stalemate when the Democrats gathered in Baltimore. Van Buren had 146 delegates, out of a total of 266, but his opponents managed to change the convention rules so that a two-thirds majority would be needed to win.

Van Buren, who had angered many members of his party by opposing the annexation of Texas, couldn't get to two-thirds, but he had enough support to block anyone else from getting there, either. Finally, as the stalemate dragged on, the convention turned surprisingly to a candidate who had actually been seeking a vice-presidential nomination: James K. Polk, former governor of Tennessee and former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. He won on the ninth ballot and went on to narrowly defeat Henry Clay in the general election.

Polk was America's first dark-horse presidential candidate. If all three million voters in the United States had been asked before the convention whom the Democrats would nominate, ". . . not one hundred would have designated James K. Polk for the first office," the New York Daily Tribune declared.

Polk was as surprised as anyone. In a letter to former Rep. Zadok Casey, of Illinois, a few weeks later, Polk wrote: "I need scarcely say to you that my nomination was wholly unexpected by me."

Contested conventions almost never fail to surprise.

Michael D. Schaffer is a former book review editor of The Inquirer. mdschaffer87@verizon.net