1970 Union State presidential election (Finanzamt)

The 1970 Union State presidential election was the 25th quadrennial presidential election, held on Monday, August 10 1970. Incumbent New Union President Richard Nixon defeated Progressive challenger and US Senator for New England Edmund Muskie as well as US Senator for Trinity Lyndon Johnson of the newly established New People's Party in the first round, the first ever candidate to do so since 1958. Though they were able to avoid a debacle akin to their 1966 convention, the Progressives remained divided as ever between more radical elements spearheaded by the Young Progressives and a more moderate faction loyal to the Progressive National Committee. While the presumptive nominee Muskie was firmly in the latter camp, many anti-communist hardliners feared he would be too lenient in his treatment of socialists and other radicals in the YPs and the broader party, a concern not remedied by the proposed nomination of Senator Scoop Jackson as Muskie's running mate. By the beginning of 1970, negotiations between Muskie and his opponents had broken down, resulting in Senate Majority Leader Johnson and his allies breaking away from the Progressives to found the New People's Party, which subsequently nominated Johnson and formerly Progressive Representative Emanuel Celler for President and Vice President. President Nixon, whose popularity was lower than that of previous Progressive Presidents Wallace and Reuther but nevertheless stable and on the rise, secured his party's nomination without competition. However, Vice President Kennan had publicly announced his intention to not seek re-election, citing familial matters, forcing Nixon and NUP leadership to pick a new running mate. General Secretary Ted Agnew, who had been considered an early candidate himself, eventually proposed Harry Byrd, the Governor of Liberty, who eagerly accepted the nomination. Nixon and his aides subsequently attempted to install Byrd as the new Vice President before the election, but the nomination was rejected by the Progressive-held National Assembly. The executive thus attempted to influence and pressure several legislators into compliance, an undertaking which would later be revealed as the Byrd Affair by journalists of the Columbiaville Herald. Major campaign issues included foreign policy, where Muskie was lambasted by both Nixon and Johnson for his, albeit cautious, criticism of the Union State's interventionism in Africa and attacked him for supposedly being too conciliatory towards the EUSPR. Furthermore, the rising crime rate and uptick in political violence, oftentimes originating from the YPs, proved another weakness of the Progressives. Conversely, both the NPP and Progressives were united in opposition to Nixon's economic policy of New Pragmatism and vowed a return to more traditional welfare state, though the administration's reforms had not been as market liberal as some critics had previously feared. Nevertheless, analysts both contemporary and modern agree that the Progressive-New People's split facilitated the President's re-election, with the left's time and resources being diverted toward attacking each other instead of the incumbent government and allowing for Nixon to win an absolute majority of votes in the first round. This triumph was the first re-election of a conservative incumbent President since 1906, when Elihu Root was carried to victory by an electorate still shocked by the assassination of President Borden. It was also seen as a confirmation of the success Nixon's New New Union policy had had in distancing the party and the American right wing from the King dictatorship, as the NUP also won a majority in the National Assembly for the first time since its inception with its victory in the legislative elections of the same year, finally breaking the Progressives' dominance over US politics and re-establishing conservatism as a viable political outlook. Finally, Byrd was the second Vice President to be elected as the running mate of an incumbent President who had previously chosen another person as his deputy, a feat then only achieved by William Seward in 1854. Nixon and Byrd would be inaugurated on September 1, 1970 as the last President and Vice President of the Union State prior to its dissolution.