50 Fun Facts About Republican Party

Which animal has symbolized the Republican Party since an 1874 Harper's Weekly cartoon?

The elephant stood among political animals panicked by a donkey in a lion's skin, a scene the cartoonist borrowed from one of Aesop's fables.

The abbreviation GOP, a nickname Republicans have carried since the 1870s, stands for which phrase?

Grand Old Party grew out of an 1875 line in the Congressional Record praising the gallant party that had defended the Union. A Cincinnati newspaper changed the adjective a year later.

Which color have US news outlets used for Republican-won states on election maps since 2000?

Red only stuck after the long 2000 count kept the electoral map constantly on screen; until 1996, NBC had colored Republican states blue.

Which Oscar-winning director spoke to an empty chair on stage at the 2012 Republican National Convention?

Clint Eastwood largely improvised the routine, with the chair standing in for President Barack Obama, and about 30 million people watched it live.

Which Republican served as both vice president and president without being elected to either office?

Gerald Ford was a congressman from Michigan when he was appointed to fill a vacant vice presidency in December 1973, and he moved up again eight months later.

Which suffragist was arrested in Rochester in 1872 after voting a straight Republican ticket for president?

Susan B. Anthony was fined $100 at her trial and told the judge she would never pay it. She never did, and the authorities let the matter drop.

Which Republican president later became Chief Justice, the only person to hold both offices?

William Howard Taft had long sought the job and got it in 1921, eight years after leaving the White House, when Warren G. Harding appointed him.

Which World War II general won the White House as a Republican in 1952 after 20 years of Democrats?

Dwight Eisenhower went on to sign the 1956 bill authorizing the Interstate Highway System, still the largest road-building program in American history.

Which Republican president, once a Democrat and a union leader, won re-election in 49 states?

Ronald Reagan lost only Minnesota, his opponent's home state, and the District of Columbia in 1984, taking 525 electoral votes.

Which 1863 document from Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, declared slaves in rebel states free?

The Emancipation Proclamation applied only to the ten states still in rebellion, so it left nearly 500,000 people enslaved in the loyal border states.

In which Wisconsin town did activists meet in a schoolhouse in 1854 and propose the name Republican?

Ripon's Little White Schoolhouse, built only a year earlier, is now a National Historic Landmark for its role in the party's founding.

Which law, opening western territories to slavery by local vote, sparked the Republican Party's founding?

The Kansas–Nebraska Act scrapped the 1820 line that had kept slavery out of the northern territories, and the outrage in the North pulled the existing parties apart.

Which western explorer nicknamed the Pathfinder became the first Republican nominee for president in 1856?

John C. Frémont had led five expeditions into the West, but the fame was not enough: he lost the election to Democrat James Buchanan.

Which party, Abraham Lincoln's own while in Congress, collapsed in the 1850s as members joined the Republicans?

The Whigs won the presidency twice, in 1840 and 1848, and lost both men to death in office before the party broke apart over slavery.

The Republican Party's founders chose its name in the 1850s to echo the party led by which Founding Father?

Thomas Jefferson called his 1790s organization the Republican Party too, though it is remembered today as the Democratic-Republican Party.

Which New-York Tribune editor helped found the Republican Party, then ran for president against it in 1872?

Horace Greeley may even have coined the party's name, yet in 1872 he was the nominee of both the Liberal Republicans and the Democrats, and lost in a landslide.

The 1856 Republican platform paired slavery with which other practice Congress should ban in the territories?

Polygamy meant the Mormon settlements of Utah, and Congress banned plural marriage in the federal territories six years later.

Which Michigan city hosted the first statewide Republican convention, held in an oak grove in July 1854?

Jackson's grove stood on the edge of town at the time, and the spot has been known as Under the Oaks ever since.

Which New York senator led the first ballot at the 1860 Republican convention but lost to Lincoln?

William Seward became Lincoln's secretary of state instead, and in 1867 he negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia.

Which city built a temporary wooden hall called the Wigwam to host the 1860 Republican convention?

Chicago had no hall large enough, so the wood-frame Wigwam went up to seat ten thousand delegates, guests and observers.

Which Tennessee Democrat, elected on Lincoln's 1864 ticket, was impeached by a Republican-led House in 1868?

Andrew Johnson kept his office by a single vote in the Senate, after trying to fire his secretary of war in defiance of Congress.

Which Union general, who accepted Robert E. Lee's surrender, won the presidency as a Republican in 1868?

Ulysses S. Grant was nominated unanimously on the first ballot, and as president he signed the bill that created the Department of Justice.

Which Republican faction, led in the House by Thaddeus Stevens, demanded full civil rights for freed slaves?

The Radicals thought Lincoln's terms for the defeated South too lenient, and they went on to fight his successor bitterly over Reconstruction.

Which Mississippi Republican became the first African American to sit in the United States Senate in 1870?

Hiram Revels was a minister who had helped organize two regiments of Black troops for the Union, and the Senate seated him on a party-line vote of 48 to 8.

Which change to the Constitution, pushed through by Republicans in 1870, barred denying the vote because of race?

The Fifteenth Amendment was a compromise: Republicans settled on its wording only after rejecting more sweeping guarantees of the right to vote.

Which 1862 law, long demanded by Republicans and signed by Lincoln, gave settlers 160 acres of public land?

The Homestead Act had been blocked for years by Democrats in Congress and passed only after the Southern states left the Union. About 1.6 million homesteads followed.

Which Massachusetts Republican was caned on the Senate floor in 1856 after an anti-slavery speech?

Charles Sumner was attacked by South Carolina congressman Preston Brooks, and the outrage in the North helped turn the struggling new party into a major force.

Which Republican president won the Nobel Peace Prize for brokering an end to the Russo-Japanese War?

Theodore Roosevelt mediated the peace talks held in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, four years after becoming the youngest president in history at 42.

Which nickname did the breakaway Progressive Party of 1912 take from its candidate's boast of strength?

The Bull Moose ticket outpolled the official Republican nominee in 1912, but both finished well behind Democrat Woodrow Wilson.

Which Harper's Weekly cartoonist, credited with the modern Santa Claus, gave Republicans their animal symbol?

Thomas Nast also popularized the Democratic donkey, and his drawings were instrumental in the downfall of New York's Boss Tweed.

Which Democratic senator beat Republican challenger Abraham Lincoln in 1858 after seven famous debates?

Stephen Douglas kept his seat because state legislators, not voters, chose senators at the time, even though Republican candidates drew more votes statewide.

Which state was the birthplace of seven Republican presidents, every one elected between 1868 and 1920?

Ohio ranks second only to Virginia as a birthplace of presidents, though two of its seven were living in other states when they won.

Which Montana Republican became the first woman elected to Congress, before most American women could vote?

Jeannette Rankin served two separate terms, each as the country entered a world war, and in 1941 she was the only member of Congress to vote against war with Japan.

Which Republican vice president was sworn in as president by his own father, a notary public, in 1923?

Calvin Coolidge took the oath in the family parlor by the light of a kerosene lamp at 2:47 in the morning, then went back to bed.

Which bribery scandal over navy oil reserves sent a member of Warren G. Harding's Republican cabinet to prison?

Teapot Dome was a Wyoming oil field set aside for the navy, and Interior Secretary Albert Fall, who leased it for bribes, became the first cabinet member to go to prison.

Which Republican governor did a famous newspaper headline wrongly declare the winner over Truman in 1948?

Thomas Dewey was so far ahead in the polls that one paper's first edition went to press with his victory, and Truman held up a copy for the cameras two days later.

Which utility executive, a Democrat until late 1939, won the Republican presidential nomination in 1940?

Wendell Willkie lost the election, then made two wartime trips abroad as the president's informal envoy and gave him his full support.

Which Arizona senator, author of The Conscience of a Conservative, lost in a landslide as the 1964 Republican nominee?

Barry Goldwater won only his home state and five states in the Deep South, though by then he had reshaped and redefined the conservative movement.

Which federal body did Republican president Richard Nixon create in 1970, the year of the first Earth Day?

The Environmental Protection Agency opened in December 1970, pulling pollution programs scattered across the government under one roof.

Which Washington complex, burgled in 1972, named the scandal that drove Republican Richard Nixon to resign?

The Watergate housed the Democratic National Committee's headquarters, where men tied to the president's campaign were caught planting listening devices.

Which Republican became only the second president, after Grover Cleveland, to win two non-consecutive terms?

Donald Trump was also the first president who had neither served in the military nor held any government office before reaching the White House.

Which Arizona judge, once Republican leader of the state senate, became the first woman on the US Supreme Court?

Sandra Day O'Connor had already made history in 1973 as the first woman to serve as majority leader of any state senate in the country.

Which action film star became California's Republican governor by winning the 2003 recall election?

Arnold Schwarzenegger replaced the recalled Democrat Gray Davis and won a full term in 2006. Years earlier he had chaired the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports.

Which former child film star ran for Congress as a Republican in 1967 and later became US ambassador to Ghana?

Shirley Temple lost that California primary but found a diplomatic career instead, including a second ambassadorship in Czechoslovakia and a spell as chief of protocol.

Which Navy pilot, a prisoner of war in Vietnam for over five years, was the 2008 Republican nominee?

John McCain refused an early release offered after his father took command of US forces in the region, insisting that men captured before him go home first.

Which Alaska governor became the first woman on a Republican presidential ticket as the 2008 running mate?

Sarah Palin was only the second woman nominated for vice president by a major party; the first had run for the Democrats in 1984.

Which 1994 campaign document promising votes on ten bills helped Republicans retake the House after 40 years?

The Contract with America was unveiled six weeks before the election, written by Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey and signed by all but two Republican House members.

Which Maine Republican, the first woman to serve in both houses of Congress, ran for president in 1964?

Margaret Chase Smith was the first woman placed in nomination for president at a major party's convention, and in 1950 she was among the first to criticize Joseph McCarthy's tactics.

Which New York governor gave his name to the moderate, socially liberal wing of the Republican Party?

Nelson Rockefeller sought the presidential nomination in 1960, 1964 and 1968 and fell short each time as the party's conservatives gained ground.

Which Massachusetts Republican became the first African American elected to the Senate by popular vote in 1966?

Edward Brooke had already been the first African American elected attorney general of any state, and he later became the first Black senator to win re-election.