"for the first time, we’re going to elect a candidate from a state that does not execute prisoners"

The title of this piece is a fascinating tidbit of presidential trivia drawn from this intriguing local article headlined "Why The Death Penalty Is Not An Issue In This Campaign."  Here are excerpts from the effective piece:

The death penalty used to be an important issue in presidential politics. In 1988, Vice President George Bush used his Democratic opponent Michael Dukakis’s opposition to the death penalty to portray him as soft on crime....

Running against Bush four years later, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton didn’t make the same mistake. He flew back to Little Rock to ensure the execution of Ricky Ray Rector, who had killed a police officer and then shot himself in the head. Rector was so brain damaged that he didn’t finish his last meal, saving his pecan pie “for later” before he was led to the execution chamber.

The death penalty also became an issue for Bush’s son, George W. Trying to establish that he was a friend to black voters, Bush boasted that the killers of James Byrd, a Texas man who had been dragged behind a truck by white supremacists, were “going to be put to death.”...

Capital punishment will not be an issue in this year’s campaign. For the first time, both candidates are from states that have abolished the death penalty. Which means that, also for the first time, we’re going to elect a candidate from a state that does not execute prisoners. (Illinois did not abolish capital punishment until 2011, three years after President Obama was elected. As governor of Massachusetts, Romney proposed a bill to restore the death penalty, but his legislature rejected it, denying him an achievement he could tout to conservatives.) Below is a list of such presidential candidates throughout American history. It’s hard to argue that any of them have lost specifically because they opposed the death penalty, but they generally came from states more liberal than the nation as a whole, so their stances were part of a political philosophy that voters did not accept.

Lewis Cass, Michigan, 1848

Robert M. La Follette, Wisconsin, 1924

Hubert Humphrey, Minnesota, 1968

Walter Mondale, Minnesota, 1984

Michael Dukakis, Massachusetts, 1988

John Kerry, Massachusetts, 2004

Barack Obama, Illinois, 2012

Mitt Romney, Massachusetts, 2012

Significantly, I think the death penalty should be an issue in the 2012 presidential campaign because the federal death penalty has been in a mysterious state of suspension even since the Baze lethal injection litigation created a moratorium on executions more than five years ago.  As detailed here at the DPIC website, there are more than 50 persons on federal death row, including an handful sentenced to death during the Obama Administration.  Thus, the federal chief executive (and his appointed Attorney General) has some unique death penalty responsibilities and thus ought to at some point in a campaign speak to his views on how best to discharge these responsibilities.

Related post (from 2010!):

• Wondering about the state and fate of the federal death penalty