Friday, November 1, 2019

the first president from Florida

DT has changed his legal residence from Trump Tower to Mar-a-Lago. This is historically interesting because it makes him the first president to be a citizen of Florida, but also because he is, I think, the fourth president to change his state of residence while in office. The other three also all involved New York.

The first was Eisenhower, who had been officially living in New York when he was elected because he had been serving as President of Columbia University, though that became increasingly nominal, especially while he was on leave off in Europe as military commander of NATO. By the time of his re-election in 1956, he'd bought his retirement home at Gettysburg and moved his residence there, so he was from New York in his first election and from Pennsylvania in his second. He'd been born in Texas and spent his entire childhood in Kansas, and lived all over during his long army career.

The second was Nixon. Previously a life-long Southern Californian, he'd moved to New York after his gubernatorial loss in 1962 and joined John Mitchell's law firm. That's where he was living at his first election. But he bought his "Western White House" in San Clemente and moved his residence there before re-election. After his ejection from the presidency, however, he moved back to New York and eventually to suburban New Jersey.

I'm pretty sure that Bill Clinton of Arkansas moved his residence to his eventual home in Chappaqua, New York, before leaving office, though I can't be sure because he never ran for office there. Hillary Clinton did, though, so at least she must have.

Many other presidents have moved states, but either before running for office (e.g. Lincoln, who was born in Kentucky, raised in Indiana, and lived in Illinois) or in a few cases afterwards (the first was James Monroe of Virginia, who as a widower went to live with his daughter in, ta da, New York).

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