July 18, 2008 – 5:14 a.m.
How many presidents were formerly New York state legislators?
a) 1
b) 2
c) 3
d) 4
Answer: d) According to the New York legislature’s Web site, four former state lawmakers went on to serve as president:
• Martin Van Buren, who was elected to a single term as president in 1836.
• Millard Fillmore, who was elected vice president in 1848 and succeeded to the presidency when Zachary Taylor died in office in 1850.
• Theodore Roosevelt, who was elected vice president in 1900, became president upon the 1901 assassination of William McKinley, and was re-elected in 1904.
• Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was elected president in 1932, 1936, 1940 and 1944 before dying in office in 1945.
They also are the only four presidents born in New York: Van Buren in Kinderhook and FDR in Hyde Park, both in the Hudson Valley; Fillmore in the upstate town of Summerhill; and Theodore Roosevelt in Manhattan.
Other references show that four presidents were born in other states but relocated and served in the office as residents of New York:
• Chester Alan Arthur, a Vermont native, was elected vice president in 1880 and moved up to fill out the unexpired term of President James A. Garfield, who died in September 1881 after being shot by an assassin two months earlier.
• Grover Cleveland, a New Jersey native, was elected president in 1884, lost to Benjamin Harrison in 1888, then won the office back from Harrison in 1892. Cleveland is the only president who has served non-consecutive terms.
• Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Texas native, was the Army general who commanded the Allied forces in Europe during World War II, then settled in New York City as president of Columbia University. He listed New York as his home state when he won for president in 1952, but switched his residency to his farm in Gettysburg, Pa., when he won re-election in 1956.
• Richard M. Nixon, a California native, served two terms as Eisenhower’s vice president before losing the 1960 presidential election narrowly to John F. Kennedy. After losing a 1962 bid for governor of California, Nixon moved to New York City to practice law. He staged a remarkable comeback by winning the 1968 race for president, in which he ran as a New York resident. But when he was re-elected in 1972, he ran as a resident of his native state of California.
New York Sen.