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Wendell Lewis Willkie was the Republican Party's candidate for United States President in 1940. Willkie was an attorney and a longtime Democrat activist, but changed his party registration to Republican in 1939. Unlike other potential Republican nominees to run against incumbent president Franklin D. Roosevelt, Willkie favored supporting Britain and other U.S. allies in World War II. His position would change throughout the general election, and Roosevelt was elected to a third term on November 5, 1940. After the election, Willkie made two international trips as Roosevelt's informal envoy. The two later discussed forming a liberal political party once the war was over, but Willkie died in 1944 before the idea could come to fruition. 

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Thaddeus Thomson Hutcheson, Sr. (1915-1986) was a Houston attorney who became the Republican candidate in the 1957 special election to fill Senator Price Daniel’s seat when he vacated to become the Governor of Texas. Hutcheson won 23 percent of the votes, but lost to Ralph Yarborough, who was Daniel’s gubernatorial primary opponent. The 1957 election was the only political race Hutcheson would enter.

Hutcheson served in the U.S. Navy in World War II as a Lieutenant Commander assigned to the Destroyer Escort U.S.S. Swayze. He was a partner in his father’s law practice in Houston along with his older brother, Palmer Hutcheson, Jr., and cousin, Thomas Taliaferro. The firm was known as Hutcheson, Taliaferro & Hutcheson, and subsequently became Hutcheson and Grundy.

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Harry S. Truman was the Vice President for Franklin Delano Roosevelt for only four months before becoming the 33rd President of the United States following Roosevelt's death. He remained president from 1945 to 1953. He is responsible for ending World War II with Japan by utilizing atomic bombs, starting the Marshall Plan to help rebuild Europe's broken economy, leading the Cold War against Russia and China, and getting involved in the Korean War, among other things.

In the presidential election of 1948, Truman ran against Republican Thomas E. Dewey. His pick for Vice President was Alben W. Barkley. Truman won 303 electoral college votes to Dewey's 189, giving him a second term as president.

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Robert C. Byrd was a United States Senator from West Virginia. The cardinal on this button may be a play on Byrd's last name, or it could refer to his work with Amtrak to keep the Cardinal train route operating along the old historic Chesapeake and Ohio main line that runs through West Virginia. Byrd was born Cornelius Calvin Sale, Jr. in 1917, but following his mother's death in the 1918 flu pandemic, he was adopted by his aunt and uncle, who changed his name to Robert Carlyle Byrd. Byrd served in the United States House of Representatives from 1953 to 1959, and in the Senate from 1959 until his death in 2010. 

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Hubert Humphrey was first elected to the United States Senate as a representative of Minnesota in 1948. Humphrey's proposal to end racial segregation was included in the Democratic party platform at the national convention in the same year. Before he became a politician, Humphrey worked in his father's pharmacy, but dreamed of becoming an academic. He earned his bachelor's degree in 1939 from the University of Minnesota followed by his master's degree from Louisiana State University in 1940, and then returned to the University of Minnesota as an instructor and a doctoral student. Humphrey then became involved in local politics and did not finish his PhD. Despite pressure from then-President Harry Truman's aides to keep civil rights issues out of the Convention in 1948, Humphrey represented a minority portion of the Democratic Party when he spoke, calling for federal legislation against lynching, stopping legal segregation in the schools of the South, and ending job discrimination based on skin color. The minority platform was adopted, and Truman was aided in his re-election bid by gaining support from black voters. 

As a Senator, Humphrey introduced the Peace Corps bill in 1957, and a bill in 1960 to establish a National Peace Agency. He was the lead author of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and served as Democratic whip in the same year. Humphrey's colleagues nicknamed him "The Happy Warrior". When Lyndon B. Johnson inherited the presidency following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, he chose Humphrey to be his running mate against Republican Barry Goldwater. The Johnson/Humphrey ticket was elected in a landslide in 1964. Humphrey's bid for President in 1968 was unsuccessful, but he returned to the Senate in 1971, serving until his death in 1978. 

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Hubert Humphrey was the Democratic Party's nominee in the 1968 presidential election. Humphrey served twice as Minnesota's representative in the United States Senate, from 1949 to 1964 and again from 1971 to 1978. Before becoming a politician, Humphrey helped to run his father's pharmacy, earned a master's degree and taught political science at Louisiana State University and Macalester College. Humphrey was elected as the mayor of Minneapolis in 1945, and elected as a Senator in 1948. Humphrey was the lead author of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and introduced the first initiative to create the Peace Corps. 

When Lyndon B. Johnson inherited the presidency following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, he chose  Humphrey to be his running mate against Republican Barry Goldwater. The Johnson/Humphrey ticket was elected in a landslide in 1964. After Johnson decided not to run for re-election in 1968, Humphrey launched his campaign and secured the Democratic Party's nomination after avoiding the primary elections against fellow Democrats Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy. The assassinations of Robert Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., combined with increased opposition to the Vietnam War, were harmful to Humphrey's campaign, and he lost to Richard Nixon in the general election. 

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Wilbur Huckle was a minor league baseball prospect for the New York Mets in the 1960's. Despite never making it onto the major league roster, Huckle attracted a following. Fans began appearing at Shea Stadium in 1964, the building's inaugural season, wearing "Huckle for President" pins. Huckle was known for his red hair and freckles, and went on to manage the Batavia Trojans in the New York-Penn league for three seasons after his playing career was over. The slogan "Extremism in Defense of the Mets is No Vice" was a twist on a quote from 1964 presidential candidate Barry Goldwater's nomination acceptance speech, where he said, "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." 

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In 1948, Republican incumbents Governor Dwight Green and Senator Charles (Curly) Brooks ran for re-election in Illinois. Green was elected Governor in 1941 and served two terms in office. Green had served as U.S. Attorney General for Illinois from 1931-1935, and participated in the fight against organized crime in Chicago, helping to prosecute Al Capone for tax evasion. The 1947 coal mine explosion in Centralia, Illinois in which 111 miners died was blamed on Green’s neglect of previous requests from minors for greater safety measures at the mine. It was also revealed that Green’s administration had elicited political contributions from mine owners during this period. Green was defeated in the 1948 election by Adlai Stevenson.

Charles (Curly) Brooks served as Republican Senator from 1940-1949, and was strongly supported by the Chicago Tribune.  Brooks was a Marine veteran of WWI, and law professor at Northwestern University. Brooks was defeated in the 1948 election by Paul Douglas.

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Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater was the Republican Party's nominee in the 1964 presidential election. His main rival in the primary elections was Norman Rockefeller, governor of New York. Goldwater selected William Miller, a little-known Congressman from New York, as his running mate. Goldwater stated that he chose Miller because he "drove [incumbent President] Johnson nuts". 

During the general election campaign, the Republican party was divided between its more moderate and liberal faction, based in the Northeast, and the more conservative side, located primarily in the South and West. Conservatives who supported Goldwater were resentful of how the moderate and Northeasterners had dominated the party. They preferred a smaller federal government and lower taxes, opposing social welfare programs. Moderate Republicans were concerned with Goldwater's rhetoric on nuclear weapons and some Americans considered him to be a dangerous extremist. 

Incumbent President Lyndon Johnson defeated the Goldwater/Miller ticket in a landslide on Election Day, carrying 44 of 50 states and the District of Columbia.