George Romney and the 1968 Presidential Election.

July 2, 2020 4:50 PM

When George Romney ran for the Republican nomination for President in 1968 there were questions if his birth in Mexico made him ineligible for the presidency. He left the race before the convention and people stopped talking about if he was a Native Born Citizen as defined in the US Constitution. Was this ever resolved?
posted by Raybun to Law & Government (6 answers total)

It would take an honest-to-god court case to actually litigate and decide this, but note that both John McCain (who won the nomination) and Ted Cruz were also both out of the country, and nobody seemed to have a problem with them being "natural born citizens." It's widely accepted that being born to American parents—no matter where—establishes being naturally born a citizen.
posted by General Malaise at 4:59 PM on July 2, 2020 [3 favorites]

Agreed that, without a court case, it can't really be considered resolved - and that hasn't happened. This CRS report, I think, presents probably the closest thing to an 'official' government answer on this.
posted by kickingtheground at 5:07 PM on July 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

Note that McCain is a slightly different case, since he was born in the then Panama Canal Zone, which was US-controlled territory.
posted by Chrysostom at 6:39 PM on July 2, 2020 [3 favorites]

It's true that without a court case, this can't be considered completely settled, but the fact that no such court case has advanced to a higher court (they've been brought but generally dismissed on procedural grounds), despite several very serious candidates being in this position, represents a fairly strong legal consensus around the argument contained in the Congressional Research Service report linked above. The TLDR version is that a natural-born citizen is anyone who is granted the rights of citizenship at birth, whether by virtue of being born within the US, or by whatever other circumstances Congress chooses to grant citizenship at birth (e.g. being born to American citizen parents).
posted by firechicago at 3:59 AM on July 3, 2020

I graduated college in 1968. My recollection is that the Romney issue was resolved during the campaign, as a practical matter if not with legal finality, but I dont remember how.
posted by SemiSalt at 5:11 AM on July 3, 2020

The Wikipedia article does a good job on describing what happened with Romney.

the New York Law Journal published an article by a senior attorney at Sullivan & Cromwell arguing that Romney was, in fact, eligible. The Congressional Research Service also came down on Romney's side, as did most other constitutional experts at the time.

During the campaign, Romney was generally considered a viable and legal candidate for United States president. He departed the race before the matter could be more definitively resolved, although the preponderance of opinion since then has been that he was eligible.

That article cites two 2000s-era newspaper articles with further detail. How Mitt Romney's Mexican-Born Father Was Eligible to be President and Romney's birth certificate evokes his father's controversy. I can't find the relevant primary sources online (NY Law Journal, Congressional Research Service).

The question clearly isn't 100% settled since it keeps coming up.
posted by Nelson at 11:15 AM on July 3, 2020