NORTON — As Barack Obama became president, the man he defeated in November was honored with a different kind of ceremony in northwest Kansas.
A framed photograph of Republican Sen. John McCain went up Tuesday at First State Bank, in Norton, home of the “They Also Ran” gallery that’s a tribute to losing presidential candidates.
The row of black and white drawings and photographs starts with Thomas Jefferson, who lost to John Adams in 1796, winds its way around three walls and ends with McCain, the 59th person with his likeness added. A brief biography is beneath each portrait.
The museum curator, Lee Ann Shearer, said about 30 people showed up to watch her add McCain’s photograph next to Sen. John Kerry, the unsuccessful Democratic nominee in 2004.
They stayed to sample cookies, which Shearer helped bake, and sip punch. A few remained to watch Barack Obama become the nation’s 44th president on a TV set up in the gallery.
“I got goose bumps. I’m kind of sentimental about my country. It’s history in the making,” said Shearer, who also is a bookkeeper at the bank.
Shearer said McCain’s picture used up the last space in the gallery, prompting the question of what it is going to do.
“We got four years to think about it, but the bank likes it here,” she said.
She said there has been some talk about moving the gallery closer to U.S. 36, an east-west highway through the northern part of this rural county seat town of about 3,000. But she said there are no plans to move it out of the bank.
The gallery was started in 1965 by William Walter Rouse, bank president at the time, after he read Irving Stone’s book “They Also Ran,” about presidential campaign losers. Rouse decided that, despite their political shortcomings, the losers deserved a shrine.
The gallery had been getting the photographs from the Library of Congress, but that has proven expensive — about $100 each. Four years ago, the gallery received Kerry’s photograph from his campaign. This year, the McCain photograph was found on the Internet because pictures given by the campaign were too dark, Shearer said.
The town is off the beaten tourist path, about 60 miles north of Interstate 70, which bisects the state. Shearer said the gallery, which is open during bank hours and free, gets about 100 visitors a year.
“It’s better than it was a year ago and it picks up during the summer. We’re listed in travel guides and that helps,” she said.
Fourteen honorees, including Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, either were president after losing the first time or were turned out by voters.
Those who ran multiple times still get just one portrait, including Henry Clay and William Jennings Bryan.
Shearer said the last third-party candidate to adorn the walls was John Anderson in 1980. After that, the gallery decided to limit it to Democratic and Republican candidates because of the limited wall space.
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