Former House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) says he once tried to persuade late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to be Sen. Bob Dole’s (R-KS) running mate on the 1996 Republican ticket.
In a op-ed published Tuesday with the Independent Journal Review, Boehner wrote that he thought Dole’s campaign needed to be reinvigorated. He recalled that while choosing Scalia would’ve been a left-field choice, he reasoned Scalia was a “brilliant, engaging, conservative Italian-American justice with a large, Catholic family, with potential cross-generational appeal.”
Boehner said he made the pitch to Scalia over pepperoni and anchovies pizza. Two days later, he said Scalia telephoned him and said, “The possibility is too remote to comment upon, given my position.”
Ultimately, Dole would choose Jack Kemp to be his running mate, which Boehner wrote “accomplished the goal of bringing excitement to the ticket.”
Read the full thing here.
