It is now over thirty years since epidemiological studies revealed a relationship between low birth weight and subsequent risk of developing traditionally adult-onset diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular and renal disease. Initial focus was directed towards the importance of fetal undernutrition. However, it is now recognized that a range of other in utero adverse exposures including chronic fetal hypoxia, maternal over-nutrition and maternal stress can also lead to increased risk of cardio-metabolic and renal diseases in later life. Animal models, including those using non-human primates, sheep and rodents have been critical in demonstrating causality of relationships and helped to define underlying mechanisms, such as epigenetic programming of gene expression and oxidative stress. As the field moves forward in the coming years, these mechanistic studies will help to identify rational intervention strategies to reduce the developmental programming of cardiometabolic and renal dysfunction in suboptimal pregnancy.

After his name was presented to California's Republican State Convention as a candidate for governor in 1861, Leland Stanford mounted the podium. He was acutely conscious that this was not the first time he stood in line for party favor. Conventions past had nominated Stanford for state treasurer and governor, but he wanted it clearly understood that ambition had nothing to do with it. “I never was a candidate for the nomination upon my own motion…. I did not solicit those nominations, but I submitted because I was devoted to the principles of our party. (Applause.) I felt it was my duty, as it was the duty of every man, to serve when called upon in times of trial.” Stanford assured the assembly that this was no less true in 1861. “No gentleman in this convention has ever received a letter in regard to this gubernatorial contest, [sic] from me during my absence from the State. There is not to-day, in this convention, a gentleman who ever received a letter from me in regard to it.” The impetus for his candidacy originated elsewhere. “My friends insisted that my name should come before the people, and so I have consented.” He closed by reminding his listeners that “This is not a struggle between men, we are here to-day for the purpose of sustaining principles.”

Raw political ambition was still a vice in the eyes of many nineteenth-century Americans.

Michigan's voters had never witnessed anything resembling Chase S. Osborn's barnstorming for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 1910. Touring the lower peninsula in an automobile caravan over several weeks that summer, Osborn's entourage logged in twelve thousand miles – sometimes tooling along at an alarming thirty miles per hour. The “cow path campaigning” stopped “wherever we found a crossroads, a blacksmith shop and a bird's nest.” His savvy handlers sent an organizer to towns ahead to ensure that Osborn was greeted by a band and an enthusiastic crowd. Osborn was a “natural campaigner,” writes his biographer, “energetic, colorful, highly egotistical, a complete extrovert” and a good public speaker. Primary day left him hoarse from seven hundred mostly extemporaneous speeches. Osborn gloried in the glad-handing techniques perfected by candidates for lesser offices, but he did not overlook the tactics that had nominated governors past. He wrote numerous letters, hired a retinue of local campaign promoters, and even sought to enlist the census takers in his cause. It proved to be an expensive undertaking. Much of the thirty-five thousand dollars Osborn spent came out of his own bank account after his fellow mine owners proved less than generous. Some of the payments violated the state's new limitations on campaign expenditures, but it was easy enough to find loopholes in the statute. A longtime supporter of direct nominations, Osborn's ready adaptation to its demanding regimen accounted for his victory that fall.

In the near total absence of official records of convention proceedings, local newspapers furnished the list of state delegates. Information on occupations appeared in city directories published in the same year as the state convention. Directories published the year after the state convention were consulted for delegates who were not found in the previous edition. Some names appeared without an occupation. In about half these cases, a directory published two or four years earlier revealed an occupation that was the one assigned for this study. Individuals traced back in earlier directories had to retain the same address. Persons with “No Occupation” in Figures 2.3 and 2.4 and Tables 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3 either had no occupation listed in the directory over a period of four years or, more commonly, could not be located in the earlier editions.

When the names appearing in each source exactly match, as they do in most instances, record linkage was simple and reasonably sure. There were a number of “close fits” that required a judgment call. In the interest of consistency and of mitigating subjectivity, the following guidelines determined when a match from the newspapers and directories was inferred:

1. First and last names had to conform – with rare allowances for variations on abridged first names or common nicknames; for example, “Augustus” in one source appears as “Gus” in the other.

2. When more than one individual with a given name appeared in the directory, an address singled out the individual living in or near (within 1 block) of the appropriate ward.

3. […]

As the twice-elected chief executive of New Jersey's largest city, James M. Seymour was an obvious choice for governor in 1898. The Newark mayor never formally announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination, but did admit that were it tendered him, “he would consider himself … constrained to accept.” Seymour needed a friendly delegation from his home county of Essex to the state convention to make his candidacy viable. The mayor's friends mounted a well-organized effort to carry the primaries, outdoing anything attempted by any previous gubernatorial aspirant. They had to be more aggressive because of the hostility of the local Democratic organization. Seymour's patronage practices had alienated many the party's leaders, a common source of strife that ended many an incumbent's political career. The turmoil that engulfed the ensuing primary revealed the deficiencies of the party-administered indirect primary when faced with a highly visible and contentious struggle for party supremacy.

Ostensibly, the Newark mayor's candidacy appeared formidable. His opponent, Elvin W. Crane, was an obscure politician who had served two terms in the state assembly a decade earlier. “[O]n his merits and popularity Mr. Crane would never have had a ghost of a chance of being nominated for governor,” the Newark Evening News editorialized.