Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, September 15th, 1992, Ted Weiss won the Democratic Party for his U.S. House seat.

Weiss was first elected to the seat representing the West side of Manhattan in 1977.

It was a very blue district.

This was his seventh election in a row, so no surprise that he won the primary.

Except for one thing that might be surprising, Ted Weiss died the day

before the election. He had been ailing in health throughout his final term but he

stayed on the ballot of course and the day before day, which would have also been his 65th birthday, he died of a heart failure.

So come primary day, he won it in a landslide.

He would go on to be replaced on the ballot by a man named Jerry Nadler, a man who still holds that seat.

So here to discuss the curious case of Ted Weiss is as always Nicole Hammer of Columbia.

Hello Nicki.

Hey Jody.

So I'll say, we're interested in this story

for a couple of reasons.

One is that we did that Star Trek Barack Obama

Jerry Ryan sliding doors episode.

And we got a number of emails afterwards pointing out

other sort of political moments like this including one of them from a

listener named Alec mentioning this this white story so it's you know it's an

interesting one in terms of butterfly effects it also I

...