Arnold Vinick

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Arnold Vinick
Alan Alda as Arnold Vinick
First appearance	A Change Is Gonna Come
Last appearance	Tomorrow
Cause/Reason	series ended
Statistics
Occupation	Senator from California (Seasons 6-7), Republican Presidential Candidate (Seasons 6-7), incoming Secretary of State (Season 7)
Family	Richard Vinick (father), Patricia Vinick (mother)
Spouse	Catherine Vinick (deceased)
Children	four, names unknown
Relatives	nine grandchildren
Portrayed by	Alan Alda
Created by	John Sacret Young and Josh Singer

Arnold Vinick was a fictional character on the television series The West Wing played by Alan Alda. A former Republican senator from California and Republican presidential nominee, he was narrowly defeated by Democrat Matt Santos in the 2006 presidential election. He is currently the Secretary of State-designate in the incoming Santos administration.

He is a social moderate and fiscal conservative with a maverick streak and a direct manner. Vinick seems to be loosely based on Senator John McCain, although unlike McCain, Vinick is pro-choice. He is, however, opposed to late-term abortion. Vinick has also been described as a deficit hawk, like McCain. His politics, however, seem to dovetail almost precisely with those of McCain's predecessor, the late-career Barry Goldwater, whose opposition to the Religious Right's domination of the Republican Party since 1980 and their corresponding abandonment of limited-government conservatism made him an ideological pariah within his own party. Unlike Goldwater (and McCain to a certain extent), Vinick had no such difficulties with the Republicans' new base.

In one episode, Arnold Vinick mentioned growing up in a "citrus-growing" community. In response to this, the town of Santa Paula, which is famous for citrus growing and is often referred to as the "Citrus Capital of the World", wrote to The West Wing's production company, asking that Santa Paula be made Arnold Vinick's hometown. The production company promised to keep Santa Paula in mind for any campaign filming. In the meantime, the city council decided to organize a campaign for Arnold Vinick, including the opening of an Arnold Vinick presidential campaign headquarters. The town was eventually mentioned as Vinick's hometown in the episode "Two Weeks Out," broadcast on March 19, 2006.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The son of Richard Vinick, a public school teacher in the New York City School District, and Patricia Vinick, a community activist, Vinick was born in New York Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn in 1940 (It is stated he would be Seventy in 2010). When he was four years old, his younger brother was born and the family relocated to the southern California town of Santa Paula to farm orange groves. In Santa Paula, Vinick volunteered at the public library.

A picture of Vinick with his wife, Catherine.

After graduating from Yale and Stanford Law School, Vinick opened a law practice in Santa Paula. He was eventually elected to the city council in the town's first write-in victory. He served one term on the council before being elected to the California State Assembly. He then moved on the United States Senate where he won election with 6.9 million votes—the highest total for any Senate candidate at the time (Barbara Boxer in 2004 is the only Senator to have ever matched this number in the real world). Vinick has served in the Senate for twenty-four years as of the 2006 election (thereby, eliminating the terms of Pete Wilson, John F. Seymour, and Dianne Feinstein in the real world).

Vinick was married to Catherine Vinick for thirty-four years before she died in 2004. He has one brother, four children and nine grandchildren.

Vinick serves as Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and serves on the Committees on Foreign Relations and Environment and Public Works. Vinick was offered the post of Ambassador to the United Nations by President Josiah Bartlet's Deputy Chief of Staff, Josh Lyman, but declined as he intended to run for President. Lyman and former White House Chief of Staff Leo McGarry were concerned that Vinick, as an articulate and appealing centrist, offered the Republicans a real chance to win back the White House after Democrat Bartlet's two terms. However, both wondered if he was conservative enough to win the Republican nomination.

The Republican ticket: Vinick-Suillivan.

Vinick opposes federal funding for ethanol as an alcohol fuel, considering it a political boondoggle. He once told Josh Lyman, half-seriously, that he doesn't trust anyone who doesn't shine his own shoes. In the primaries, Vinick defeated the Reverend Don Butler and former Speaker of the House and Acting President Glen Allen Walken for the Republican nomination in the 2006 presidential election. Shortly after winning the nomination, Senator Vinick met with President Bartlet, whom he has a mutual measure of respect for, to discuss a deal to raise both the federal debt ceiling and the national minimum wage.

After the Reverend Butler declined to be his running mate in the 2006 election, due to Butler's strong pro-life views, Vinick, who felt he needed a staunch conservative to balance the ticket, selected Governor Ray Sullivan of West Virginia.

Vinick may be an atheist, agnostic or other religious skeptic. Though this has been hinted it in his public statements, he has not actually made an explicit statement on the matter. Vinick may also be a book collector, having received a 17th century King James Bible from his late wife. Her untimely death, and the harsh requirements of Old Testament Judaic law which he discovered when he read the Bible in depth, made him question his own religious beliefs.

In the seventh season of the show, Senator Vinick and Governor Sullivan are running against Congressman Matt Santos of Texas, the Democratic nominee, and his running mate, former White House Chief of Staff and Secretary of Labor Leo McGarry. Democratic political consultant Bruno Gianelli is a consultant on his campaign, initially with an ambitious plan to win all 50 states.

Presidential debate between Santos and Vinick.

Throughout the campaign, Vinick and Santos treat each other with mutual respect. (In the episode "King Corn," it is revealed that, two years before the election, Vinick and Santos co-sponsored an immigration reform bill that was defeated in committee on Capitol Hill.)

At the outset of the first and only Santos-Vinick debate, Vinick proposed to have "a real debate," without time limits on speaking; i.e. to ignore the rules to which their campaigns had agreed. Santos readily agreed. During the debate, Vinick tried to paint Santos as a typical liberal Democrat who would raise taxes to pay for intrusive big-government programs while still leaving the federal budget unbalanced. The senator laid out a moderate agenda and reiterated his support for tax cuts, proposed tax-deductibility for health insurance costs, explained why he had voted for the Central American Free Trade Agreement, opposed a moratorium on the federal death penalty, promised to open part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil exploration, and declared his strong support for nuclear power. He was heckled by a member of the audience for claiming that Head Start didn't work, but perhaps his most surprising comment and show of blunt honesty was his remark that he would not create any new jobs, saying that in a free society entrepreneurs, not the government, created jobs.

President Bartlet and Senator Vinick at the San Andreo nuclear power plant.

In the middle of the campaign, as Vinick enjoyed a huge lead over Santos, a nuclear reactor in Southern California comes close to meltdown, creating a panic for millions living in the vicinity. In the episode "Duck and Cover" it is revealed that Vinick, as a Senator from California, pushed for the plant's opening and speedy approval by regulators. The reactor did not melt down, although when the story broke that Vinick was a major supporter of the plant, his poll numbers dropped dramatically, putting numerous states, including California (which, despite leaning Democratic in presidential elections in both reality and the show, was thought to be safe for Vinick, given that was his home state), into play and causing the election to become too close to call.

After a staff shakeup prompted by the Republican National Committee, Vinick decided to go to California on the heels of the Santos campaign, and hold a press conference outside of the San Andreo plant in order to defuse the political fallout from the incident. His strategy seems to have been effective, as he returned to his straight-talking style, exhausting reporter's of their questions and commandeering live news coverage from his opponent's campaign.

Despite this strategy's success (the Senator won his home state of California), Senator Vinick lost the presidential election to Rep. Santos by 272 electoral votes to 266. Senator Vinick conceded the election after Nevada, the decisive state, was carried by Santos by about 30,000 votes. Although Senator Vinick was urged by his staff to contest the election, he refused to do so.

After the election, Vinick appeared to be positioning himself to run again in 2010 against Santos (it was in fact mentioned a few times that Vinick did lead in the 2006 popular vote), but his advisors tried to convince him that there were better Republicans who could run and that his age would be a hindrance. It is stated that Vinick would be seventy by the 2010 election. Impressed by his foreign policy acuity, President-elect Santos asked Vinick to join his administration as Secretary of State. Vinick initially turned him down, but then accepted when Santos assured him that he could perform the job on his own terms, without partisan politics.

[edit] Background

A New York Times article published on April 10, 2006 reported that, if not for the death of actor John Spencer, Vinick would have won the election. According to the article, the writers felt it would be too much for Santos to lose his running mate and the election in one day, so the plot was changed to have Vinick lose, but narrowly.

[edit] See also

Preceded by Unknown	U.S. Senator (Class 1) from California, The West Wing 1983–2007	Succeeded by Unknown
Preceded by Robert Ritchie	Republican presidential candidate, The West Wing 2006 (lost)	Succeeded by Most recent candidate
Preceded by Lewis Berryhill	United States Secretary of State, The West Wing 2007–	Succeeded by Incumbent