This election can still get weirder

D at Laywers, Guns, and Money reminds us of the thrilling 1838 race for the presidency... of Texas:

In late June of that year, James Collinsworth -- one of the republic's founders who had served (simultaneously) as Secretary of State, as Supreme Court Justice, as Attorney General and as Senator -- ended a week-long bender by jumping into Galveston Bay. Two days earlier, his friend Peter William Grayson -- also a candidate for the republic’s highest office -- had killed himself in Tennessee after a woman humiliated him by deflecting his marriage proposal. Running a campaign that was suddenly unopposed, Mirabeau Lamar predictably coasted to victory. Though Lamar would go on to die of natural causes two decades later, his brother Lucius -- a judge in Georgia’s superior court, had killed himself on Independence Day 1834 after realizing he’d condemned an innocent man to die.

The current race still has a long way to go.