John Connally and fellow Texan president. In May 1973, Connally joined the Republican Party. When Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned five months later because of scandal, Connally was one of Nixon's potential choices to fill the vacancy. Nixon tapped Gerald Ford, the House Minority Leader from Grand Rapids, Michigan, because he believed that the moderate Ford could be easily confirmed by both houses of Congress, as required by the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution. A Connally nomination presumably could have been blocked by liberal Democratic opposition. The weakened Nixon did not want a fight for the vice-presidential selection. Connally's party
Spiro Agnew what one reporter called his "offensive and sometimes dangerous banality". He used the derogatory term "Polack" to describe Polish-Americans, referred to a Japanese-American reporter as "the fat Jap", and appeared to dismiss poor socio-economic conditions by stating that "if you've seen one slum you've seen them all." He attacked Humphrey as soft on communism, an appeaser like Britain's prewar prime minister Neville Chamberlain. Agnew was mocked by his Democratic opponents; a Humphrey commercial displayed the message "Agnew for Vice President?" against a soundtrack of prolonged hysterical laughter that degenerated into a painful cough, before a final message: "This would be