After Gerald Ford resigned his House seat in 1973 to become Vice President of the United States, Vander Veen was elected in a special election on February 18, 1974, to fill Ford's seat in the 93rd Congress. Vander Veen's election from the heavily Republican district was seen as a stunning upset defeat for the Republican Party. He is the only Democrat to be elected to Congress from the Grand Rapids area since 1912. The Republican candidate, Robert VanderLaan, was the Republican leader of the Michigan Senate and, up to that point, had never lost an election. Vander Veen turned the election into a referendum on the increasingly unpopular U.S. President Richard Nixon. He stopped campaigning directly against his opponent, and instead took out newspaper advertisements "in which he promised to do his utmost to dislodge Nixon and turn the presidency over to Ford, a political folk hero in the district." This upset caused a panic in the Republican Party leadership, as it appeared to foreshadow more losses for the party in the November elections. Political analyst Larry Sabato writes in his Crystal Ball newsletter that Vander Veen's capture of Gerald Ford's solidly Republican district after Ford had been elevated to the Vice Presidency was an electrifying victory that foreshadowed the Democratic Watergate landslide of November 1974. "(see also 1974 Midterm Senate and House elections)"