In 2020, the Democratic Party's nominee was not necessarily anybody's favorite (at least not among people on social media) - a divided primary electorate resulted in the nomination of a glad-handing Irish Catholic septuagenarian from the Acela corridor, the sort of politician who seemed to belong to the past rather than the future. But his vision of common decency and being stronger, together pleased an electorate that likes the idea of bipartisanship and team-building. His close ties to the superhuman community (including a few quasi-endorsements from former members of the Freedom League) helped a lot too.
And so it is that in 2020, former Freedom City Mayor Michael "Mike" O'Connor was elected President of the United States, having narrowly lost the popular vote (though both candidates got below 50% thanks to the presence of third party candidate ) but securing a solid majority in the Electoral College thanks to his strong support from Catholic voters in the Midwest who saw him as one of their own. O'Connor rebutted charges of inexperience (having never held office higher than city mayor) by pointing out that he'd been in politics since the late 1980s and that Freedom City is a city as diverse as and big as many small countries - he's met more heads of state than many Presidents, and not all of them from Earth, either!
That famous image of him eating a vanilla ice cream cone while waiting for his nomination has been an iconic one - you might not love vanilla ice cream, it might not be your favorite choice, but ultimately most people can agree they'll eat it. He's part of a big, bustling dynasty - his father "Big Mike" is still living and in good health for a man of over 100, and between his sons, daughters, and grandchildren there are frankly too many O'Connors to count.
(It is not widely known that: O'Connor's father was Freedom Eagle I, the gadgeteer genius of the Liberty League all the way back in WWII. Born as the war raged in Europe, Mike himself was not interested in his father's legacy - he doesn't even like to fly, preferring trains and automobiles when he can. The Freedom Eagle legacy has occasionally been donned by Mike's children, but none of them are terribly interested in superheroic careers - though they have a tendency to take demanding jobs in emergency responder or military work.)
His Vice-President is Kalinda Kaur (pronounced 'core'), formerly the Representative for Wisconsin's 9th Congressional District, a long-gerrymandered district that encompasses the city of Bedlam and its surrounding territories. The daughter of a Sikh immigrant long-haul trucker and an African-American school librarian from Wolverton, she went to law school after her father was gunned down by some joyriding Stark Hill thugs, planning to come back home and fight for justice.
When she came back to Bedlam and found work in the public defender's office, it was supposed to be a temporary stopgap - but she quickly realized that defending those who could not defend themselves was a far finer and sweeter way to fight for what she believed in. She soon set her sights beyond just Bedlam, and in 2010 the assistant public defender was elected to Congress, boosted by a city machine that rightly realized that if they gave her a national platform, she'd be less interested in busting their chops. And it worked - the machine even helped her and her elderly mother move to Stone Ridge from Wolverton, where she grins real big at all the people who have sneered at her her whole life.
She gained a national profile in Congress as a major critic of the Cahill administration (helped greatly by her successful use of social media) and was talked about herself as a long-shot Presidential candidate in 2020 before deciding to stay out of the race. At thirty-eight years old, she is actually younger than President O'Connor's children but she's a young, fresh face in the Democratic coalition and was ultimately an excellent choice to build ties to the party's progressive wing.
You might think the city's underworld and its political machine, especially her longtime patron Councilman Willie Boggs, would be fearful of her success - but for most of them, this is a delight! A Bedlam City girl who went to a public high school in Wolverton is going to be the Vice-President of the United States! And once she moves into that big house in DC where the Vice-President lives, they're never going to have to worry about her again.
