In case you missed our first twenty-six volumes or the greatest hits edition, let me explain. Every Monday, we go into the archives of The New York Times to find the first time the paper covered selected topics. This week, we're focusing on the remaining Republican and Democratic presidential candidates. If you have a suggestion for next week, leave us a comment.

The Democrats

Barack Obama

February 6, 1990

First Black Elected to Head Harvard's Law Review

The Harvard Law Review, generally considered the most prestigious in the country, elected the first black president in its 104-year history today. The job is considered the highest student position at Harvard Law School. The new president of the Review is Barack Obama, a 28-year-old graduate of Columbia University who spent four years heading a community development program for poor blacks on Chicago's South Side before enrolling in law school. His late father, Barack Obama, was a finance minister in Kenya and his mother, Ann Dunham, is an American anthropologist now doing fieldwork in Indonesia. Mr. Obama was born in Hawaii. "The fact that I've been elected shows a lot of progress," Mr. Obama said today in an interview. "It's encouraging."

Hillary Clinton

June 15, 1969

A Program for Pacifying the Campus

A student spokesman at Wellesley responded with anger when Senator Edward Brooke called it foolish "to propound demands for social change in a vacuum, oblivious to the substantial changes already in progress." "We feel," said Hillary D. Rodham, president of the Wellesley College Government Association, "that for too long our leaders have used politics as the art of the possible. And the challenge is to practice politics as the art of making what appears impossible, the possible."

The Republicans

John McCain

July 31, 1967

Start of Tragedy: Pilot Hears a Blast As He Checks Plane

At 10:30am Saturday, Lieut. Comdr. John Sidney McCain 3d climbed aboard his A-4 Skyhawk for a mission over North Vietnam. "I closed the canopy and started the plane and then went through the normal checks of the gauges and the settings," the 30-year-old Navy pilot recalled today. "Suddenly I felt and heard an explosion. It was either my plane or the one to the right. Flames were everywhere." In the following moments aboard the aircraft carrier Forrestral, the 150-pound Annapolis graduate climbed out of the cockpit, stepped precariously onto the plane's three-foot-long refueling pipe and then leaped onto the burning flight deck and ran.

* * * * *

The son and grandson of two noted admirals, Commander McCain has a disarming disregard for formal military speech or style. He is wiry, prematurely gray and does not take himself too seriously.

Mike Huckabee

November 4, 1992

The 1992 Elections: State By State

Mr. Clinton easily landed his home state's six electoral votes, marking the first time Arkansas had voted Democratic for President since 1976. Mr. Perot and Mr. Bush, after writing off the state, even went so far as to ridicule it. Senator Dale Bumpers, the three-term incumbent, defeated his Republican challenger, Mike Huckabee. In the heavily Democratic Congressional district in the northeastern corner of Arkansas, Blanche Lambert, the Democrat who beat her former boss, Bill Alexander, in the primary, defeated the Republican challenger, Terry Hayes.

Ron Paul

April 28, 1976

Big Victory by Bentsen Called Vital to Re-election

John B. Connally, the popular former Democratic Governor [of Texas], was credited in 1970 with pushing Mr. [Lloyd] Bentsen to victory over Mr. [George] Bush [in the Senate race]. Mr. Connally, now a Republican, helped a politically unknown gynecologist, Dr. Ron Paul, upset a liberal Democrat, Bob Gammage, in a race last month to fill the unexpired 22d Congressional District seat vacated by Democrat Bob Casey, who has been appointed to the Federal Maritime Commission.

And just in case New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg launches a third-party campaign, here's the first time he was deemed worthy of New York Times ink:

Michael Bloomberg

November 9, 1975

Spotlight: Block Trader at Salomon

When two Salomon Brothers partners said to be in often bitter competition for the same job were "reassigned" to other duties in late July, 33-year-old Michael R. Bloomberg came up with the plum they were both seeking "“ control over Salomon's prestigious block trading operations in stocks.

* * * * *

Mr. Bloomberg, an intense personable Harvard M.B.A., now finds himself working 12-to-15-hour days "“ one man doing the work formerly done by three partners. But that is not to say that Mr. Bloomberg is unhappy with his lot, for block trading remains one of the headiest areas in the brokerage business.

* * * * *

For Mr. Bloomberg, who "loves the business," lives modestly and claims he doesn't really have the time to spend what he does draw down, the real rewards are thus far clearly psychic.

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