Incumbent in the context of "Government official"

In government and politics, inauguration is the process of swearing a person into office and thus making that person the incumbent. Such an inauguration commonly occurs through a formal ceremony or special event, which may also include an inaugural address by the new official.

The word inauguration stems from the Latin augur, which refers to the rituals of ancient Roman priests seeking to interpret if it was the will of the gods for a public official to be deemed worthy to assume office.

An official is someone who holds an office (function or mandate, regardless of whether it carries an actual working space with it) in an organization or government and participates in the exercise of authority (either their own or that of their superior or employer, public or legally private). The term officer is close to being a synonym, but it has more military connotations. An elected official is a person who is an official by virtue of an election.

Officials may also be appointed ex officio (by virtue of another office, often in a specified capacity, such as presiding, advisory, secretary). Some official positions may be inherited. A public official is an official of central or local government. A person who currently holds an office is referred to as an incumbent. Used as an adjective, something "official" refers to something endowed with governmental or other authoritative recognition or mandate, as in official language, official gazette, or official scorer.

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 2, 1920. The Republican ticket of senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio and governor Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts defeated the Democratic ticket of governor James M. Cox of Ohio and assistant secretary Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York. It was the first election held after the end of the First World War, and the first election after the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment gave nationwide suffrage to women.

Incumbent president Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat who had served since 1913, privately hoped for a third term despite severe physical and mental disabilities from a stroke, but he had very little support. Former president Theodore Roosevelt had been the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, but he died in 1919 without leaving an obvious heir to his progressive legacy. The major parties turned to little-known dark horse candidates from the state of Ohio, a populous swing state with many electoral votes. Cox won on the 44th ballot at the 1920 Democratic National Convention, defeating William Gibbs McAdoo (Wilson's son-in-law), A. Mitchell Palmer, and several other candidates. Harding emerged as a compromise candidate between the conservative and progressive wings of the Republican party, and he clinched his nomination on the tenth ballot at the 1920 Republican National Convention.

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 4, 1952. The Republican ticket of general Dwight D. Eisenhower and senator Richard Nixon defeated the Democratic ticket of Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson II and senator John Sparkman in a landslide victory, becoming the first Republican president in 20 years. This was the first election since 1928 without an incumbent president on the ballot.

Stevenson emerged victorious on the third presidential ballot of the 1952 Democratic National Convention by defeating Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver, Georgia Senator Richard Russell Jr., and other candidates. The Republican nomination was primarily contested by Eisenhower, a general, widely popular for his leadership in World War II, and the conservative Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft. With the support of Thomas E. Dewey and other party leaders, Eisenhower narrowly prevailed over Taft at the 1952 Republican National Convention. He selected youthful California Senator Richard Nixon as his running mate. In the first televised presidential campaign, Eisenhower was charismatic and very well known, in sharp contrast to Stevenson.

The 1980 presidential campaign of Ronald Reagan was a successful election campaign for President of the United States in 1980 by former California governor Ronald Reagan, and former CIA director George H. W. Bush. Reagan and Bush, defeated incumbent President Jimmy Carter and incumbent Vice President Walter Mondale. Reagan, a Republican who had also tried to seek the Republican nomination in 1976, launched his 1980 presidential bid on November 13, 1979, and secured nomination for his election on July 17, 1980. On November 4th, 1980, Reagan and Bush defeated Carter and Mondale in an electoral college landslide, winning 489 electoral votes compared to Carter and Mondale’s 49 electoral votes.

Reagan, a Republican and former governor of California, announced his third presidential bid in a nationally televised speech from New York City in 1979. He campaigned extensively for the primaries after losing the Iowa caucus to former congressman and director of the Central Intelligence Agency Bush. In the primaries, he won 44 states and 59.8 percent of the vote. He decided initially to nominate former president Gerald Ford as his running mate, but Ford wanted such extended powers as vice president, especially over foreign policy, that their ticket would effectively amount to a "co-presidency". As a result, negotiations to form a Reagan–Ford ticket ceased. Reagan then selected Bush as his vice-presidential running mate.

The speaker of the United States House of Representatives, commonly known as the speaker of the House or House speaker, is the presiding officer of the United States House of Representatives, the lower chamber of the United States Congress. The office was established in 1789 by Article I, Section II, of the U.S. Constitution. By custom and House rules, the speaker is the political and parliamentary leader of the House and is simultaneously its presiding officer, de facto leader of the body's majority party, and the institution's administrative head. Speakers also perform various other administrative and procedural functions. Given these many roles and responsibilities, the speaker usually does not personally preside over debates—that duty is instead delegated to members of the House from the majority party—nor regularly participate in floor debates.

The Constitution does not explicitly require the speaker to be an incumbent member of the House of Representatives, although every speaker thus far has been. If an incumbent member, the speaker also represents their district and retains the right to vote. The speaker is second in the United States presidential line of succession, after the vice president and ahead of the president pro tempore of the Senate.

A coup d'état (/ˌkuːdeɪˈtɑː/ ; French: [ku deta] ; lit. 'stroke of state'), or simply a coup, is typically an illegal and overt attempt by a military organization or other government elites to unseat an incumbent person or leadership. A self-coup is said to take place when a leader, having come to power through legal means, tries to stay in power through illegal means.

By one estimate, there were 457 coup attempts from 1950 to 2010, half of which were successful. Most coup attempts occurred in the mid-1960s, but there were also large numbers of coup attempts in the mid-1970s and the early 1990s. Coups occurring in the post-Cold War period have been more likely to result in democratic systems than Cold War coups, though coups still mostly perpetuate authoritarianism.