Last week, former FBI agent Brian Fitzpatrick announced he'd seek the Republican nomination for the seat his older brother, GOP Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, is vacating in the Philadelphia suburbs at the end of this term. Should the younger Fitzpatrick prove successful, it naturally got us to wondering: Have any brothers ever directly succeeded one another in the House? The source to turn to for such information is always the University of Minnesota's Smart Politics site, which says this phenomenon has happened on a number of occasions—16, in fact.
Most cases of fraternal succession took place long ago, with just a handful since World War II. The most recent instance took place in 2010, when Mario Diaz-Balart succeeded his brother Lincoln in what was then Florida's 21st Congressional District, but Mario was already a member of Congress: He simply slid over from the 25th District to his brother's seat after Lincoln announced his retirement. Prior to that, Arkansas' Asa Hutchinson (now the state's governor) won the seat his brother Tim left open to run for Senate in 1996.
The other two post-war cases happen to involve some well-known figures: Arizona's Mo Udall, who followed his brother Stewart in 1961, and Sam Ervin, who won a special election in 1946 after his brother Joseph died. Sam didn't seek re-election to the House but later was appointed to the Senate, where he became famous for leading the committee that investigated Watergate. For the full run-down on all of the brother-to-brother handoffs throughout U.S. history, click through for UMN’s complete roundup.
And if you were wondering, no brother-sister or sister-sister pairs have ever been involved in any sibling successions. While many voters profess to dislike congressional legacies, it'll actually be a sign of a certain type of progress when we see women succeeding their sisters in office.