Grover Cleveland is the only president to win non-consecutive terms: NPR

If Trump wins re-election, he would be the second president in US history to serve non-consecutive terms.

The first was Grover Cleveland, who did two stints in the White House from 1885-1889 and 1893-1897.

How did it happen?

A primer on the nation’s 22nd and 24th presidents

Cleveland, a lawyer, entered politics in the 1940s as an anti-corruption reformer. He was elected mayor of Buffalo, NY, in 1881 and governor of the state three short years later.

Cleveland was nominated as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate in 1884 and overcame a sex scandal to defeat his Republican opponent, Senator James Blaine of Maine. He was the first Democrat elected after the Civil War, which ended in 1865.

His first term in office was marked by several big moments, including the deadly ones Haymarket Riot of 1886 in Chicago, which became a symbol of the struggle for workers’ rights, and the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act in 1887, which established federal regulation of an industry (railroads) for the first time.

Cleveland, elected a bachelor, also married during his presidency, on only president to do so in the White House.

But he also made some decisions that angered his critics, such as vetoing private pension bills for Civil War veterans and money to distribute seeds to drought-stricken farmers.

He ran for reelection in 1888, but lost to Republican candidate Benjamin Harrison—a Union Army colonel during the Civil War and grandson of former President William Henry Harrison.

Cleveland’s re-election campaign was poorly run on many levels, said presidential historian Troy Senik told History.com.

“He began the race without a campaign manager; delegated most of the election responsibilities to his running mate, Allen Thurman, who at age 74 was not healthy enough to withstand the rigors of the campaign; and based the entire race around his proposal to cut tariffs, which divided his own Democratic Party and united Republicans in opposition, Senik said.

Cleveland won the popular vote—48.6% to 47.9%—but lost the Electoral College vote. He moved to New York City and practiced law.

So what lured him back to the campaign trail?

Barbara Perry, co-chair of the University of Virginia Miller Center’s Presidential Oral History Program, told History.com that Cleveland had no intention of running for re-election after his first term, but was increasingly dissatisfied with his party’s populist drift and worried that another candidate. would “draw the party towards the kind of comradeship against which he had fought so hard.”

Notably, she said his decision to run again predates the modern primary system — so it didn’t involve voters the way it would today. He was nominated in 1892 and ran against Harrison again.

This time, with the country on the brink of an economic crisis and newly receptive to his stance on reducing tariffs, Cleveland won in a landslide.

His second term was also dominated by economic and labor issues, from the economic depression known as the Panic of 1893 to Pullman Strikewhich disrupted rail traffic throughout the Midwest and marked the first time the federal government used an injunction to break a strike (it also led to the creation of Labor Day as a conciliatory gesture).

Support for Cleveland from his own party declined throughout his tenure. After leaving the White House, he retired to Princeton, NJ, where he lived until his death in 1908.

While Cleveland was the only president to succeed in winning non-consecutive terms, he wasn’t the only one to try.

Martin Van Buren, who served from 1837 to 1841, attempted to run as a third-party candidate in 1848. Millard Fillmore, who served from 1850 to 1853, ran again in 1856. Theodore Roosevelt, who left the White House in 1909, ran unopposed luck for a third term in 1912.

Over a century later, Cleveland remains in a club of one — and Trump is eager to join.