If you're tired of hearing about confessions

The death of former Massachusetts Governor Edward King leaves Ned Lamont, Chuck Schumer and Robert Abrams as the sole living members of a very exclusive club: people who beat a Presidential or Vice Presidential nominee in a statewide primary.

King ousted incumbent Michael Dukakis in the 1978 Democratic gubernatorial primary. Schumer defeated '84 VP candidate Geraldine Ferraro in the 1998 Democratic U.S. Senate primary; Abrams beat her in 1992 but lost the general election to Republican Alphonse D'Amato. Lester Maddox, who defeated Jimmy Carter in the 1966 Democratic primary for Governor of Georgia, died in 2003.

If the club is extended to people who beat Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates in general elections, living members include: Kent Hance, who defeated George W. Bush in a 1978 congressional race in Texas; Lawrence DeNardis, who won a 1980 House race in Connecticut against Lieberman; Arkansas' John Paul Hammerschmidt, who beat Bill Clinton for Congress in 1974; U.S. Senator Norman Coleman, who won a 2002 U.S. Senate race over the last-minute candidacy of Walter Mondale; and James Abdnor, who unseated U.S. Senator George McGovern in South Dakota in 1980.

More for extreme junkies: Frank White, who ousted Clinton in the race for Governor of Arkansas in 1980, died in 2003. Paul Cronin, who defeated John Kerry in a 1972 House race in Massachusetts, died in 1997. George H.W. Bush lost two races for the U.S. Senate in Texas: in 1964 to Ralph Yarborough, who died in 1996, and in 1970 to Lloyd Bentsen, who passed away last May. Edmund (Pat) Brown won a 1962 race for Governor of California over Richard Nixon; he died in 1996. John F. Kennedy defeated Henry Cabot Lodge in the 1952 Massachusetts U.S. Senate campaign, and Pappy O'Daniel, who beat Lyndon Johnson in a 1941 special election for U.S. Senate in Texas, died in 1969. Stephen Young, who died in 1984, defeated '44 Vice Presidential candidate John Bricker in the 1958 Ohio U.S. Senate race.