Gerrymandering

Elbridge Thomas Gerry was the Governor of Massachusetts in 1812, when he signed a bill that redrew district boundaries in Massachusetts to benefit his Democratic–Republican Party. One of the contrived districts in the Boston area was said to resemble, on a map, the shape of the mythological salamander. A cartoon published at the time took the argument to its logical conclusion, depicting the district in question as a dragon–like monster. (You can see it here on Wikipedia.)

Wikipedia tells us that the word 'Gerry–mander' was used for the first time on 26 March 1812, in the Boston Gazette. (Four paragraphs further on, Wikipedia says that historians believe the word was coined by the editors of "a Federalist newspaper" – the Federalists being the party that opposed the Democratic–Republicans. It doesn't explicitly state that this was the Boston Gazette, but we may perhaps infer that it was.) Gerry pronounced his surname with a hard 'G', and the newly–coined word would originally have been pronounced in the same way.

The remapping of the districts was a notable success for the Democratic–Republicans. Although in the 1812 election both the Massachusetts House and governorship were won by Federalists by a comfortable margin – costing Gerry his job – the state senate remained firmly in Democratic–Republican hands.

Gerry went on to become the fifth vice–president of the USA in 1813, supporting James Madison. But he died some 20 months later, in November 1814 – less than half way through what was Madison's second term of office.