Theodore H. White
According to political journalist Theodore H. White, it was Ranney who, in a Nov. 18, 1969, hearing designed to reform the delegate selection process of the Democratic Party, "set... in motion" the idea of quota set-asides, though Ranney "consistently ever since...has expressed his abhorrence of quotas." White attributes the quota system eventually adopted by the McGovern–Fraser Commission as "one of the major factors in the wrecking" of the campaign of George McGovern as the 1972 Democratic presidential candidate and the landslide re-election of Richard Nixon.