John Spencer’s Death Shook ‘The West Wing’ — And Its Onscreen Presidential Election
Real-life drama hit the production of The West Wing during production of the NBC show’s seventh season, when John Spencer, the Emmy-winning actor behind White House Chief of Staff Leo McGarry, died of a heart attack at age 58 on December 16, 2005.
After much back-and-forth in the writers’ room — detailed below — the decision was made to have Leo die, as well, off-screen in Season 7’s two-part “Election Day” storyline. And the grief viewers see onscreen is that of both Leo’s colleagues and Spencer’s costars.
The West Wing producers considered ending the show after John Spencer died
Two months after Spencer’s death, The West Wing executive producer John Wells told the Deseret News he and the other producers agonized over how to continue the show — and even whether they should.
“We spent a lot of time … trying to figure out how we would deal with it,” Wells said. “We had conversations about whether it was even appropriate to continue to do the show without John, frankly. He was such a close friend and a wonderful actor and such a central part of the ensemble and of our lives together as a group.”
At the time of the real-life tragedy, The West Wing’s cast and crew had shot five episodes that hadn’t aired, including three that featured Spencer. Wells said the producers eventually decided against changing or reshooting those installments. “John was so wonderful in the episodes that the best homage we could make to his contribution to the show was to let people see the last days of his work,” he said. “And if you knew John, I think he would have been [ticked] at me if we had actually changed it. Like, ‘Wait, you’re cutting my scenes, kid? What are you doing that for?’”
Spencer’s death flipped the results of Season 7’s presidential election
NBC/Courtesy: Everett Collection
In The West Wing’s seventh season, two politicians vie to succeed Jed Barlet (Martin Sheen) as U.S. president: Democratic congressman Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits) and Republican senator Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda). Santos had tapped Leo to be his running mate. After a contentious presidential race — and Leo’s death — Santos wins the election and chooses Pennsylvania governor Eric Baker (previously played by Ed O’Neill) as his vice president.
But Wells indicated that Spencer’s death may have changed the results of the election. “John’s passing happened at a point where we had thought we had made a decision in how to go, and it affected it in the sense that it changed a lot of the storytelling,” he told the Deseret News.
Fellow EP Lawrence O’Donnell, now famous as an MSNBC anchor, told The New York Times that April that Spencer’s death did indeed change the election outcome. Vinick was originally scripted to win, but after Spencer’s death, the writers concluded viewers would be too sad to see Vinick lose his running mate and the election, O’Donnell said.
Dropped by the now empty West Wing stage at Warners. Found this wonderful tribute on the wall. pic.twitter.com/wqsv744pwH
— Rob Lowe (@RobLowe) February 7, 2014
On a 2019 episode of the podcast The West Wing Weekly, supervising producer and writer Eli Attie said he believed Wells thought that “with John gone also we really would not have wanted the Republican to win, that that would have been two blows to the fans of the show.”
And in a West Wing oral history Empire published in 2014, Wells said the writers “went back and forth on whether the Republican should actually win the election.” Alda, meanwhile, told the magazine that “at one point they did decide that Vinick would win, and they started to write stories that would make him more attractive to the public.”
Sheen corroborated those anecdotes: “Up until his death, the Republican was going to win the election,” he told Empire. “Jimmy Smits would be defeated, and that wonderful actor Alan Alda would win. But with John’s death they said no and, against history, the Democrats would continue.”
Martin Sheen recently paid tribute to Spencer
As Sheen and West Wing costar Mary McCormack appeared on MSNBC’s Inside With Jen Psaki in August 2024, both actors teared up watching Spencer play Leo in a clip from the show’s Season 6 finale, “2162 Votes.”
“John Spencer still lives here [points to his heart] in our family,” Sheen said during that segment. “I’ve never seen that scene, ever, until just this moment. It was just overwhelming. We were just talking about him last night. We were equally sad and happy and joyful to have worked with him, to have known him, and then seen him there. I’ve never seen that thing before, and I’m just overwhelmed.”
Remind 