"Hartsfield's Landing" is the fifteenth episode of the third season of The West Wing, an American serial political drama. The episode aired on February 27, 2002 on NBC. The episode takes its title from the fictional bellwether town that is central to the episode, which is holding an election that Josh Lyman wants to win for the president. "Hartsfield's Landing" also includes Toby Ziegler and Sam Seaborn playing chess matches against President Jed Bartlet, and C. J. Cregg involving herself in a prank war against Charlie Young. Allison Janney, who portrayed C. J., described the episode as one of her favorites. In 2020, the episode was reprised by the original cast in A West Wing Special to Benefit When We All Vote. Plot The episode takes its name from the fictional town of Hartsfield's Landing, New Hampshire, which has an eligible voting population of 42. It is election day for the small town, and Josh is focused on winning the town for President Bartlet because the town's population finishes voting within ten minutes of midnight, feeding their results into the news cycle for 21 hours until the rest of New Hampshire finishes voting. While the election is only preliminary, the town has a reputation for predicting the next president in every election since William Howard Taft. Josh, therefore, makes Donna canvass for the votes of her connections in the town. Donna spends the next few hours standing outside the White House, in the cold night, trying to remind the voters of the president's accomplishments. Josh eventually calls off the effort, recognizing that the voters are their own individuals and that he cannot control the outcome. Meanwhile, the president has returned from India with new chess sets, gifting them to Sam and Toby and challenging both to a match. Toby's match, set in the Oval Office, is a follow-up to the conversation the two had in a prior episode, where Toby criticizes the president for hiding his intellect in favor of folksiness and linked it to his father, who always despised his intellect. The president, though still angry at Toby, explores the two sides of the argument with him; at one point, after Toby calls the president's father an "idiot", he puts Toby in check and angrily storms out of the room. Toby, however, has the final word on the president's situation, telling him that he far outclasses his opponent intellectually