Andrew Nathan Johnson, September 21, 1875 (Jackson County, Ky.) - August 30, 1959 (Lexington, Ky.)
VP candidate for Prohibition Party (1944)
Running mate with nominee: Claude A. Watson (1885-1978)
Popular vote: 74,758 (0.16%)
Electoral vote: 0/531
The campaign:
Claude A. Watson, who had been the running mate in 1935, was nominated in Nov. 1943 for President and Rev. Floyd C. Carrier was selected as the VP. Carrier developed some health problems and was replaced by Rev. Andrew Nathan Johnson in January 1944.
In addition to proposing a single six-year term of office for the Presidency, the 1944 Prohibition Party platform continued the open appeal to Christian churches as it had in 1940:
True Use of the Ballot:
We pledge our support to the original purpose of the ballot, which is to register the individual voter's conviction on principle, and not merely to elect persons to office. We recognize church leaders, pastors, church officials, members and editors of Christian literature as very influential on behalf of higher standards of political action, and we urge them to recognize and teach the true use of the ballot for principle. We urge them to unite in this party, which upholds righteousness as implied in the Ten Great Comandments and the Golden Rule.
The Liquor Problem:
Right thinking people are alarmed at the rapidly growing peril of the liquor power as now manifested:
1. Inflicting the alcoholic appetite upon millions of girls and women.
2. In multiplying juvenile delinquency.
3. In increasing gambling, vice and all kinds of crime.
4. In combating the efforts of the church and other moral forces.
5. In dominating our great organs of public opinion.
6. In subjecting political leaders and parties to its control.
7. In delaying, if not endangering, the success of our war effort.
The re-legalizing of the liquor traffic has brought about the worst moral reaction of modern times. Present conditions are due directly to the action of Government in restoring the liquor power through repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment, and repeal was due directly to the platform pledges of both the old parties in the 1932 presidential campaign.
Of all the wrongs committed by Government none has been worse than the authorizing of the liquor traffic to degenerate our own citizenship.
Watson was denied permission for priority airplane travel or to buy a new car for the campaign by war rationing agents. By and by he apparently was given his air travel rights and was issued extra gasoline for campaigning by auto. Watson also made the news when his brother was arrested on a DWI charge in Feb. 1944.
On the ballot in a couple dozen states, they finished strongest in Oregon (0.49%) and Alabama (0.45%)
Election history:
1908 - US House of Representatives (Ky.) (Prohibition Party) - defeated
1943 - Governor of Kentucky (Prohibition Party) - defeated
Other occupations: Methodist minister
Buried: Wilmore Cemetery (Wilmore, Ky.)
Notes:
Graduated Asbury College 1903, DD from Ohio Northern University, PhD from Milton University
(Pennsylvania?).
Buried in the same cemetery as Leander Lycurgus Pickett (1859-1928) who was the VP candidate for
the American Party in 1924 and made a trustee of Asbury College one year after Johnson graduated.
