Merritt Barton Curtis, August 31, 1892 (San Bernardino, Calif.) – May 16, 1966 (Washington, DC)
VP candidate for Texas Constitution Party (aka Constitution Party) (1960)
Running mate with nominee: Charles Loten Sullivan (1924-1979)
Popular vote: 18,162 (0.03%)
Electoral vote: 0/537
The campaign:
The Texas branch of the Constitution Party once again split from the national party and nominated their own ticket-- Mississippi attorney and segregationist Democrat Charles L. Sullivan for President and retired Marine Corps General Merritt B. Curtis for Vice-President.
Curtis, who just to confuse things was also running for President the same year under the national Constitution Party banner (but only on the ballot in Washington State), did not seem to be very active in the campaign. In fact I can find no record of him acknowledging his nomination one way or the other.
Curtis was pretty much an under-the-radar figure across the country but seemed to be celebrated in extreme Right-wing circles for his involvement with a group known as Defenders of the American Constitution in the 1950s, an anti-Semitic and anti-communist paramilitary organization. The DAC was co-founded by another retired Marine Corps general, Pedro del Valle, who was said to have urged a military coup in America. Gen. del Valle later became a peripheral figure alleged to be implicated in JFK assassination conspiracy theories by some writers.
On the ballot in Texas only, the Sullivan/Curtis third place result of 18,162 was 0.79% of the popular vote in the Lone Star State.
Election history:
1960 - US President (Constitution Party) - defeated
Other occupations: soldier (WWI, WWII), attorney, insurance executive
Buried: Arlington National Cemetery (Arlington, Va.)
Notes:
Member of the National Sojourners.
