Nov. 1968. Ohio
Coretta Scott King, April 27, 1927 (Heiberger, Ala.) – January 30, 2006 (Rosarito Beach, Mexico)
VP candidate for McCarthy Committee (1968)
VP candidate for Coalition for McCarthy Party (1968)
Running mate with nominee: Eugene McCarthy (1916-2005)
Popular vote: ? (0.00%)
Electoral vote: 0/538
The campaign:
In 1968 an obscure political figure, US Sen. Eugene McCarthy (Minn.), challenged incumbent President Johnson in the Democratic primaries. McCarthy's anti-war stance energized a whole new generation of young activists who were really in the first wave of voters to have grown up entirely in the shadow of the atomic/nuclear mushroom cloud and thus felt a visceral sense of urgency the older generations for the most part failed to grasp.
McCarthy became a David to Johnson's Goliath, and within a short time LBJ decided to drop out of the race, opening it up for Sen. Robert Kennedy and Vice-President Hubert Humphrey. McCarthy soon found himself outspent and outflanked by the better known candidates and was marginalized to the far Left by the Democratic Party establishment. After the Party convention McCarthy waited until the very last week of the campaign to finally give a lukewarm endorsement to Humphrey.
In the meantime, McCarthy's followers were not so easily defeated. The 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago was a bloody affair and Humphrey was seen as being too closely tied to the unpopular LBJ. McCarthy's followers were prepared to go all the way to November, attempting to get his name on the ballot in several states as a "fourth party" since George Wallace already had the primo "third party" position.
By early September 1968 it was too late for McCarthy's followers to place him on the ballot in many states, so energetic write-in campaigns were waged. In Georgia, Oregon, and Rhode Island groups sprang up to work for McCarthy. In Michigan there was the McCarthy Write-In Committee, Massachusetts had three groups pushing for the Senator-- Citizens for Participation Politics, Conference for New Political Action, and the Flag Party-- and in New York there was the Coalition for Independent Candidacy (aka Coalition Party). As far as I could ascertain, none of the above proposals included a running mate.
McCarthy had various running mates and different party banners in other states. The most coordinated effort, such as it was, concerned the New Party, formed chiefly by Marcus Raskin, co-director of the Institute for Policy Studies. "If we cannot force a realignment of political structures," said Raskin, "There will be mass violence."
But in 1968 "mass violence" had already been gripping the country with the two highest profile victims being Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.
It is difficult to say if the New Party operated under variant names across the country.
McCarthy himself disavowed this fourth party activity and took steps to keep his name off the November ballot. Raskin and other McCarthy followers didn't care.
Newly widowed, Coretta Scott King was starting a new chapter in life where she would grow as a civil rights leader in her own right. Some had political designs for her. Her name was among those placed in nomination for US President in the Peace and Freedom Party, and in Ohio and Iowa she was nominated to be on Eugene McCarthy's ticket as a Vice-Presidential choice.
A group in Iowa called the Coalition for McCarthy Party held a convention with a couple hundred people and nominated King as the running mate. Both and King and McCarthy made swift requests to be removed from the ballot.
Earlier in the year King had also been nominated by the Freedom and Peace Party to be a running mate with Dr. Benjamin Spock. Both of them declined and Dick Gregory with Mark Lane were substituted.
In Ohio a group called the McCarthy Committee secured a place on the ballot for the ticket. McCarthy and King were rather slow in informing the Ohio Secretary of State about their desire to be removed from consideration, so the Electors for McCarthy/King found themselves cast adrift when it was announced no write-ins for this ticket would be counted. That didn't stop their supporters from continuing to use their names as a protest vote.
The McCarthy/King ticket certainly had some write-in votes in Iowa and Ohio, but the exact number is not known.
Election history:
1968 - Peace and Freedom Party nomination for US President - defeated
Other occupations: singer, activist, author
Buried: Martin Luther King Jr. Center (Atlanta, Ga.)
Notes:
Once worked as a babysitter caring for future actor John Lithgow.
