Zagarell, Gus Hall, Mitchell
Michael Zagarell, December 26, 1944 (New York, NY) -
VP candidate for Communist Party USA (aka Free Ballot Party) (1968)
Running mate with nominee: Charlene Alexander Mitchell (b. 1930)
Popular vote: 1,077 (0.00%)
Electoral vote: 0/538
The campaign:
In the 1968 election year the Communist Party USA was making a comeback to the United States electoral game after an absence of 28 years. The last time we saw them openly run candidates in a Presidential election was in 1940. In 1948 and 1952 they endorsed the Progressive Party tickets and after that they just struggled to survive in the face of hostility from both the Right and Left. They were a magnet for vilification and persecution by Right-wing McCarthyites in the 1950s as the Cold War raged, but the CPUSA was also viewed as too authoritarian, Soviet-friendly, and Right-wing within the framework of other Leftist labor-centered political parties.
Athough Charlene Mitchell, the Presidential nominee of CPUSA selected in July 1968, was not the first African American woman to be on a party ticket, she was indeed the first to run for President. Charlotta Amanda Spears Bass was the VP nominee for the Progressive Party in 1952, which was also endorsed by CPUSA.
Michael Zagarell, age 23, was selected as the running mate. He was one of several Presidential or Vice-Presidential nominees in the 1968 election year under the Constitutionally mandated age of 35. And in the era where the term "Generation Gap" was a harsh reality this was important. Mitchell's gender and race combined with Zagarell's youth spoke to three categories of disenfranchised Americans and, at least in 1968, was a counterweight to the perception that the CPUSA was sort of a relic-of-the-past party.
The CPUSA ticket was on the ballot only in Minnesota (415 votes, 0.03%) and Washington State (377 votes, also 0.03%). They gained a number of write-ins other states, particularly in California with 260 votes.
Later in life Mitchell left the CPUSA and joined the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.
Election history:
1974 - New York Attorney General (Communist Party USA) - defeated
1988 - US House of Representatives (NY) (Independent Progressive) - defeated
Other occupations: editor of Daily Worker, National Youth Director of CPUSA, editor of Political Affairs
Notes:
Joined CPUSA in 1962
