Frank Lyle Varnum, October 6, 1916 (Pasadena, Calif.) - January 12, 2013 (Roseburg, Ore.)
VP candidate for American Party (1980)
Running mate with nominee: Percy L. Greaves Jr. (1906-1984)
Popular vote: 6,647 (0.01%)
Electoral vote: 0/538
The campaign:
Percy Greaves (pronounced Graves) was nominated by the American Party after 16 ballots. Retired airline pilot Frank Varnum was selected as his running mate. The New York Times reported that a party spokesman "said that Mr. Greaves had won in a close battle by 'progressive' party members against a faction representing the its old 'reactionary and redneck' image."
Greaves was a Republican turned Libertarian Party and only recently turned American Party author specializing in free market capitalism and Pearl Harbor attack historical revisionism. Varnum, a member of the John Birch Society and possibly the only person in America with a toothbrush mustache in 1980, appeared to balance the ticket as part of the more traditional wing of the American Party.
Greaves' moderate stance on abortion failed to pass the litmus test for the American Party members in Minnesota and Kansas. The former state ran a slate of unpledged Electors, and the latter state ran an entirely different ticket of Frank W. Shelton and Marian Ruck Jackson.
The American Party in 1980 stressed complicated economic issues more than hot button social topics, and it failed to excite the base. Plus, the Reagan Republicans had co-opted a lot of the John Birch Society-inspired platform used by the American Party over the years, except the major party simply changed the wording to be more acceptable to mainstream voters and had a famous Hollywood actor read the script. 1980 just was not going to be a good year for the American Party.
On Election Day the American Party ticket trailed far behind their splinter-party rival, the American Independent Party. In fact even the combined vote of the Kansas and Minnesota American Party insurgents outpolled the Greaves/Varnum ticket.
On the ballot in five states and certified write-ins in a couple others, they had their strongest results in Indiana 0.21%, Delaware 0.17%, and Utah 0.16%.
Greaves died of cancer on Aug. 13, 1984, which meant that in the event they had been elected Varnum would have become President in the last year of the term.
Election history:
1966 - Long Beach (Calif.) City Council (Nonpartisan) - primary - defeated
Other occupations: race car driver, orchardist, realtor, US military flight instructor, airline pilot
Buried: Coles Valley Cemetery (Coles Valley, Ore.)
Notes:
Lived in Ventura, Calif. and (PNW trivia!) moved to Roseburg, Oregon-- burial place of third party
VP Joseph Lane!
Survived a crash in 1947 when a twin-engine plane he was piloting lost power after takeoff.
