Laura Ruth Ticciati, March 7, 1952 -
VP candidate for Natural Law Party (aka Independent) (2000)
Running mate with nominee: John Samuel Hagelin (b. 1954)
Popular vote: 4,663 (0.00%)
Electoral vote: 0/538
The campaign:
John Hagelin was running for a third time for President in 2000, but what exact party and who the running-mates were takes some sorting out.
As early as November 1999, Mike Tompkins (the running-mate in 1992 and 1996) was campaigning in Ohio, identified as the Natural Law Party VP. As late as August 2000, when Hagelin was fighting Pat Buchanan for the Reform Party of the United States of America nomination, Tompkins was called the former's running-mate in Iowa. In the same month, when Hagelin was removed from the Indiana ballot as the Reform Party candidate, Tompkins was listed on the ticket. A Hagelin/Tompkins NLP 2000 campaign button was even produced.
But something happened and I could not find any sources that spelled it out.
It was in August 2000 that Hagelin told the press he was considering either Silicon Valley multimillionaire entrepreneur Amos Nathaniel "Nat" Goldhaber as his running-mate, or NASA scientist Bob Bowman. This was right after Pat Buchanan was declared the official Reform Party nominee, a nomination disputed by Hagelin. So at a parallel splinter group Reform Party convention, Goldhaber was nominated as Hagelin's VP. Two weeks later Goldhaber was officially nominated the second spot at the NLP convention as well. Shortly after all of this, the FEC granted the Reform Party nomination to Buchanan, along with the matching funds.
A fellow devotee of Transcendental Meditation with Hagelin, Goldhaber is the son of Jewish refugees who were respected physicists. He was raised in Berkeley, Calif.
Still, Tompkins ended up on the ballot with Hagelin in two states. In Massachusetts they were presented as "Unenrolled" and gained 0.11% of the vote. In Missouri the Hagelin/Tompkins ticket, under the NLP banner, had 0.05%.
Laura Ticciati was on the ballot with Hagelin in Kansas, Louisiana, and New Jersey. In several other states Hagelin was on the ballot with no VP at all.
Ticciati said her goal in entering the race was a "desire to make the hazards of genetic engineering a central issue of Campaign 2000." In the late 1990s she and her husband Robin had co-authored Genetically Engineered Foods: Are They Safe? You Decide.
Hagelin still considered himself representing a fusion of the NLP and Reform Party and indeed was listed as a Reform candidate on the ballot in Illinois, Minnesota, Oregon, Tennessee, Wisconsin and perhaps a few others. In New York, the old New Alliance Party leaders Fred Newman and Lenora Fulani were now using the Independence Party as a vehicle and in that capacity ran Hagelin/Goldhaber under their banner. Fulani had made an earlier attempt to be Hagelin's running-mate. Interestingly, Newman and Fulani had originally endorsed Pat Buchanan but changed their minds.
Overall the NLP finished with 83,710 votes (0.08%) in 2000, a decline from their 1996 result. The Hagelin/Ticciati ticket finished with a popular vote vote of: Kansas 0.13%, New Jersey 0.07% and Louisiana 0.06%. There would have been a problem with the Constitution in the event of their vistory sonce both candidates were residents of the same state-- Iowa.
It was their final nationwide election effort. The Party eventually scattered into local chapters, with Michigan remaining the most active. In 2004 the NLP endorsed Rep. Dennis Kucinich in the Democratic Party primaries.
Election history: none
Other occupations: author, founded Mothers for Natural Law (M4NL) 1996,
Notes:
The only woman ever on a NLP ticket.
