Dale Edwin Way, July 17, 1950 (Pennsylvania) -
VP candidate for Independent (2008)
Running mate with nominee: Joseph Charles Schriner (b. 1955)
Popular vote: 82 (0.00%)
Electoral vote: 0/538
The campaign:
Running for President, in the first place, is not exactly something the average guy does. And in the second place doing so with your family as you travel tens of thousands of miles across the USA in a vacation van while talking to voters is not exactly average either. But Joe "Average Joe" Schriner liked to portray himself that way.
2008 was his third run on a platform best described as Populist Catholic Social Teaching. This time his running-mate was a fellow he knew when they both lived in Bluffton, Ohio named Dale Way.
In 2008 Way was living in Cassopolis, Mich. where he worked as Maintenance Director at Camp Friedenswald, a Mennonite Church Camp. Way had been a Methodist minister for 16 years. This is a church where it is normal practice to move their clergy around every few years and as Schriner wrote in his biography of his VP, "He was told he was being reassigned again when he made the decision to stay in Bluffton because the frequent moving was becoming disruptive to family life ..."
Way then became a house painter, handyman, and something of super-volunteer in Bluffton where he lived 1997-2007 before moving to Michigan. Schriner mused that perhaps Way could use his painting skills to repaint the White House to the color green.
Schriner was a registered write-in in Maryland (8 votes), Minnesota (3 votes), and Ohio (71 votes).
Election history:
2003 - Village Council (Bluffton, Ohio) - defeated
Other occupations: Maintenance Director at Camp Friedenswald, Methodist minister, handyman, house painter, community theater actor
Notes:
Originally from Altoona, Penn.
