Abram Wolfson

Abram Wolfson

VP candidate for American Vegetarian Party (1964)

Running mate with nominee: Symon Gould (1894-1963)
Popular vote: 0 (0.00%)
Electoral vote: 0/538

The campaign:

Symon Gould had been the American Vegetarian Party VP nominee three times (1948, 1952, 1956) and Presidential nominee in 1960. In early 1963 he was preparing to run for President in 1964.

Gould was quoted by the press in April, 1963: "I'm getting ready to announce. Personally I think JFK is in for a lickin', if events continue to shape up agin him. After all, there are six big electoral states that are in doubt. The Repubs have elected their governors in three of  'em. JFK had better start doing something sensational to recapture the throb of the public. Thus far he's marking time, and not making history. He's relying too much on the rhetoric of his speech-writers and not enough on executive action. I could give him a few points if he asked me! They're in the platform of the American Vegetarian Party. One is a call for the appointment of a Secretary of Peace in the cabinet, someone of the stature of a Bertrand Russell (but an American, of course). Another thing I'd suggest is that he fly down to Greenville, Miss., and lead a Negro voter up to the registrar."

Gould's running mate was Abram Wolfson. Aside from his name I can find no other information.

Sadly, Gould died of cancer on Nov. 24, 1963, two days after President Kennedy was assassinated. Since AVP was basically a political party driven by a strong personality there was apparently no replacement nominee for President. I could not locate any documents regarding exactly when (or if) the Party officially dissolved or what actions were taken by Wolfson after Gould's death.

Election history: ?

Other occupations: ?

Buried: ?

Notes:
Another third party VP candidate shrouded in mystery.

Christopher Gian-Cursio

Christopher Gian-Cursio, February 5, 1910 (Rochester, NY) - July 26, 1985 (Rochester, NY)

VP candidate for American Vegetarian Party (aka Vegetarian Party) (1960)

Running mate with nominee: Symon Gould (1894-1963)

Popular vote: 0 (0.00%)
Electoral vote: 0/537

The campaign:

He was the founder of the American Vegetarian Party, but in the three previous elections Symon Gould had placed himself in the role of running-mate. In 1960 he finally stepped up to the position of Presidential nominee.

The VP choice was Christopher Gian-Cursio, who has the distinction of being the first hyphenated surnamed running mate in American history. Gian-Cursio was a Miami-based naturopathic practitioner and chiropractor who was a professional associate with the better known Herbert M. Shelton, who had served as the AVP's Presidential nominee in 1956. And, like Shelton, Gian-Cursio had experienced years of finding himself in court under charges of practicing without a license. Shelton himself likened Establishment efforts to haul them into court with that of the Gestapo. Gian-Cursio was sentenced to a year in prison in 1947 when two of his patients died. Shortly after the 1960 election, Gian-Cursio would be convicted of manslaughter in Florida for the 1963 death of a patient and sentenced to five years of incarceration.

Beyond dietary policy the AVP endorsed the protest methods being used at the time by Martin Luther King. Said Gould, "The American Vegetarian Party endorses all forms of protest on the part of Negroes, especially the passive, non-violent kind, and takes special note in endorsing the Gandhian method of protest illustrated by the 'sit down' strike, especially that Mahatma Gandhi subscribed to the vegetarian ethical ideals in his procedures."

After the election Gould told the press he thought the Party polled half a million votes and he personally spent three hundred dollars on the campaign. On Gian-Cursio's role, Gould said, "He did an outstanding job, especially around Miami." I could not find any evidence that Gian-Cursio campaigned at all and his nomination did not seem to be counted as an important milestone or credential in his life by his followers or foes.

Gould's post-election summary included, "The 2-Party system is too limited for this big country. We're big enough to be exposed to all sorts of philosophies. It's a pity that we find it so difficult to have our names listed on Big City voting machines. We must depend on places where the voters mark their ballots or can write in the candidates of their choice."

Since they were not on any ballots and no votes for AVP were recorded it is difficult to ascertain the strength of their poll numbers. But Gould's guess of half a million is probably off by several zeroes.

"We face the future with confidence," Gould concluded, "I'll be 70 in 1964 when we try again." He wouldn't make it.
   
Election history: none

Other occupations: naturopathic practitioner, chiropractor, author, lecturer

Buried: Holy Sepulchre Cemetery (Rochester, NY)

Notes:
Buried in the same cemetery as Louise Brooks
Purchased Warner Castle in Rochester, NY in 1944 to use as a sanitarium called The Castle of Health.
  The building and land became part of a city park in 1951.
Moved from Rochester to New York City in 1952. Living in Miami, Fla. by 1960
Radio comedian Fred Allen appeared as a character witness in a 1947 trial on behalf of Gian-Cursio
 It didn't help.
Described by the press in 1947 as "a suave, dark man with a small mustache."

Edwin Maurice Cooper

Edwin Maurice Cooper, May 12, 1885 (Clay County, Neb.) - February 26, 1971 (Montebello, Calif.)

VP candidate for Prohibition Party (1956)

Running mate with nominee: Enoch Arden Holtwick (1881-1972)

Popular vote: 41,937 (0.07%)
Electoral vote: 0/531

The campaign:

Chairman Lowell H. Coate resigned his office, walked out the 1955 Prohibition Party convention and took about 20 delegates with him in an effort to form a new umbrella third party which became the Pioneer Party. This episode is covered in the Burr McCloskey profile.

Meanwhile, political nomad and retired General Herbert C. Holdridge was searching for a new home. He wanted the Prohibition Party Presidential nomination but settled for the position of running mate alongside Party stalwart Enoch Arden Holtwick. In 1952 Holdridge had been the American Rally nominee for President (without a VP nominee) parallel with his nomination from the American Vegetarian Party. He had a falling out with the AVP and withdrew/was removed from the ticket before the election. Holdridge quit the American Rally Party as well but waited until immediately after the 1952 election to do so. Burr McCloskey, the 1956 Pioneer Party VP nominee, had been Holdridge's 1952 campaign manager for both the AVP and American Rally.

After being the VP nominee for nearly year, Holdridge gained some unwanted publicity for the Prohibition Party when he was ejected from the August, 1956 Republican Party convention for handing out anti-Eisenhower literature described as "virulent" and "scurrilous." It was shortly after that incident he either voluntarily withdrew or was kicked out of the position of running mate for Holtwick. After a scramble the Party selected California attorney and Prohibition loyalist Edwin M. Cooper as the replacement.

Holtwick was 75, Cooper 71. Not quite the oldest combined ages on a Presidential ticket in US history, but close.

The 1956 Party platform was mostly a repeat of the 1952 version, but there was a new section in this one that could be considered quite progressive:

Extension of Democracy

  To help perfect our political democracy and extend it to all who live under our flag we urge;

    (1) The submission to the people of an amendment to the Constitution to provide for the election of the President and Vice-President directly by the people;

    (2) Immediate home rule and the franchise and representation in Congress for the District of Columbia;

    (3) Immediate statehood for Alaska and Hawaii;

    (4) Encouraging Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam and Samoa to advance as rapdily as possible to complete internal self-government;

    (5) We recognize the right of all Indians to full citizenship.

On the ballot in 10 states, their best showings were in New Jersey (0.37%), Kansas (0.35%), and Indiana (0.33%). That doesn't look very exciting but they actually fared better than most of the other third parties in the 1956 Presidential race.

Election history:
1954 - Attorney General of California (Prohibition) - defeated
1958 - Attorney General of California (Prohibition) - defeated

Other occupations: attorney, YMCA leader

Buried: Rose Hills Memorial Park (Whittier, Calif.)

Notes:
Methodist
Sometimes called Edward M. Cooper
Buried in the same cemetery as Lewis Arquette, Ron Glass, William Hopper, Nguyen Coa Ky.
Graduate of USC Law School, passed the bar in 1910.
His opponent in the 1954 AG race was Edmund G. "Pat" Brown.

Burr McCloskey

Burr McCloskey, July 15, 1920 (Akron, Ohio) - January 2, 2001 (Evanston, Ill.)

VP candidate for Pioneer Party (aka American Pioneer Party) (1956)

Running mate with nominee: William Langer (1886-1959)

Popular vote: 0 (0.00%)
Electoral vote: 0/531

The campaign:

A case can be made that the short-lived Pioneer Party was a splinter of the Prohibition Party.

Lowell H. Coate (1889-1973) who was raised a Quaker and aspired at one time to be a Methodist minister, had at some point embraced atheism and was an ardent pacifist. Somehow in 1953 he became the first and only non-Protestant and humanist to attain the chairmanship of the Prohibition Party. Unsurprisingly, his tenure was brief.

One of the speakers at the 1955 Prohibition Party nominating convention was Republican maverick North Dakota US Senator William "Wild Bill" Langer. He was an isolationist and friendly to the prohibition cause. He used his opportunity to speak at the convention to criticize what he saw as President Eisenhower's willingness to bow to Wall Street. There was talk of Langer being the Party's Presidential nominee.

Apparently Coate and his faction supported Langer, but something dramatic happened as reported in the Sept. 8, 1955 issue of the Kokomo Tribune: "Dr. Lowell H. Coate of Los Angeles, who resigned this week as national chairman of the Prohibition Party and announced that he and 20 secessionists had organized a Pioneer Party, once was a resident of Howard County ... Dr. Coate resigned as chairman when the party rejected his proposal that it take a broader name adopted to embrace a wider range of questions than liquor ..."

The departure of Coate and his entourage was also the departure of the last significant faction of progressives within the Prohibition Party.

By Nov. 1955 the Pioneer Party had organized to the point where they held a convention with around 30 delegates from 16 states. They were affiliated with the American Rally Party and hoped to create an umbrella for all third parties by 1960. A news account at the time reported: "The delegates adopted a platform calling for economic reform, a return to constitutional government, a 'golden rule' foreign policy and free health service. The platform urged demilitarization and 'repudiation of war and conscription.'"

Sen. Langer was nominated for President by Burr McCloskey and in turn the convention selected the latter gentleman as the running mate.

McCloskey had been the campaign manager in 1952 for Herbert C. Holdridge when he ran for President under the banner of the American Rally for Peace, Abundance and the Constitution (aka the American Rally Party) in tandem with for President as the nominee of the American Vegetarian Party. Holdridge's effort was, to be direct, a fiasco.

Langer and McCloskey had known each other since 1938. Both men were brilliant, erratic, and unpredictable. They worked together in a theatrical but Quixotic attempt to deny Earl Warren his confirmation to the Supreme Court. Langer even denied he knew concerned-private-citizen McCloskey, which was a straight out lie. So when the Senator later called his nomination by the Pioneer Party "nonsense" one has to wonder how much Vaudeville was taking place in this game. On McCloskey's part, some on the progressive side felt that although he used rhetoric from the Left he might have been a stalking horse for the Right given his outspoken anti-Communist views.

In the end it was much ado about nothing. The Pioneer Party was not on any ballot and ceased to exist after the election.

Election history: none.

Other occupations: worker at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., labor organizer, soldier (WWII), steel mill worker, campaign manager, poet, playwright, novelist, advertising agency owner.

Buried: Rosehill Cemetery and Mausoleum (Chicago, Ill.)

Notes:
Buried in the same cemetery as Charles Gates Dawes, Bobby Franks, Virginia Graham, Oscar
 Mayer,  Reinhart Schwimmer, Ignaz Schwinn, Richard Warren Sears, Aaron Montgomery Ward.
If elected would have become President upon the death of Langer Nov. 8, 1959.
"I learned how to fight as a wee boy because my name is Burr and my father's name was Burr. The popular cant is that Aaron Burr was a traitor, and my lovely chums in grammar schools across the country used the cant to malicious advantage, I had to fight because I knew better. In my family the saying around the Sunday dinner table was that the only mistake Burr made in killing Hamilton was that he should have done it twenty years sooner. I still believe this. There was a national debt, an Eastern establishment: it all goes back to Hamilton. He was a pimp for Washington at Valley Forge. He should have been killed twenty years sooner. American history is so distorted that it still isn't nice to say this in polite society"--Burr McCloskey, 1973.

Symon Gould

Holdridge and Gould

Symon Gould, May 19, 1894 (New York, NY) - November 24, 1963 (New York, NY)

VP candidate for American Vegetarian Party (aka Vegetarian Party) (1948, 1952, 1956)

Running mate with nominee (1948): John Maxwell (1863-1960)
Running mate with nominee (1952): Daniel J. Murphy (1887-1965)
Running mate with nominee (1956): Herbert M. Shelton (1895-1985)

Popular vote (1948): 68 (0.00%)
Popular vote (1952): 0 (0.00%)
Popular vote (1956): 0 (0.00%)

Electoral vote (1948, 1952, 1956): 0/531

The campaign (1948):

Attempting to build on the perceived momentum of America seeing the advantages of a meatless diet as a result of WWII food rationing, vegetarian activist Symon Gould was one of the main forces behind the creation of the American Vegetarian Party in 1947 during the sessions of a American Naturopathic Association meeting. The aims of the Party appeared to be simply for promotional purposes rather than political, since they apparently never attained ballot status in any state during the five presidential elections they existed.

85-year old John Maxwell, who ran a vegetarian restaurant in Chicago, was selected as the Presidential nominee. Along with Peter Cooper, standard-bearer of the Greenback Party in 1876, this age is something of a record for Presidential candidates (Lorenzo Stephen Coffin was also 85 when he was the running mate for the United Christian Party in 1908). One legal problem regarding Maxwell-- he was born in England evidently as a British subject-- making him ineligible to hold the Presidential office. Gould selected himself, or so the story goes, as the running mate.

Wikipedia cites Daniel J. Murphy as the 1948 running mate but all other evidence points to Gould.

Maxwell said he had "tasted no meat for 45 years" and also ran against alcohol, tobacco, and pharmaceutical medicine. Other issues included supporting government ownership of all natural resources, advocating a law prohibiting farmers from spending more than 20% of their labor on raising meat, and a pension of $100 for everyone over the age of 65.

According to Gould, Maxwell "wanted to accomplish something during the campaign" and that was his thinking behind marrying a woman 40 years younger than himself as the election season unfolded.

Gould predicted 5 million votes for the Party: "Three million of these would be the American vegetarians and the remainder of the votes would come from prohibitionist, anti-vivisectionists and anti-cigarette smoking groups. We will also attract other groups of people of similar high moral principle."

During the campaign Gould became embroiled in a public feud with the writer George Bernard Shaw regarding some esoteric differences in vegetarianism.

The campaign (1952):

The original 1952 ticket was headed by frequent party-jumper Herbert C. Holdridge with Gould once again being in the VP slot.

Holdridge, who claimed he had been a vegetarian since 1947, was the only American general who retired during the Second World War. In 1944 he appeared to be in support of the Socialist Party of America but by 1948 the retired general was attempting to gain the Democratic Party nomination for President. By 1952 he was covering all bets-- He was the Presidential nominee of the American Rally for Peace, Abundance and the Constitution (aka the American Rally Party), and he was making moves to be the Democratic Party nominee again, plus he was the nominee of the American Vegetarian Party.

For reasons that are unclear, Holdridge either withdrew or was forced off the ticket in late September/early October, 1952. Holdridge's campaign manager Burr McCloskey claimed the retired general quit because the vegetarians were "making Holdridge out to look as crackpot as they are." In another news source McCloskey said Holdridge was "asked" to resign from the ticket as the AVP had sharp differences of opinion over issues with the parallel American Rally Party campaign and could not endorse those activities or issues. As an aside, McCloskey would later be the VP nominee for the Pioneer Party in 1956.

The retired general continued to campaign, without a running mate, on the American Rally Party and quit that party shortly after Election Day.

At this point with only a month left in the campaign, Daniel J. Murphy was selected as the new substitute Presidential nominee for the American Vegetarian Party. Murphy had lost his left arm and leg decades earlier in an accident as a railroad employee and was now running an artificial limb shop in San Francisco. 

The campaign (1956):

The AVP nominated Herbert M. Shelton for President with Gould being the Party's VP choice for the third election in a row.

Shelton was a naturopath and pacifist. He was arrested, convicted, and jailed many times in his life, once for anti-draft activity during WWI, but most of his legal woes were due to charges of quackery, practicing medicine without a license, and twice for negligent homicide in the course of his "treatments" (1942 and 1978). Apparently Shelton himself didn't take his nomination very seriously.

The AVP platform promoted ideas that were obscure in 1956 but are more widely discussed today such as: "Vegetarianism is synonymous with universal brotherhood and universal peace. Its fundamental principle of 'anti-killing' if generally adopted would banish wars. In furtherance of this ideal, the American Vegetarian Party is unconditionally opposed to the slaughter of animals for sustenance, sport, or style. We contend that these barbaric and uncivilized practices brutalize men and generate in them a blood-lust that ultitmately seems to find an outlet in annihilating wars."

Election history:
1960 - US President (American Vegetarian Party) - defeated
1962 - US Senate (NY) (American Vegetarian Party) - defeated
1964 - US President (American Vegetarian Party) - died before election

Other occupations: editor, Secretary of the Vegetarian Society of New York, founder of the International Film Arts Guild in 1930, founder of American Library Service in 1922,

Buried: ?

Notes:
The winner of the 1962 Senate election was Republican Jacob Javits, a former classmate of Gould's--
 Also in that Senate race was Stephen Emery who also the Socialist Labor VP nominee in 1948 and  1952.
Alleged editor of the American print of the silent film Nosferatu.
Went on a three-week fast on an annual basis.
Jewish by birth, became pro-Israel during a 1949 visit, urging the UK to support US efforts there.
Died of cancer at age 70 two days after President Kennedy was assassinated.                                          In the Liz Taylor/Richard Burton film The Comedians (1967), the actor Paul Ford portrays "Mr. Smith," who was the fictional 1948 Vegetarian Party nominee for President.