Edward Estlin Cummings

Edward Estlin Cummings, October 14, 1894 (Cambridge, Mass.) – September 3, 1962 (Madison, NH)

VP candidate for Independent (1956)

Running mate with nominee: Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

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

The campaign:

To include the poet ee cummings as a member of the third party vice-presidential nominee club might be stretching things a bit, but the story is too good to bypass. I did the same thing with the Spirit of George Washington in the 1952 election.

Omni-artist Bruce Conner (1933-2008) was just starting his professional career during this election year. Conner credited himself and his friend Frank English with cooking up the idea of running the poet Ezra Pound for President, starting around Feb. 1956. Heavily influenced by Marcel Duchamp and the conceptual artists of his time, Conner's campaign of "Ez for Prez" could be viewed as a dry humor art exercise rather than a political statement.

Pound, who I would like to note gives us another Pacific Northwest connection as he was born in Idaho, was a major figure in the American and expatriate literary scene during the Lost Generation and Jazz Era. By the 1930s-1940s he was an outspoken anti-Semite and fascist who embraced Hitler and Mussolini. During WWII he was a paid propagandist for the Italian government. Pound was no doubt saved from being executed for treason when the US courts ruled he was mentally ill and unfit to stand trial, and by 1956 he had been incarcerated in St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, DC for a decade.

One of the many fellow poets agitating for Pound's release was ee cummings. Although not especially political, a trip to the Soviet Union in 1931 had shifted Cummings to the far Right and he quietly supported Sen. Joe McCarthy's efforts to root out "subversives." Conner, who Cummings described to Pound as a "young scamp," had struck up a correspondence with both poets.

On the 28th of June 1956 Conner wrote to Cummings, "Ez says he wd. be most happy for you to be running mate if you wd. accept. Would you?" There is no record of Cummings declining the honor, so I will for the purposes of this blog take that as a "Yes."

Unfortunately for Pound, several people in Right-wing hate groups loved the idea of supporting this fascist for President and promoted it as well, which no doubt made the poet's release more problematic. What started as an artistic joke, Ez for Prez became an American fascist rallying cry. One of the chief organizers was John Kasper, a white supremacist, anti-Semite, KKK member, and accused Right-wing terrorist. In 1964 he ran for President with the National States' Rights Party.

Needless to say the Pound/Cummings ticket was not any ballots.

Election history: none.

Other occupations: poet, painter, essayist, author, playwright, soldier (WWI),

Buried: Forest Hills Cemetery and Crematory (Jamaica Plain, Mass.)

Notes:
Buried in the same cemetery as William Lloyd Garrison, Eugene O'Neill, fellow third party VP nominee Samuel Clarke Pomeroy, and Anne Sexton.

George Washington (Spirit)

George Washington (Spirit), physical body: February 22, 1732 (Westmoreland County, Va.) - December 14, 1799 (Mount Vernon, Va.) / spirit form: December 14, 1799 - present

VP candidate for Washington Peace Party (1952)

Running mate with nominee: Ellen Linea Wahlquist Jensen (1897-1991)

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

The campaign:

The identity of the VP nominee for the Washington Peace Party was never made public, so I am entering the realm of conjecture here. Although stating the running mate could very well have been the spirit of George Washington might come across as a snarky wiseguy guess, in the context of this political party's world view it is actually a reasonable and likely assumption.

The Washington Peace Party was formed Aug. 13, 1952 in Miami, Fla. The nominee was Ellen Linea Wahlquist Jensen.

Ellen Linea Wahlquist was born to Swedish immigrants in Chicago, Oct. 29, 1897. By WWI she was in Washington State where she married Norwegian boat builder Paul Jensen in the city of Everett on July 31, 1918. He was a decade older than she. They had one son and lived in Seattle's Ravenna district. Something happened in the 1930s, either Paul died or the marriage fell apart, but by the late 1930s Ellen was on her own, earning a living as a stenographer and working at the University of Washington Law Library as an assistant.

At some point she also became a psychic and an astrologer, but it almost seemed like the press was more amused at the fact that she was a grandmother of three as if that compounded the conventional wisdom that it was absurd to take any female candidate seriously.

The Party spokesperson, "Executive Secretary" and resident of the apartment complex address that was also Party headquarters was Helen I. Hoag of Miami. Hoag, who at some time claimed an encounter with a UFO, would go on to found the Awareness Research Foundation, Inc. and compiled teachings on astrology, Atlantis, UFOs, Lord Sananda, ESP, metaphysics, and past lives. She also was the author and merchandiser in the esoteric market of a number of books in the coming decades with titles like: My Lives on Atlantis (1969) -- My Visits to Other Planets: the Sun, Moon and the Star, Capella (1970) -- What Happens Between Lives (1969) -- The 3 Missing Planets (1974). Her Foundation moved to North Carolina in later years.

The Party chair was Louis C. Morris of Hallandale, Fla. who also claimed to be a Cherokee named Chief White Eagle. It is possible an investigation could potentially reveal a Pretendian given the circumstances.

Ellen Linea W. Jensen, as she was billed, was rather cagey about her running mate. On Sept. 17 the media reported, "She has refused to identify the name of the man who is her vice presidential running mate." And on Oct. 29 this mysterious VP nominee was out of the race as the press told readers, "... that her party is in process of selecting another Vice Presidential candidate. The original nominee became ill and had to retire."

Without getting into specifics, Hoag described Jensen as, "a grandmother who has been working for the best interests of our country -- without pay -- for many, many years." Jensen told the press she communicated with George Washington "on the other side" and followed his advice. She also said she was a "Himalayan Master" in a previous life.

The Party slogan was "Light Around the World." The platform called for "world peace and lower taxes." Jensen promised "to stamp out Communism within nine minutes of my inauguration." The Party supported the concept of no government policymakers except native-born Americans. And bringing up the Father of Our Country again, Hoag said it was time to "return to the principles voiced and practiced by our country's founder and first president, George Washington -- no foreign entanglements."

In spite of Party statements that the Horoscope favored Jensen's election, the Washington Peace Party failed to gain ballot status in any state and vanished after the 1952 election. Later in life Jensen lived somewhere in Snohomish County north of Seattle, and died within King County Oct. 13, 1991.

Election history (physical body):
1757 - House of Burgesses (Va.) - defeated
1758-1765 - House of Burgesses (Va.)
1789-1797 - US President (Independent)

Other occupations (physical body): surveyor, planter, soldier, US President

Buried (physical body): Mount Vernon, Va.

Notes:
Small world dept.: Paul and Ellen Jensen in the 1920s lived on the same street in the Ravenna District only a quarter mile away from where I lived when I was a grad student at the UW 1980. When Ellen was on her own in the 1940s she lived in an apartment even closer to another house in the U District where I lived in the 1970s.