Ann Northrop

 Above: Northrop, 2008 ; Below, Steve Michael

Ann Northrop, 1948 (Hartfort, Conn.) -

VP candidate for AIDS Cure Party (aka Independent) (1996)

Running mate with nominee: Steve Michael (1956-1998)
Popular vote: 408 (0.00%)
Electoral vote: 0/538

The campaign:

Steve Michael was a member of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) and ran for President initially in the Democratic primaries and then later on the AIDS Cure Party. During the primaries WMUR in Manchester, NH yanked two of Michael's TV ads. He sued them-- and won.

Michael's campaign style was frank and direct. In 1992 he was noted for being one of the activists who heckled and confronted Bill Clinton during the 1992 election season. In 1996 he was holding Clinton to account for promises made but not delivered concerning AIDS.

His running-mate was Ann Northrop, a New York-based television and print journalist who was also an activist with ACT UP. She had been arrested numerous times in acts of civil disobedience before she was nominated for VP.

The campaign was poorly covered by the media even though the AIDS pandemic had been around for over a decade and a half by 1996.

The Michael/Northrop ticket's 408 popular votes placed them 9th out of 10 on the Tennessee ballot, the only state where they were listed, with 0.02% of the votes there.

In a tragic postscript that gained the Party more news coverage than they received during the campaign, Steve Michael died on May 25, 1998 as a result of AIDS (so in the event of their victory Northrop would have assumed the Presidency at that time). The funeral procession consisted of a demonstration, complete with Michael's body in a casket carried by pallbearers, taken to the front of the White House. Northtrop commented, "Bill Clinton is a murderer, and this death, and tens of thousands of others, must be laid at his doorstep ... He is a liar, and he is letting people with AIDS die on purpose. We will not rest until this crisis is over ... Steve's finest hour was when he was hounding and haunting the president. And I remain secure in the knowledge that he will haunt this president forever."

It should be noted the first HIV-infected Gay activist on a Presidential ticket who also would have died in his term was Harold Franklin Moore, who was Lenora Fulani's running-mate in the State of Oregon in 1988 under the New Alliance Party banner.

Election history: none

Other occupations: television and print journalist, lecturer, board of directors at the Institute for Gay and Lesbian Strategic Studies, AIDS and homosexuality educator for Hetrick-Martin Institute for Lesbian and Gay Youth, member of the NY delegation at the 1992 Democratic Party convention

Notes:
Sometimes called Anne Northrop
Vassar, class of 1970
Came out as a lesbian in 1976
Washington State trivia alert: Steve Michael was born and raised in Longview, Wash. and lived in
 Seattle.

Miriam Ben-Shalom

Miriam Ben-Shalom, May 3, 1948 (Waukesha, Wis.) -

VP candidate for Queer Nation Party (1992)

Running mate with nominee: Joan Jett Blakk (b. ca1957)
Popular vote: ? (0.00%)
Electoral vote: 0/538

The campaign:

Joan Jett Blakk was the drag persona of Chicago-based Terence Smith created in 1974. "I kind of think of myself," Blakk said in an interview, "as a combination of Divine, David Bowie in his early days, and Grace Jones--mix that all up and you’re talking Joan Jett Blakk."

Blakk ran for Mayor of Chicago in 1991, and having weathered the political spotlight in one major campaign, ran for President in 1992 under the auspices of the Queer Nation organization. It was recognized the effort was purely for publicity and getting the word out rather than ballot access or winning.

Blakk was, as far as I can ascertain, "the first queer, black drag-queen" to run for President. But she was not the first Gay activist to be on a ticket. I believe that place in the record books belongs to Harold Franklin Moore, who was the VP on the Oregon ballot with Lenora Fulani under the New Alliance Party (listed as "Independent") in 1988. Moore died as a result of AIDS in 1989.

The electioneering was campy but had a serious foundation. With the AIDS pandemic still going strong under the regime of the two-term Ronald Reagan who never once addressed it in public, even four years later under George H.W. Bush it remained a national health crisis the major parties were too afraid to adequately address for fear of being perceived as pro-Gay.

Her campaign slogan was "Lick Bush in '92." To be precise she used the term "camp-pain"-- "putting in the camp, taking out the pain, honey." Blakk promised to paint the White House lavender or pink, have "Dykes on Bikes" patrol our national borders, universal healthcare, pro-choice, abolish student debt, move the capital to Palm Springs, "give everything back to the Indians and let them take from there," be the first president to take calls directly from constituents, instead of the FBI we'll have the Fashion Bureau of Investigation, "fire everyone in Washington," the whole country needs redecorating, and to generally make America "more fabulous, more fruitful, and more glamorous."

There was a method to this camp-pain, Blakk said, "You can watch the news and never hear the word 'Gay’ mentioned. That just unnerves me. But with this campaign, they'll have to say the word; I'll make them."

Blakk's operatives, in a method that was accused of being made behind closed doors by an all boys club, chose Miriam Ben-Shalom in June 1992 to be Blakk's running-mate. Ben-Shalom had become a national figure, a hero to many, for challenging the military's discriminatory treatment of Gay soldiers. She had been discharged from the Army against her wishes and fought in the courts to be reinstated in 1987 but in 1990 the Army pushed her out again. Still, her reinstatement had been a victory no matter how short-lived. By 1992 she was a civilian but continuing to be an activist.

Demonstrating that the Gay community was a broader and more diverse movement than mainstream Americans realized, the Blakk campaign experienced as much conflict from within as it did from the outside. In addition to the perceived gender split in the decision-making process for the campaign, a segment of the Queer Nation Party were not pleased that a person associated with the military had been selected as the VP. Others in the QNP felt the joke had gone awry and a serious social problem was being trivialized.

I could not locate any source demonstrating that Ben-Shalom had accepted the nomination or campaigned for the ticket.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Shivelva Kennedy-Sinatra (aka J.V. McAuley) was also on the ticket running for the position of First Lady, which must have a first in several categories.

Efforts were made, to no avail, to be placed on a few ballots. Although Blakk warned voters, "If you don't elect me President, we're gonna have to go to another planet," she ran again in 1996 under the Blakk Pantsuit Party.

Ben-Shalom went to become an even more controversial figure and was charged with being transphobic when she voiced her opinion that she felt the transgender movement was oppressive to women and had co-opted issues she had fought for earlier in her activism.

She also made the news when in Oct. 2016, at age 68, she taught a would-be carjacker in Milwaukee that he was messing with the wrong ex-Army sergeant as she thwarted his crime.

Election history: none

Other occupations: Israeli Army, US Army, technical college instructor, co-founder Gay Lesbian and Bisexual Veterans of America

Notes:
Converted from Catholicism to Judaism, became an Israeli citizen and served in the army of that country for a couple years. Returned to the US in 1971.

Harold Franklin Moore

Harold Franklin Moore, August 6, 1945 - December 1, 1989 (Portland, Ore.)

VP candidate for Independent (aka New Alliance Party) (1988)

Running mate with nominee: Lenora Fulani (b. 1950)
Popular vote: 6,487 (0.01%)
Electoral vote: 0/538

The campaign:

In 1988 Lenora Fulani was the nominee for the New Alliance Party. She managed to achieve the nearly impossible task of gaining ballot status in all 50 states + DC. In some cases the NAP worked with already existing third parties such as the Solidarity Party and United Citizens Party. In California they tried but failed to take over the Peace and Freedom Party and in the process temporarily derailed the PFP for that election year.

Meanwhile, Dennis L. Serrette the NAP Presidential nominee for 1984, denounced the Party as a toxic cult during the 1988 election season. This point of view would be shared by several in the cultbusting community.

Fulani had eight running-mates in 1988, stating "If we got elected, we'd figure it out." Her running-mate in Oregon was Harold F. Moore.

Moore, who confessed to "a long and complicated criminal history" including long periods of incarceration, was a Portland, Oregon-based HIV-infected Gay activist who had originally been involved in the Democratic Party supporting Dukakis in a lukewarm way but was won over by Fulani and the New Alliance Party partly as a result of the Democratic failure to adequately address the AIDS crisis. Moore told the press, "I used to feel isolated" but thanks to the NAP "the hole inside me is gone." Three months after joining the Party, he found himself in the position of VP nominee on the Oregon ballot.

It is important to remember that during both of his terms, President Reagan never addressed the AIDS pandemic in public.

Not all Gay activists were so enthralled by the NAP's outreach program and a considerable body of critical literature exists.

In 1987 Fulani said the NAP was prepared to endorse Jesse Jackson in the event he won the Democratic nomination, but in case he didn't her campaign was forging ahead.

The NAP platform included national health care, support for AIDS victims, recognition of Native American treaty rights, stronger environmental regulations, a freeze on military spending, ending aid to South Africa-Contras in Central America-Israel, support of pro-choice laws, support of public transportation.

Nationally Fulani gained 217,221 votes (0.24%) and placed 4th, a truly impressive and historic finish on many levels-- for openers, Fulani was the first African American woman to be listed on every US ballot. The Fulani/Moore ticket finished with 0.54% of the popular vote in Oregon, the 4th best showing for Fulani among the 50 states + DC.

Election history: none

Other occupations: journalist for Gay publications

Buried: ?

Notes:
Would have died in office if elected.