Joffre Le Mar Stewart, April 17, 1925 (Chicago, Ill.) – March 12, 2019 (Chicago, Ill.)
VP candidate for American Beat Consensus Party (aka Beat Party of America aka Beatnik Party aka Beat Anti-Party) (1960)
Running mate with nominee: William Lloyd Smith (1924-1995)
Popular vote: -0 (-0.00%)
Electoral vote: 0/537
The campaign:
The American Beat Consensus Party was the brainchild of Myron Reed "Slim" Brundage (1903-1990), a writer, poet, radical activist who founded the Hobo College and Beat gathering place College of Complexes, based in Chicago. And here's a true Washington State trivia connection, around 1919-1920 he lived in Aberdeen, Washington as an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World. I live in the same county so we are getting pretty close here.
Brundage hosted the Beatnik Party nominating convention July 1960 in the New York branch of the College of Complexes and even tossed his own beret into the ring, but on the 4th or 5th ballot the victors were Chicago poets Bill Smith and Joffre Stewart. The fact they were from the same state posed a Constitutional problem, but Smith and Joffre were actually anti-candidates with the slogans, "Don't get out the vote!" and "Don’t vote, but if you must, vote for yourself, and if you don't have enough ego to do that, vote for us."
Their campaign consisted of riding freight trains to various college campuses and beatnik hangouts across the country in order to address their target audience.
Right-wing paleolibertarian Murray N. Rothbard wrote the following regarding the ABCP:
... But the real glory of the Beat Party is not so much that candidate as the platform. Let me hasten to say that the platform is, at times, vague and even inconsistent, but what platform isn't? There is no point in being too purist about all this; after all, every platform is a compromise of contending interests. One plank calls for "abolition of the working class," presumably a reference to the future glories of automation. Another calls for a $10,000,000,000 subsidy to artists – apparently a sop to the socialist faction. A third was a little unclear in transmission, but it called for something like a "balanced debt" and a "repudiated budget," instead of the other way around. (So, all right, do you think Galbraith's economics any better?) But the true greatness of the Beat Party platform lies in its foreign policy plank, and its main political philosophy plank. Both are the most libertarian to be found in any party this year, if not any year. The foreign policy position is remarkably clear-cut and free of contradiction: absolute peace with all nations, because the "Beatniks are cowards."
The all-time purest libertarian plank, however, is the following: Bill Smith pledges that, when elected, his first act will be the immediate announcement of the dissolution of the Federal government. His second act will be his instant resignation. No one, not Barry Goldwater, not even J. Bracken Lee, will ever top that one.
And so – Mr. And Mrs. Conservative, if you want a real choice this year, if you are tired of the socialism of the Democrats and the me-tooism of the Republicans, and if you have given up hope of the third party that has been long promised and never fulfilled, awake and take heart! There is a real choice this year, there is a real third party in the field. Maybe it’s not everything you hoped for, but it is by far the best you will have. So face the facts of political life, and vote for Bill Smith for President and Joffre Stewart for Vice-President. Don’t waste your vote again!
During the campaign Smith, on live television, said the difference between Kennedy and Nixon was the same as the difference between "syphilis and gonorrhea, cholera and cancer."
Running mate Stewart wrote an essay-length letter to the Hyde Park Herald for Aug. 24, 1960. Some excerpts:
... As an anti-candidate, I campaign against voting. Thus I am not asking for anyone's vote unless you say that I am asking for your conscientious NONvote ... I ask people not to vote, because to vote is to participate in the State which is predicated on armed coercion. Thus, to vote is to participate in violence, whereas I encourage people to participate nonviolently in struggles for peace and freedom ...
Rather than vote, I urge people to veto governments by refusing to pay taxes. Your dollar, the greenbacked ballot, is the most significant balloting instrument you have. Every time you pay in a tax dollar, you vote for the continuance of government(s). Every time you withhold taxes from government(s), you veto all the violence that government(s) organize and perpetuate thru the elemental violence of cops-courts-jails-taxes.
The cops-courts-jails-taxes constitute the basic infra-structure on which is raised the gigantic superstructure of violence visible as the Pentagon, the Presidency, the UN, barely visible as the CIA, and invisible as fallout until someone goes under with leukemia.
Or look at it this way: as a conscientious objector to war, I point out that it is impossible to vote for peace. The constitution sets up the President as commander-in-chief of the army and navy. No peace loving man would want to be president--and we know how proud Kennedy, Nixon, et al, are of their war records. Thus any vote is a vote against the sincere peacemaker. Any vote is a vote against the anti-candidate(s) of the Beat Anti-Party Movement, which should be added to the Peacemakers, and the Catholic Workers, as a contra-cratic pacifist tendency.
The very last thing we want is your "vote."
And thus I have answered the most important question that can come up in any election: whether one should ever vote.
A conscientious withdrawal from politics means taking back from bureaucrats and politicians the power of decision over the most important questions that concern atomic age humanity. It means deciding responsibly by acting directly on problems in the manner above indicated, rather than shucking responsibility into the remote recesses of the loveless labyrinths of Leviathan. A conscientious withdrawal from politics signifies a vote of confidence in one's self, as well as reliance on latent and actual powers of kindness in mankind generally.
Since the Smith/Stewart ticket was not on any ballots, and in their eyes a deliberate nonvote was a vote in line with their political philosophy, it is difficult to say if they had any impact on this very close election.
35 years after the election, Smith recalled, "I sent Kennedy and Nixon telegrams on election night that said, 'As more people didn't vote than voted for either of you, we claim victory. Therefore, meet me at Appomattox with your broken swords.'"
Election history: none
Other occupations: poet, anarchopacifist, anti-Zionist pamphleteer, soldier (WWII),
Buried: ?
Notes:
Alan Ginsberg's poem Howl makes a reference to Stewart as a person "with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing / out incomprehensible leaflets."
