Asiba D. Tupahache, January 16, 1951 (Long Island, NY) -
VP candidate for Campaign for a New Tomorrow (aka Peace and Freedom Party aka Independent aka Equal Justice and Opportunity aka Labor-Farm/Laborista-Agrario Party) (1992)
Running mate with nominee: Ronald Daniels (b. 1942)
Popular vote: 27,884 (0.03%)
Electoral vote: 0/538
The campaign:
Ron Daniels had been the Executive Director of Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition and was involved in Jackson's 1984 and 1988 Presidential primary campaigns, serving as deputy campaign manager in the latter effort. He was also a political science professor, so he was definitely going into the electioneering with no illusions.
With the goal of building a truly multiracial movement dubbed Campaign for a New Tomorrow, he announced his intention to run on Columbus Day 1991 to call attention to the fact that Americans celebrated a day devoted to a man who enslaved and killed people in the civilizations he "discovered."
With Jackson declining to run in 1992 many of his followers felt that Bill Clinton was much too centrist. The Campaign for a New Tomorrow wanted to pick up where Jackson left off. They advocated universal health care, strict environmental laws, inner city restoration programs, cutting the military budget, and increasing taxes on the wealthy.
But instead of having the opportunity to focus on the major parties, Daniels' campaign ended up mostly in conflict with the New Alliance Party. Nowhere was that more evident than in California.
NAP nominee Lenore Fulani was running for President again in 1992, and for a second time won the Peace and Freedom Party primary in California only to be denied the final nomination at the convention. In 1988 the PFP actually melted down and did not have an official nominee, something they did not want to repeat in 1992. Many of Fulani's critics felt the NAP was a cult attempting to take over the PFP and was not actually a true Left wing movement. Fulani provided her own version of events in an article written in 2000:
By 1992, I was running for president for a second time. I sought the California Peace and Freedom Party nomination again. Ross Perot was running for president, too, and the two-party system was about to come face to face with his formidable independent challenge. In liberal and progressive political circles there was feverish concern about the presidential election. Rev. Jesse Jackson had run twice -- in 1984 and in 1988 -- raising and then dashing the hopes of black and progressive Americans that our political power could be expanded through the Democratic Party. But in 1992 Jackson did not run for a third time; instead progressives -- including African Americans -- were being primed to support Bill Clinton, who cut his teeth in national politics by playing the race card. He seized an opportunity to publicly upbraid Jackson to demonstrate that he wasn't sympathetic to black and liberal concerns. This was part of Clinton's strategy to win Reagan Democrats back into the fold. Black and progressive leaders, who had given the Democratic Party a political "blank check," had to figure out how to make Clinton "fly" for their constituents.
Mainstream liberals figured they'd have no problem because their constituents would still feel they had nowhere else to go. But, the left establishment (i.e. the old left) was worried that ordinary progressives and blacks might defect to independent politics. When I threw my hat into the ring again in 1992, the old left needed a candidate to face me down. What better choice than Jesse Jackson's former deputy campaign manager, Ron Daniels, to run as the "official progressive" presidential candidate, but under "black cover."
Daniels puttered around the country, getting on the ballot in only 10 states, and wheeling out every piece of trash the old left had manufactured against me for 15 years, announcing that his goal was to destroy me ... But nowhere was the confrontation between Daniels, the black puppet of the white fringe left and me, the black progressive trying to bring minority voters into the nascent independent movement, sharper than in the 1992 California Peace and Freedom Party primary.
This contest was a three-way between Daniels, myself and a Latina woman whom Daniels' supporters had recruited to siphon off Hispanic and female voters from me. In spite of his vicious cult-baiting, attempts to hijack the party and other forms of political garbage, I won the three-way preferential primary with 51 percent. Daniels polled 32.5 percent and the "planted" candidate 16 percent. Many of my voters came from the black and Latino registrant base -- which had continued to grow since 1988 -- and from white progressives who wanted the party to be more relevant.
But Daniels and his ultra-left political allies weren't done. They once again mobilized support at the state convention to reject the wishes of the membership and gave Daniels the Peace and Freedom line. Once again, these left leaders preferred to disempower the rank and file to pursue their own narrow goals. When the Perot movement hit it big, and 20 million Americans went independent, I was able to take my networks and followers into a new coalition with Perot voters. Peace and Freedom, its fringy ideologues and Ron Daniels were all left behind in the sectarian dust.
It should be noted Daniels had a long career in civil rights activism including participation with the National Black Independent Political Party before his involvement with the Democrats. Also, 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. Jackson himself endorsed Clinton in 1992.
Asiba Tupahache, a Matinecoc Nation Indigenous American activist from Long Island, NY, was selected as the VP nominee. Daniels explained his philosophy in his choice of a running-mate during a campaign speech:
So we're talking about using this candidacy. Let’s be clear that it’s an educational vehicle, a vehicle to mobilize the unmobilized, register the unregistered, and more than anything else, to build permanent organizations. And that’s what we're doing in city after city.
This is a movement prepared to work with other initiatives. It's distinguished, however, by the fact that it comes essentially out of the Black community. It's reaching out to people of color in very emphatic and decisive ways. Within the next weeks I hope to announce something we've talked about throughout this campaign, a Native American woman as a running mate.
This is important, both because the issue of Native Americans is crucial and because it's important to have a woman as a co-partner in this process. In 1992, 500 years after the Columbus fiasco, we need someone who will tell the experiences of Native Americans. Let America know what happened 500 years ago, but also that Native Americans are being exploited, preyed upon, dispossessed even as we speak tonight.
It is difficult to find any sources discussing Tupahache's role in active campaigning.
Two years after the election, Daniels was interviewed by Against the Current and he talked about the 1992 campaign:
ATC: What are the lessons that you draw from your own campaign? What you’re talking about here sounds a lot like what you did in 1992. What are the obstacles you met and how could you overcome them?
RD: [Laughs.] Well, no, what I did in 1992 was run. What I'm talking about here is unfinished parts of what we tried to do. In 1992, it was important to try to run to lay out some ideas, which I feel perfectly vindicated about. In fact, I think a lot of people now feel that I was absolutely correct. People who wouldn't touch it. They were into "defeat Bush at all costs." I kept saying that any difference between Bush and Clinton would be incremental and not fundamental.
ATC: In many ways, he's worse than Bush.
RD: Yes, because Bush could not talk about taxing unemployment benefits. There probably would have been more resistance to NAFTA had there been a Republican running it. And then labor just fell for the okie-doke, man. On health care and NAFTA! After NAFTA: "We’re angry. We're going to punish him." He dangled worker replacement legislation in front of them. "Hang on." Then he didn't do a damn thing for it. He just cut labor's throat, and labor went for it. So you're right, having a Democrat is even worse, because there's this illusion.
I think that the key problems of running a candidate are still resources, ballot access. We've got to be able to break this media thing. There would be times when I was making speeches, when I'd be in the stratosphere – to twenty people! I was convinced that if I could have made that same speech on national television, it would have gotten them. We've got to find a strategy that allows us to get our message out. We cannot get around the problem of the dictatorship of the corporate, for-profit media. I think that if we could get a consensus behind someone in 1996 and work out a broad-based coalition of groups that would support a candidacy, then we would have a much better impact than my campaign had. My own game plan would be to see if we can strengthen Campaign for a New Tomorrow and see it as one of the critical centers, because it is a predominantly African-American, person of color formation. If there were a strong affirmation or demand, then I'd be open to running in the year 2000. I'd like to close the century with a campaign that would point to some new directions for the 21st century.
The Daniels/Tupahache ticket could be found on the ballot in seven states plus DC and received recorded write-ins in four others. For some reason Daniels had no running-mate listed on the Utah ballot so the 177 votes in the Beehive State are subtracted from the total. The team's strongest results: District of Columbia 0.52%, California 0.17%, Louisiana 0.09%, Wisconsin 0.07%. 1992 was the last election where either candidate ran for public office.
Election history: none
Other occupations: teacher, author, editor, publisher, video artist
Notes:
Advocate of home schooling.
