Martin Joseph McNally, ca1944 (Michigan) -
VP candidate for Nationalist Christian Democratic Party (1980)
Running mate with nominee: Garrett Brock Trapnell (1938-1993)
Popular vote: ? (0.00%)
Electoral vote: 0/538
The campaign:
The evening of Thanksgiving Eve, 1971 was a typically nasty one here in Washington State for that time of year. Lots of rain and high winds. I remember it very well as we were glued to the local TV watching a live skyjacking taking place by a fellow the media later called D.B. Cooper. He was holding a Northwest Orient Airlines jet and crew hostage in exchange for 200 grand at Sea-Tac Airport. If the weather had not been so awful we could've run outside and watched the jet pass over our farm just minutes before Cooper bailed out two counties away and became part of Pacific Northwest folklore.
Personally, I think he sunk to the bottom of a lake or river and since Mt. St. Helens blowed up real good whoooee (as my friends Big Jim McBob and Billy Sol Hurok like to say) in May 1980, the odds of finding his body are pretty slim.
And speaking of 1980, among the Vice-Presidential candidates that year was one of Cooper's many imitators, one Martin Joseph McNally (aka Robert Wilson). He skyjacked a passenger airliner in 1972 and in the '80 election was serving a life sentence plus 75 years in prison in Marion, Ill.
The presidential candidate was Garrett Brock Trapnell, another Cooper-inspired skyjacker, who was also a bigamist, con man, bank robber, jewel thief, and, as it turns out, politician. When Trapnell took control of the jet in 1972 he not only demanded money, he wanted Angela Davis (a future third party VP candidate!) released from prison and he wanted a pardon from President Nixon among other things. Instead he was made an involuntary guest of the Crowbar Hotel. During the 1980 election he was also incarcerated in Marion.
Trapnell and McNally's escapades both before and after they met are the stuff of adventure movies. But I'll just focus on their much less action-packed run for the White House in 1980-- otherwise this profile will turn into a book.
Trapnell had announced his Presidential run in 1979 under the Nationalist Christian Democratic Party banner. His platform was short on specifics but he did state he wanted Secret Service protection and some of that public money doled out to the other major politicians running for the White House. McNally's name as the VP choice first appears in news articles around April Fools Day 1980.
By 1980 both Trapnell and McNally had become sort of jailhouse lawyers and they kept the courts constantly busy with various cases. In terms of their campaign, they went to court to be placed on the Indiana ballot during the primary, but learned that "minor" parties were excluded from the primaries in the Hoosier State. At the same time this was going on the duo were also in court over their alleged involvement with a prison breakout.
There is a legal point that could have complicated things in the event the Trapnell/McNally ticket had won. There is no law preventing felons or imprisoned people from serving in office as President if elected although getting on the ballot appears to be a state-by-state decision. It is plausible that President Trapnell could have pardoned himself. However the fact they were both "residents" of the same state poses a Constitutional problem that has never been tested. McNally's last address had been in Michigan so maybe he could have argued that was his real residence.
There have been a few previous tickets where one of the candidates was in jail or prison during part or all of the election but this was the first time I am aware of where both the Presidential and Vice-Presidential nominees were behind bars.
Not on the ballot and apparently not certified write-ins, there is no record of how many votes the Trapnell/McNally ticket received. A couple sources mention McNally himself ran for President, year unspecified, but I cannot ascertain if this is in error or if he really ran and I have never come across a solid reference to it. [Update: An observant reader provided documentary verification that McNally filed with the FEC in 2000 for President as a member of the National Christian Party]
Election history:
2000 - US President (National Christian Party) - defeated
Other occupations: US Navy, service station attendant, skyjacker
Notes:
Served 37 years in prison and was released Jan. 27, 2010.
A couple years ago I went on a long road trip and stayed the night in Marion, Ill. The drinking water
alone in Marion might be punishment enough for anyone.
McNally's skyjacking plan was complicated when a drunken would-be hero named David J. Hanley
rammed the jet at takeoff with his wife's Cadillac. So they had to switch to another jet. Hanley later
ran for President in the Democratic Party primaries in 1976.
