Dale Harold Learn

Dale Harold Learn, December 8, 1897 (East Swiftwater, Penn.) - March 16, 1976 (East Stroudsburg, Penn.)

VP candidate for Prohibition Party (1948)

Running mate with nominee: Claude A. Watson (1885–1978)

Popular vote: 103,708 (0.21%)
Electoral vote: 0/531

The campaign:

Claude Watson was nominated again for President but not without a contest. Other names proposed were Enoch Arden Holtwick (future 1952 VP nominee and 1956 Presidential nominee), David Leigh Colvin (1920 VP nominee and 1936 Presidential nominee with Watson as his running mate) and Dale Harold Learn, a realtor from Pennsylvania. Watson won the prize and Learn was nominated as the running mate.

Watson knew how to work the media. He publicized the fact he was the first Presidential nominee to pilot his own campaign airplane. A tall tale was told that Mrs. Watson had already visited the White House in order to make redecoration plans when she assumed the role of First Lady.

The 1948 Prohibition Party platform did indeed have a few extreme statements regarding alcohol and God being the source of all government, but on many other issues it is a surprisingly centrist document given their earlier hard Right religious turn in 1940 and 1944. This time they probably had the most moderate platform in tone of the many third parties running that year.

They earned 0.21% of the national vote, landing in 6th place. As paltry as that sounds the Party would never come close to finishing with a percentage that high again. Their 103,708 popular votes marked the final instance where they surpassed 100,000.

On Election Day, the Watsons were unable to vote since their absentee ballots had been misplaced.

With recorded votes in about two dozen states, the Watson/Learn ticket had their largest percentages in Indiana (0.89%), Kansas (0.82%), Washington (0.68%) and Michigan (0.62%).

Election history:
1942 - Governor of Pennsylvania (Prohibition Party) - defeated
1946 - US Senate (Penn.) (Prohibition Party) - defeated
1947 - Prohibition Party nomination for US President - defeated

Other occupations: school director, realtor, lay minister for the United Methodist Church in East Stroudsburg, Penn., Trustee of East Stroudsburg State College, US Army soldier WWI.

Buried: Laurelwood Cemetery (Stroudsburg, Penn.)

Notes:
Mason
Buried in the same cemetery as Walter Burke and A. Mitchell Palmer.

Fielding Lewis Wright

Fielding Lewis Wright, May 16, 1895 (Rolling Fork, Miss.) – May 4, 1956 (Jackson, Miss.)

VP candidate for States' Rights Democratic Party (aka States' Rights Party aka Dixiecrats) (1948)

Running mate with nominee: Strom Thurmond (1902-2003)

Popular vote: 1,175,930 (2.41%)    
Electoral vote: 39/531

The campaign:

When President Truman made moves to promote civil rights in general and to desegregate the military in particular, a group of Democrats from the Deep South walked out of the 1948 convention and formed the States' Rights Democratic Party, otherwise known as the Dixiecrats.

Gov. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina was selected as the Presidential nominee. The VP choice, Mississippi Gov. Fielding Wright, was actually much more involved in agitating to form the third party. The author James W. Leuwen described Fielding as "one of the most racist political leaders in Mississippi's history."

The Dixiecrats were a regional party and could never gain enough votes in the Electoral College to win and they knew it. Their aim was to gain 127 electoral votes and force the US House to break the deadlock, where a bloc of Southern members of Congress could have increased influence over the choice of the next President. 

Here is the entire Dixiecrat platform, Aug. 14, 1948:

We believe that the Constitution of the United States is the greatest charter of human liberty ever conceived by the mind of man.

- 2 -

We oppose all efforts to invade or destroy the rights guaranteed by it to every citizen of this republic.

- 3 -

We stand for social and economic justice, which, we believe can be guaranteed to all citizens only by a strict adherence to our Constitution and the avoidance of any invasion or destruction of the constitutional rights of the states and individuals. We oppose the totalitarian, centralized bureaucratic government and the police nation called for by the platforms adopted by the Democratic and Republican Conventions.

- 4 -
We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race; the constitutional right to choose one's associates; to accept private employment without governmental interference, and to earn one's living in any lawful way. We oppose the elimination of segregation, the repeal of miscegenation statutes, the control of private employment by Federal bureaucrats called for by the misnamed civil rights program. We favor home-rule, local self-government and a minimum interference with individual rights.

- 5 -

We oppose and condemn the action of the Democratic Convention in sponsoring a civil rights program calling for the elimination of segregation, social equality by Federal fiat, regulations of private employment practices, voting, and local law enforcement.

- 6 -

We affirm that the effective enforcement of such a program would be utterly destructive of the social, economic and political life of the Southern people, and of other localities in which there may be differences in race, creed or national origin in appreciable numbers.

- 7 -
We stand for the check and balances provided by the three departments of our government. We oppose the usurpation of legislative functions by the executive and judicial departments. We unreservedly condemn the effort to establish in the United States a police nation that would destroy the last vestige of liberty enjoyed by a citizen.

- 8 -

We demand that there be returned to the people to whom of right they belong, those powers needed for the preservation of human rights and the discharge of our responsibility as democrats for human welfare. We oppose a denial of those by political parties, a barter or sale of those rights by a political convention, as well as any invasion or violation of those rights by the Federal Government. We call upon all Democrats and upon all other loyal Americans who are opposed to totalitarianism at home and abroad to unite with us in ignominiously defeating Harry S. Truman, Thomas E. Dewey and every other candidate for public office who would establish a Police Nation in the United States of America.

- 9 -
We, therefore, urge that this Convention endorse the candidacies of J. Strom Thurmond and Fielding H. Wright for the President and Vice-president, respectively, of the United States of America.

Clearly this was a platform written as if only white people were the true citizens protected by the Constitution and the liberties the Dixiecrats loftily celebrated did not apply to others. One of the most quoted utterances from the campaign was made by Wright in a radio address aimed at African Americans: "If any of you have become so deluded as to want to enter our white schools, patronize our hotels and cafes, enjoy social equality with the whites, then true kindness and sympathy requires me to advise you to make your homes in some other state."

The Thurmond/Wright ticket began the Southern Democratic Party 20 year transition as they morphed into Republicans, which was made complete and total in the presidential election of 1972. Thurmond himself switched to the Republicans in 1964. The Dixiecrats were a third party the Democrats were not going to co-opt.

Some historians believe that Henry Wallace's Progressive Party split from the Left made it more difficult to pin the Communist label on mainstream Democrats, while Thurmond's split from the Right made it more difficult to call the conventional Democrats a bunch of racists. In some weird ways these third parties actually helped Truman.

Although the States' Rights Democratic Party had a tiny popular vote, they captured 39 Electoral votes (far short of their goal) from Mississippi (97.17%), Alabama (79.75%, Truman was not even on the ballot), South Carolina (71.97%), Louisiana (49.07%), and one faithless elector in Tennessee (13.41%). Other strong results: Georgia (20.31%, where they placed 2nd), Arkansas (16.32%), Florida (15.54%), Virginia (10.35%), Texas (9.11%) and North Carolina (8.80%). They had a small amount of votes from six other states.  

Election history:
1928-1931 - Mississippi State Senate (Democratic)
1932-1940 - Mississippi House of Representatives (Democratic)
1944-1946 - Lt. Governor of Mississippi (Democratic)
1946-1952 - Governor of Mississippi (Democratic)
1955 - Democratic primary for Governor of Mississippi (Democratic) - defeated

Other occupations: attorney, US Army soldier (WWI), Speaker of the House (Miss.), semiprofessional baseball player

Buried: Kelly Cemetery (Rolling Fork, Miss.)

Notes:
Distant cousin of George Washington.
More comfortable as a backroom operator than as a hail-fellow-well-met politician.

Glen Hearst Taylor

Glen Hearst Taylor, April 12, 1904 (Portland, Ore.) – April 28, 1984 (Burlingame, Calif.)

VP candidate for Progressive Party (aka New Party aka Independent Progressive Party) (1948)

Running mate with nominee: Henry A. Wallace (1888-1965)

Popular vote: 1,157,328 (2.37%)
Electoral vote: 0/531

The campaign:

Just one of the many sideshows in the crazy 1948 election year included the battle of two FDR Vice-Presidents, Harry Truman (Democrat) and Henry Wallace (now in the newly created Progressive Party), with each claiming they were the true torch-bearer of Roosevelt's legacy.

The Progressive Party's 1948 platform mentions FDR several times in a positive light, linking the late President in what they saw as part of their political lineage:

Ten years ago Franklin Delano Roosevelt warned: "The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state. That, in its essence, is fascism."

Today that private power has constituted itself an invisible government which pulls the strings of its puppet Republican and Democratic parties. Two sets of candidates compete for votes under the outworn emblems of the old parties. But both represent a single program— a program of monopoly profits through war preparations, lower living standards, and suppression of dissent.

For generations the common man of America has resisted this concentration of economic and political power in the hands of a few. The greatest of America's political leaders have led the people into battle against the money power, the railroads, the trusts, the economic royalists.

We of the Progressive Party are the present-day descendants of these people's movements and fighting leaders. We are the political heirs of Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln— of Frederick Douglass, Altgeld and Debs— of "Fighting Bob" LaFollette, George Norris, and Franklin Roosevelt.

The platform did have one important difference from the other political parties of the Left in 1948-- they all but embraced Stalin's Soviet regime as they condemned the Cold War. It didn't help that rather than run their own candidate in this election year, the Communist Party USA (now in the hands of the Stalinists) openly endorsed the Progressive Party. The fact that the CPUSA had influence in the Wallace/Taylor campaign is beyond dispute, but to what extent is still a matter of historical debate.

Wallace and Taylor, although not Communist themselves, refused to eschew CPUSA support on the grounds of that they did not wish to participate in the growing hysteria over "Reds" and be on the wrong side of what they called a freedom of speech and thought issue.

Wallace selected US Senator Glen Taylor of Idaho as his running mate. Taylor, a Democrat, was the very first pure Pacific Northwest third party Vice-Presidential candidate, having been born in Portland and raised in Idaho. Until he was elected to the US Senate in 1944, he had never been east of Chicago.

Taylor, who had considerable experience as an actor and musician, possessed a flair for publicity and fully understood how politics is frequently like theater. Known as the "Singing Cowboy" he has been noted for the distinction as one of the most Leftists members of the Senate since the 1930s. He had very mixed feelings about joining the Progressive Party and took several weeks in making his decision to be part of the ticket. In May, 1948 he told a reporter, "I knew I would probably kill my chances of being re-elected [to the Senate] in 1950 if I threw in with Henry. I'm not a lawyer. I've been in show business all my life, living hand to mouth, often in debt. I can't leave the Senate and practice law, like most of these fellows do. It was a tough decision ... I am running because I feel that the question of peace or war is more important than any other consideration."

During the campaign, in May, Taylor was convicted of disorderly conduct in Birmingham, Ala. for using a door reserved for African Americans as he took an action to protest the policy of segregation. Henry Wallace observed, "This dramatizes the hypocrisy of spending billions for arms in the name of defending freedom abroad, while freedom is trampled on here at home."

With votes recorded in 45 states, Wallace/Taylor finished strongest in New York (8.25%), California (4.73%), North Dakota (3.80%), Washington (3.50%), Montana (3.26%), Oregon (2.86%), Nevada (2.36%), and Taylor's Idaho (2.31%). It could be argued that the Progressive Party gave New York and Michigan to Dewey.

Election history:
1938 - Democratic primary for US House of Representatives (Id.) - defeated
1940 - US Senate (Id.) (Democratic) - defeated
1942 - US Senate (Id.) (Democratic) - defeated
1944-1951 - US Senate (Id.) (Democratic)
1950 - Democratic primary for US Senate (Id.) - defeated
1954 - US Senate (Id.) (Democratic) - defeated
1956 - Democratic primary for US Senate (Id.) - defeated
1956 - US Senate (Id.) (Independent write-in) - defeated

Other occupations: actor, country-Western singer known as "The Singing Cowboy," movie theater manager, President of Coryell Construction Co. 1950-1952, inventor and producer of custom toupees called Taylor Toppers (now Taylormade), painter's assistant,  sheet metal worker, shipyard worker during WWII, sheepherder, carpenter

Buried: Skylawn Memorial Park (San Mateo, Calif.)

Notes:
Winner of the 1956 US Senate race was Frank Church, a result hotly disputed by Taylor.
Brother of Jazz singer Lee Morse (1897-1954)
12th of 13 children.
Family moved to Kooskia, Idaho when Taylor was very young.
Divorced and remarried.
Died of Alzheimer's Disease.
Lost his hair early in life and invented his own toupee which turned into a successful business still
 run by a family member.
In an effort to publicize his need for housing in Washington, DC in 1945, he sang "Oh give us a
 home, near the Capitol dome, and a yard where the children can play..." to the tune of "Home on the
 Range" on the Capitol steps.
Attempted to organize a Farmer-Labor Party in Montana and Nevada, 1935.
Engaged in a fistfight with Republican Ray McKaig, breaking McKaig's jaw, on Election Day 1946
 in Boise.
"Even if it is only a psychological phenomenon, it is a sign of what the world is coming to. If we don't ease the tensions, the whole world will be full of psychological cases and eventually turn into a global nuthouse."--Sen. Taylor on the UFO claims regarding Roswell, NM, July 1947.
He rode his horse, Nugget, up the Capitol steps.
Taylor's brother Paul ran for US Congress in California as a Progressive Party candidate.
Returned to the Democratic Party in 1949.

Tucker Powell Smith

 Smith and Thomas (and Hoopes?)

Tucker Powell Smith, January 29, 1898 (Missouri) – June 25, 1970 (Ventura, Calif.)

VP candidate for Socialist Party of America (aka Socialist Party of the United States) (1948)

Running mate with nominee: Norman M. Thomas (1884-1968)
Popular vote: 139,569 (0.29%)

Electoral vote: 0/531

The campaign:

In his sixth and final run for the presidency, Norman Thomas found himself as the head of just another of the increasing and fragmented political parties on the Left. The days of the Socialist Party of America acting as the country's premier third party were over.

1948 running mate Tucker Powell Smith was long active in pacifist political activity. At the time of the campaign he was a resident of Highland Park, Mich.

Smith was rumored to have been a ghost-writer for an anti-Truman speech by his VP rival, Progressive Party running mate Sen. Glen Hearst Taylor.

The 1948 SPA platform slammed communists (and Henry Wallace's Progressive Party by association):

Three forces today are competing for the loyalty of men. And in this race, the stakes are the survival of mankind.

On the one hand, an economic system calling itself "free enterprise" asserts that it can lead to the salvation of humanity. It has brought us repeatedly to depressions and wars, yet its spokesmen in the Democratic and Republican Parties still pretend they
have solutions.

They have, in fact, betrayed the promises with which they woo the American people every four years. They offered prosperity and delivered depression. They pledged peace and delivered war. They promised to increase our standard of living and are now raising the cost of living. They promised freedom to organized labor and hobbled it with new bonds.

They have sought partisan advantage and jeopardized national welfare. The dominant wings in their parties have combined to destroy price control and give us inflation, to undermine restraints on greed and give us shortage, to favor the rich and deny the poor, to cut the taxes of the wealthy and insult the common man with a crumb.

There is a second force in the world—which promises security and speaks of freedom but delivers only economic bondage and dictatorship. It is the force of totalitarianism. Yesterday its most sinister front was Fascism; today it is Communism.

In the United States, it marches under masked banners. It calls itself a "new party" and has pushed into the forefront well-meaning liberals who do not know the purposes of their Communist allies. And this alliance, though speaking for civil liberties at home, defends the most powerful tyranny in the modern world. It speaks of peace but is blind to the most aggressive imperialism of the present day. It speaks of one world but works for two spheres of influence. It urges the brotherhood of man but sanctifies the divisive principle of national sovereignty.

As against these forces, the Socialist Party of the United States speaks for the Third Force—democratic socialism, the principles of democratic planning and international order.

With votes recorded in 34 states the Thomas/Smith ticket finished in a very distant 5th place. In Wisconsin they tallied 0.98%, in Oregon 0.96% and the percentages dramatically plummet after that. Georgia gave them three votes and in South Carolina they earned one single lonely vote.

Election history:
1929 - Alderman, New York, NY (Socialist Party of America) - defeated
1930 - US House of Representatives (NY) (Socialist Party of America) - defeated

Other occupations: college teacher, Director of Brookwood Labor College 1933-1937

Buried: Pierce Brothers Valley Oaks Memorial Park (Westlake Village, Calif.)

Notes:
Shortly after the election he was dismissed from Olivet College in Jan. 1949 for union agitation.
Buried in the same cemetery as Karen Carpenter, Ronald Goldman, Jack Kirby, Virginia Mayo, Harry
 Nilsson, and Artie Shaw.
Future Pulitizer Prize winning author Carleton Mabee resigned his teaching job at Olivet in protest of
 Smith's firing.

Stephen Emery

Stephen Emery, August 20, 1908 (Passaic, NJ) - September 4, 1995 (Manassas, Va.)

VP candidate for Socialist Labor Party (aka Industrial Government Party) (1948, 1952)

Running mate with nominee (1948): Edward A. Teichert (1904–1974)
Running mate with nominee (1952): Eric Hass (1905–1980)

Popular vote (1948): 29,244 (0.06%)
Popular vote (1952): 30,406 (0.05%)

Electoral vote (1948, 1952): 0/531

The campaign (1948):

The SLP nominated Edward A. Teichert for a second time, but in this round his running mate was Party stalwart Stephen Emery of New York.

The 1948 platform anticipated the Military-Industrial Complex and never-ending war-based economy that President Eisenhower warned the country against over a decade later. The Party also criticizes the "Gestapo-like" tactics of the government efforts to root out "disloyalty."

Just like the Socialist Workers Party 1948 platform, the SLP took a swipe at some of the other Leftist parties, especially as they saw themselves as the only pure Marxists, and all others, including the Soviet government, as poseurs--

The Socialist Labor Party appeals to you to accept the logic of these facts: WAR, FASCISM, AND POVERTY AMIDST PLENTY ARE THE EVIL BROOD OF CAPITALISM. No worker who reaches this conclusion can, without consciously aligning himself with the forces of  reaction, support the parties that have as their aim the preservation of capitalism. In this category, besides the Republicans  and Democrats, we include the "Third Party Progressives" (who acclaim "progressive capitalism"), and the "Liberal," "Labor," "Socialist" and "Communist" reformers. To speak of "progressive capitalism" today is as nonsensical as it would have been to speak of "progressive slavery" in 1860. And to propose capitalist reforms is to help prolong the capitalist cause of war and fascism. The logic of this is inescapable.

The Socialist Labor Party, therefore, calls upon the American workers, and all other enlightened citizens, to repudiate the parties of capitalism, and to support its program for a Socialist reconstruction of society.

In an election year filled with third parties, the SLP placed 7th. With votes recorded in over 20 states they fared the best in Massachusetts (0.26%) and Minnesota (0.21%).

The campaign (1952):

In 1952 the SLP maintained Emery as the running mate but for President they nominated Eric Hass, who would go on to run in three more elections as the Party standard bearer.

The 1952 SLP platform blasts the Korean War, the Soviets, and the Red Scare in America. Some selections--

The Korean war, a senseless war to all but the capitalist and Russian imperialist interests that profit from it, is a tragic consequence of ruling-class confusion and the military approach in international relations.

---

By means of falsehoods and smears, whipped-up hysteria, witch-hunts and loyalty oaths, the capitalist plutocrats are attacking the very heart of American political democracy. They are imposing a "black silence of fear" on millions of once proudly independent and fearlessly outspoken Americans.

The Socialist Labor Party declares that the real target of this un-American attack is not the Communists, but the fundamental rights and civil liberties of the American people. The Communists are merely a convenient and vulnerable target. It has been said, not without logic, that if there were no Communist party in America, the capitalist reaction would organize one.

Eric Hass' effort to rebuilt the SLP were starting to pay off. Although their national result in 1952 was minuscule, they placed higher than usual (5th) and for the first time outpolled their dying rival, the Socialist Party of America. Best showings: New Jersey (0.24%) and Illinois (0.21%).

Election history:
1950 - US Senate (NY) (Socialist Labor Party) - defeated
1953 - New York City Council President (Industrial Government Party) - defeated
1954 - Lt. Governor of New York (Industrial Government Party) - defeated
1957 - New York City Council President (Socialist Labor Party) - defeated
1958 - US Senate (NY) (Socialist Labor Party) - defeated
1961 - New York City Council President (Socialist Labor Party) - defeated
1962 - US Senate (NY) (Socialist Labor Party) - defeated
1965 - New York City Controller (Socialist Labor Party) - defeated
1970 - Governor of New York (Socialist Labor Party) - defeated
1978 - Governor of California (Socialist Labor Party) - defeated

Other occupations: subway dispatcher

Buried: ?

Notes:
The winner in the 1970 Governor of NY race was Nelson Rockefeller.
The winner in the 1978 Governor of Calif. race was Jerry Brown.
Parents were Hungarians who immigrated in 1904.
Ruled off the ballot in the 1958 US Senate race so ran as a write-in.
Still on record being active with SLP in 1989, when he donated $20,000 to the Party.
Was attacked, beaten and robbed by an Army deserter while fishing near Placerville, Calif. in late
 May 1984. Among other things his jaw was broken and his Honda station wagon stolen. Francis
 James Snyder was captured and entered a guilty plea in court.

Grace Marie Holmes Carlson

 Grace Carlson and Dorothy Schultz were a bonafide Socialist Workers Party sister act

Grace Marie Holmes Carlson, November 13, 1906 (St. Paul, Minn.) – July 7, 1992 (Madison, Wis.)

VP candidate for Socialist Workers Party (aka Militant Workers Party) (1948)

Running mate with nominee: Farrell Dobbs (1907-1983)
Popular vote: 13,613 (0.03%)

Electoral vote: 0/531

The campaign:

Although 1948 was their first Presidential election, the Socialist Workers Party had been around for awhile, tracing their history through twists and turns, mergers and splits with both the Communists and Socialists. In the Marxist universe during this wild election year where third parties really begin to proliferate, they saw themselves as the American party of Trotskyism. Farrell Dobbs (in his first of four runs for President) and Grace Carlson, two veteran SWP members who had served time in Federal prison as a result of the Smith Act, were selected as the Party's ticket.

The SWP 1948 platform is fairly predictable, but it does go into some detail concerning their views of the other parties, which is rather unusual for a party platform. Here is their take on Henry Wallace's Progressive Party, the Communist Party USA (which had endorsed Wallace), and the Socialist Party of America:

The party of Henry Wallace represents nothing but an attempt to exploit the disgust of the people with the Democrats and the Republicans. The Wallace party is the unashamed champion of decaying capitalism. Claiming support as an anti-war party, its leader, Wallace, has betrayed the struggle in advance by declaring his readiness to support the projected war when it breaks out. Wallace's stock-in-trade is a recitation of evils without one single concrete proposal to mobilize labor's strength
against monopoly capitalism, the source of all the evils he criticizes.

The Communist Party (Stalinists), which is supporting the Wallace party in this year's election, is interested in the class struggle only insofar as it can be exploited to advance the interests of the arch-reactionary Stalinist bureaucracy in the Kremlin. When it serves Stalin's purposes, as it did during the period of the Stalin-Hitler Pact, the American Stalinists talk class struggle, support strikes, pay lip-service to the need for socialism, etc. And similarly, when it serves Stalin's purposes, as it did during the wartime period of the Washington-Moscow alliance, the American Stalinists advocate class collaboration, "national unity," cessation of labor and Negro struggles, strike-breaking, etc. In their case they remain instruments of Stalin's reactionary foreign policy and must be seen as enemies of the workers' true class interests and revolutionary socialism.

The Socialist Party of Norman Thomas pretends that war can be stopped by the United Nations just as it pretended that the war could be stopped by the League of Nations. While denouncing war in general it is no less ready to support World War III than it was to support World War II. It seeks to reform and not to abolish capitalism.

Interesting that the Socialist Labor Party failed to show up on the SWP denunciation list.

The SWP placed 8th nationally, with votes recorded in over a dozen states, some of them as write-ins only. Their strongest result was by far in New Jersey with 0.30%.

Election history:
1940 - US Senate (Minn.) (Trotskyist Anti-War Party) - defeated
1942 - Mayor of St. Paul, Minn. primary (Socialist Workers Party) - defeated
1946 - US Senate (Minn.) (Revolutionary Workers Party) - defeated
1950 - US House of Representatives (Minn.) (Socialist Workers Party) - defeated

Other occupations: teaching assistant at the University of Minnesota, vocational rehabilitation counselor, professor at St. Marys Junior college in Minneapolis, hospital secretary

Buried: ?

Notes:
Her sister Dorothy Schultz ran for Congress in Minnesota 1946 as part of the Revoltionary Workers
 Party.
Educated in Catholic schools.
Imprisoned for a year and half starting Dec. 31, 1943 for anti-war political activity.
Left the SWP in June 1952 and returned to the Catholic Church as a venue for social justice work. Considered herself a religious Marxist.
PhD in psychology at the University of Minnesota, 1933.
Her mother was a German immigrant.
Met and befriended Trotsky's widow, Natalia Sedova, in 1941.
Since she was a convicted felon, she was unable to vote for herself in 1948.

Granville Booker Leeke

Granville Booker Leeke, February 22, 1889 (Philadelphia, Penn.) - May 29, 1955 (Niles, Mich.)

VP candidate for Greenback Party (1948)

Running mate with nominee: John G. Scott (1879-1953)

Popular vote: 6 (0.00%)

Electoral vote: 0/531

The campaign:

The Party nominated John G. Scott who was a retired college professor raising bees in upstate NY and Granville B. Leeke of South Bend, Ind. by mail-vote. Scott indicated that aside from voting for himself, he planned to vote Republican in all other races.

Scott described the Greenback Party as: "Neither right, left nor middle but all three in one ... It is a conservative party, democratically-managed, with a progressive platform and liberal outlook."

Although not on the ballot in any states, six write-in votes were recorded from California.

Election history:
1944 - US House of Representatives (Ind.) (Prohibition Party) - defeated

Other occupations: maintenance man in a lathe factory, farmer, minister (Church of God)

Buried: Mount Pleasant Cemetery (South Bend, Ind.)

Notes:
Moved to Indiana ca. 1913.

Symon Gould

Holdridge and Gould

Symon Gould, May 19, 1894 (New York, NY) - November 24, 1963 (New York, NY)

VP candidate for American Vegetarian Party (aka Vegetarian Party) (1948, 1952, 1956)

Running mate with nominee (1948): John Maxwell (1863-1960)
Running mate with nominee (1952): Daniel J. Murphy (1887-1965)
Running mate with nominee (1956): Herbert M. Shelton (1895-1985)

Popular vote (1948): 68 (0.00%)
Popular vote (1952): 0 (0.00%)
Popular vote (1956): 0 (0.00%)

Electoral vote (1948, 1952, 1956): 0/531

The campaign (1948):

Attempting to build on the perceived momentum of America seeing the advantages of a meatless diet as a result of WWII food rationing, vegetarian activist Symon Gould was one of the main forces behind the creation of the American Vegetarian Party in 1947 during the sessions of a American Naturopathic Association meeting. The aims of the Party appeared to be simply for promotional purposes rather than political, since they apparently never attained ballot status in any state during the five presidential elections they existed.

85-year old John Maxwell, who ran a vegetarian restaurant in Chicago, was selected as the Presidential nominee. Along with Peter Cooper, standard-bearer of the Greenback Party in 1876, this age is something of a record for Presidential candidates (Lorenzo Stephen Coffin was also 85 when he was the running mate for the United Christian Party in 1908). One legal problem regarding Maxwell-- he was born in England evidently as a British subject-- making him ineligible to hold the Presidential office. Gould selected himself, or so the story goes, as the running mate.

Wikipedia cites Daniel J. Murphy as the 1948 running mate but all other evidence points to Gould.

Maxwell said he had "tasted no meat for 45 years" and also ran against alcohol, tobacco, and pharmaceutical medicine. Other issues included supporting government ownership of all natural resources, advocating a law prohibiting farmers from spending more than 20% of their labor on raising meat, and a pension of $100 for everyone over the age of 65.

According to Gould, Maxwell "wanted to accomplish something during the campaign" and that was his thinking behind marrying a woman 40 years younger than himself as the election season unfolded.

Gould predicted 5 million votes for the Party: "Three million of these would be the American vegetarians and the remainder of the votes would come from prohibitionist, anti-vivisectionists and anti-cigarette smoking groups. We will also attract other groups of people of similar high moral principle."

During the campaign Gould became embroiled in a public feud with the writer George Bernard Shaw regarding some esoteric differences in vegetarianism.

The campaign (1952):

The original 1952 ticket was headed by frequent party-jumper Herbert C. Holdridge with Gould once again being in the VP slot.

Holdridge, who claimed he had been a vegetarian since 1947, was the only American general who retired during the Second World War. In 1944 he appeared to be in support of the Socialist Party of America but by 1948 the retired general was attempting to gain the Democratic Party nomination for President. By 1952 he was covering all bets-- He was the Presidential nominee of the American Rally for Peace, Abundance and the Constitution (aka the American Rally Party), and he was making moves to be the Democratic Party nominee again, plus he was the nominee of the American Vegetarian Party.

For reasons that are unclear, Holdridge either withdrew or was forced off the ticket in late September/early October, 1952. Holdridge's campaign manager Burr McCloskey claimed the retired general quit because the vegetarians were "making Holdridge out to look as crackpot as they are." In another news source McCloskey said Holdridge was "asked" to resign from the ticket as the AVP had sharp differences of opinion over issues with the parallel American Rally Party campaign and could not endorse those activities or issues. As an aside, McCloskey would later be the VP nominee for the Pioneer Party in 1956.

The retired general continued to campaign, without a running mate, on the American Rally Party and quit that party shortly after Election Day.

At this point with only a month left in the campaign, Daniel J. Murphy was selected as the new substitute Presidential nominee for the American Vegetarian Party. Murphy had lost his left arm and leg decades earlier in an accident as a railroad employee and was now running an artificial limb shop in San Francisco. 

The campaign (1956):

The AVP nominated Herbert M. Shelton for President with Gould being the Party's VP choice for the third election in a row.

Shelton was a naturopath and pacifist. He was arrested, convicted, and jailed many times in his life, once for anti-draft activity during WWI, but most of his legal woes were due to charges of quackery, practicing medicine without a license, and twice for negligent homicide in the course of his "treatments" (1942 and 1978). Apparently Shelton himself didn't take his nomination very seriously.

The AVP platform promoted ideas that were obscure in 1956 but are more widely discussed today such as: "Vegetarianism is synonymous with universal brotherhood and universal peace. Its fundamental principle of 'anti-killing' if generally adopted would banish wars. In furtherance of this ideal, the American Vegetarian Party is unconditionally opposed to the slaughter of animals for sustenance, sport, or style. We contend that these barbaric and uncivilized practices brutalize men and generate in them a blood-lust that ultitmately seems to find an outlet in annihilating wars."

Election history:
1960 - US President (American Vegetarian Party) - defeated
1962 - US Senate (NY) (American Vegetarian Party) - defeated
1964 - US President (American Vegetarian Party) - died before election

Other occupations: editor, Secretary of the Vegetarian Society of New York, founder of the International Film Arts Guild in 1930, founder of American Library Service in 1922,

Buried: ?

Notes:
The winner of the 1962 Senate election was Republican Jacob Javits, a former classmate of Gould's--
 Also in that Senate race was Stephen Emery who also the Socialist Labor VP nominee in 1948 and  1952.
Alleged editor of the American print of the silent film Nosferatu.
Went on a three-week fast on an annual basis.
Jewish by birth, became pro-Israel during a 1949 visit, urging the UK to support US efforts there.
Died of cancer at age 70 two days after President Kennedy was assassinated.                                          In the Liz Taylor/Richard Burton film The Comedians (1967), the actor Paul Ford portrays "Mr. Smith," who was the fictional 1948 Vegetarian Party nominee for President.

 

Harry Adolph Romer

Harry Adolph Romer, December 9, 1895 (Ohio) - March 24, 1953 (St. Henry, Ohio)

VP candidate for America First Party (1944)
VP candidate for Christian Nationalist Party (1948)

Running mate with nominee (1944, 1948): Gerald L. K. Smith (1898-1976)

Popular vote (1944): 1780 (0.00%)
Popular vote (1948): 42 (0.00%)

Electoral vote (1944, 1948): 0/531

The campaign (1944):

Gerald L.K. Smith-- Disciples of Christ minister, isolationist, fascist sympathizer, anti-Semite, white supremacist, and Holocaust denier-- split from the Republicans and formed his America First Party in 1944. He appropriated the name of the America First Committee (who denied any connection with Smith).

Charles Lindbergh was Smith's first choice as a the Presidential nominee, but as that failed to materialize Smith took the helm instead. Ultraconservative Ohio Gov. John Bricker was chosen as the running mate. Trouble was, Bricker was already the Republican vice-presidential nominee, and he did not take kindly to being associated with the America First Party. Here are some of the Governor's reactions:

"I know nothing about it. I know no one connected with it. I shall not permit my name to be used in any such connection. I am a candidate for vice-president on the Republican ticket only."

"The act of Smith, in associating my name with his on a spurious ticket without any notice of any kind whatsoever, is the cheapest of demagoguery. I denounce it and shall not have my name used in any such connection."

"I hate demagoguery, religious intolerance and racial prejudice. They can destroy our free government, as they have destroyed liberty around the world. I shall fight them as long as I am in public office or as long as I live."

"The right of religious worship according to one’s own conscience is protected to every American citizen in the bill of rights. The men and women of our armed forces are fighting and dying to preserve that precious right. We must preserve it here at home." 

Bricker's replacement on the ticket was found in the person of Harry A. Romer, based in St. Henry, Ohio and one of Father Coughlin's associates and organizers.

Some selections from Romer's acceptance speech:
-We cannot entrust the making of a lasting peace to a controlled press and radio, present day educators and unchristian politicians. We must entrust the making of a lasting peace to a religious teaching of all Christian denominations, world minded statesmen, and Christian minded politicians. Our party believes in a Christian educational system for our public schools controlled by local school boards.

-In closing I want to say it and want to say it with pride. I was an ardent follower of Father Charles E. Coughlin. He has been and still is the greatest educator we have in the United States of America, and I hope we will soon hear his educational voice again over our National airways. I further hope he will sit in at our peace conference because it's men like him, men like the late Huey P. Long and our present day statesmen such as Nye, Wheeler, Reynolds, LaFollette, O'Daniels, Hoffman, Langer, Ford, Lindbergh, Fish, O'Connor, Holt, Lemke, Smith and others like them who are able to write a true and lasting peace.

In September Smith endorsed the Republican Dewey/Bricker ticket, saying by doing so he was simply laying the groundwork for an America First Party victory in 1948. The reasoning was not made clear.

On the ballot in two states: Michigan (0.06%) and Texas (0.02%) with a total of 1515 votes. Their remaining 200+ votes nationwide were write-ins. Smith claimed they were merely using Michigan as a "test" run.

The campaign (1948):

With a new party name-- the Christian Nationalist Party-- Smith made another attempt for the presidency. Romer was once again the running mate.

The platform opposed communism and "zionism." It supported segregation. It also called for closing the American borders to immigrants who were Jewish or non-white.

Just how far to the Populist Right on the racist and bigot chart this campaign had reached can be revealed by none other than pro-segregation South Carolina Gov. Strom Thurmond, the 1948 Dixiecrat nominee for President. When Smith and company attempted to form a political bridge with the Dixiecrats, Thurmond said, "We do not invite and do not need the support of Gerald L.K. Smith or any other rabble-rousers who use race prejudice and class hatred to inflame the emotions of the people." Yes, that's from Strom Thurmond.

The Smith/Romer ticket appears not to have been included in any ballots in spite of their efforts, so their result of a whopping 42 votes nationwide must have been write-ins. Supporters said 1952 would be their victorious year.

Election history: none.

Other occupations: machinist, merchant, funeral director, President of United Farmers of America, local American Legion commander and chaplain

Buried: Saint Henry Church Cemetery (Saint Henry, Ohio)

Notes:
Catholic.
Was an active Republican.
Felt that all Communists should be shot.