This blog post is being written on April 24, 2016. Exactly thirty-six years ago, on April 24, 1980, John B. Anderson, who had been seeking the Republican presidential nomination, declared that he was giving up the race for the Republican nomination and would instead run in the general election as an independent candidate. Anderson was very brave to do that, but his courage paid off.
He had already missed the petition deadline in five states: Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, New Mexico, and Ohio. Nevertheless, he circulated petitions in those states, along with the other states where he hadn’t missed the deadline. In July and August 1980 he won his lawsuits against the deadlines in those five states.
He also faced the problem that he hadn’t found a vice-presidential running mate. So he used a stand-in, Milton Eisenhower, who was 90 years old and was deceased President Eisenhower’s older brother. Anderson finally found his actual running mate on August 27, 1980, former Wisconsin Governor Patrick Lucey. By then petitions in almost all states had already been circulated with Eisenhower’s name on them. But Anderson’s attorneys persuaded almost all states to allow Eisenhower to withdraw and to have Lucey be replaced. Anderson sued three states that wouldn’t permit this (Florida, Indiana, and Pennsylvania) and won all those lawsuits.
Anderson had run in twenty Republican presidential primaries in 1980, and he faced charges that he was ineligible to get on the November ballot as an independent because he was a “sore loser”. But states almost entirely put him on the ballot, without any need for a lawsuit, because Anderson’s attorneys successfully argued that sore loser laws can’t apply to presidential primaries, because presidential primaries don’t nominate presidential candidates; instead they are elections for delegate to national conventions.
Anderson is still living. He is age 94 and is on the board of Fairvote, which works for proportional representation and instant-runoff voting.
Thank you, Richard. A wonderful, positive, and timely story, especially as it relates to the Green Party nomination. Green Party leader, Dr. Jill Stein(G), this week proposed Bernie Sanders join the Green Party presidential ticket in 2016.
“For me personally, everything is on the table.” Stein (G) says.
Stein’s Green Party proposal came on a podcast of Acronym TV. You (Ballot Access News) reported yesterday on this Green Party development. While writing Green Party Green TV scripts today, this very question arose. Could Bernie Sanders be on the Green Party presidential ticket, either as president or vice president?
It appears as you report, John Anderson resolved that question in the courts 36 years ago.
Thank you for the story, and your continued extraordinary work, and reporting.
Watch Green Party Green TV for the latest on Independent Green Party/Green Party candidates for local, state, federal, and presidential office.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPBJ3ktJ_gQ
Thank you, Richard, for this wonderful tribute to the very honorable John B. Anderson, a great statesman and political reformer.
You left out John Anderson got on the ballot in many states because of lawsuits filed four years earlier by Eugene McCarthy in his 1976 Indy run. He deserves some of the credit also.
Michael, your are absolutely right. When Eugene McCarthy announced in December 1974 that he would be an independent presidential candidate in 1976, he was up against the fact that 12 states had no procedure for an independent presidential candidate to get on the ballot; instead such a candidate was forced to either get the nomination of an already-existing party, or else create a new party. McCarthy sued most of those states and won all those lawsuits.
McCarthy, in turn, owned a lot to George Wallace, who won a ruling in 1968 that states must permit new parties to get on the ballot. Before then, there was no protection in the US Constitution for new parties or independent candidates to get on the ballot.
How would or did the candidates get around those sore loser laws like the ones in Michigan and Ohio?
Every election continues to be NEW – in 1968, 1972, 1976 and even in 2016.
A mere 42 years of MORON lawyers and worse MORON judges — esp. the SCOTUS robot party hacks — too EVIL and/or too STUPID to detect the prior sentence.
In 1980 Michigan interpreted its sore loser law not to apply to minor party presidential candidates. That is one reason why it was so outrageous for Michigan to say in 2012 that the sore loser law does apply to minor party presidential candidates. John Anderson was a minor party presidential nominee in Michigan in 1980. He was the nominee of the Anderson Coalition Party.
Even to this day, Michigan does not bar sore losers who run as independent presidential candidates.
Although John Anderson ran in 20 Republican presidential primaries in 1980, he did not run in the Ohio presidential primary, which was in June. Anderson had filed for the Ohio primary but he withdrew from the ballot.
John B. Anderson is a remarkable man. I had the privilege of getting to know him when I was director of academic resources at Nova Southeastern University’s Shepard Broad Law Center, where he was — until recently — a professor. (He is now professor emeritus.) His scholarly work on election law and other issues is well worth reading. He is also an extremely nice person whom everyone at school really loved. (And at a law school, that’s saying an awful lot!) He has a really good sense of humor. I sat in on a couple of his classes, and I just wish someone had taped more of his lectures.
Thank you, Michael and Richard, for mentioning and giving credit to the late, great, Eugene J. McCarthy for his hard work and persistence in political reform.