On May 10, former Wisconsin Governor Patrick J. Lucey died at the age of 96. See this New York Times obituary. He was John B. Anderson’s vice-presidential running mate in 1980, when the independent ticket got on the ballot in all 50 states and polled 6.61% of the vote.
Anderson set out on his independent candidacy on April 24, 1980, but could not find a suitable vice-presidential candidate until August 27, 1980. The vast majority of states put Lucey on the November ballot, even though Anderson’s ballot access petitions had circulated with stand-ins. The Anderson-Lucey ticket won lawsuits against Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Florida, to force state election officials to print Lucey’s name on the ballot instead of the stand-ins. Thanks to J. David Gillespie for the link.
For those interested, I have been looking over Dave Leip’s Atlas of US Presidential Elections. It seems that Anderson had no one listed as a running mate in Mississippi or Florida. A person by the name of Flint was listed in South Dakota and Milton Eisenhower was on the ballot in Texas.
I also saw that Anderson used the label “Anderson Coalition” in some states, “Anderson Alternative” in New Jersey, and “Anderson for President” in Rhode Island. I wonder if these became political parties after the election.
Anderson was also the nominee of the Independent Party of North Carolina, and of the Liberal Party in New York. The only states in which he was technically a minor party nominee and he got enough votes to keep the party on the ballot was Kentucky. Kentucky also let the party change its name from “Anderson Coalition” to “National Unity”, and Anderson decided to be on the Kentucky ballot in November 1984 as a nominee for president. But he did not campaign and he only got 1,479 votes.