Other U.S. Losers, Lovable and Not

[Editor's note: The Tyee will run follow-ups to the U.S. election every day this week.]

U.S. presidential elections attract an assortment of kooks and cranks, not all of them named Bush, Kerry or Nader.

While George W. Bush got 59.7 million votes and John Kerry took 56.3 million, they were trailed by dozens of lesser politicians. Many of those could only dream of Ralph Nader’s third-place finish with about 400,000 votes.

Just getting his name on the ballot was a victory for Nader, who qualified in 41 states, including six as a write-in candidate. His listed affiliations included the Independence Party, the Alaska Populist Party, and The Better Life.

Voters also had the chance to select Greens and Libertarians and Constitutionalists and Socialist Workers and even Prohibitionists, the oldest Third Party in the United States.

Teetotaler vote dries up

The Democratic symbol is a donkey (or an ass if you’re Republican), while the Republican’s is an elephant. The Prohibition party, which is opposed to the manufacture and sale of booze, has the camel. Since teetotalers are said to be dry, the party has also unfurled the umbrella as a symbol in the past.

Party headquarters are in the basement of the Denver home of presidential candidate Earl Dodge. The campaign warchest, such as it is, was financed by the sale of old temperance buttons with slogans such as: “Tremble, king alcohol” and “The liquor traffic must die.” (Wonder which tested better with focus groups.)

Dodge got just 137 votes in Colorado, a sobering total for a party whose high-water mark came in 1892 with 270,000 votes, about 2.2 per cent. No champagne corks popped at headquarters on Tuesday, but they wouldn’t have in any case. Hic, hic, hooray.

The anti-Osmond

In Utah, another state known for abstinence, the ballot included Charles Jay, a publicist who ran under the label of Personal Choice, which sounds like not a bad name for a personal hygiene product. The former radio host and boxing promoter ran on a platform promoting gambling, not exactly a winning proposition in a state populated by Mormons. You’d think maybe he should abandon the state with the Osmond Family for the state next door with Sin City.

Jay displays a flair for promotion. To bolster his ticket’s appeal, he selected as his running mate Marilyn Chambers, a retired adult film star. Her extensive body of cinematic work perhaps helped convince 880 Utahns to vote for Jay.

With so many axes to grind and soapboxes to climb, it can be difficult for a fringe candidate to attract attention from reporters. One solution is to ask someone famous to groom your pet cause. The Peace and Freedom Party nominated a celebrity — a celebrity prisoner (and, no, it wasn’t Martha Stewart). The case of aboriginal activist Leonard Peltier, serving a life sentence for the killing of two FBI agents at Wounded Knee, S.D., is a cause celebre, as supporters believe Peltier to be a political prisoner doing time on trumped-up charges. Incarceration in Leavenworth certainly crimped on Peltier’s time on the hustings.

He got 21,616 votes on the California ballot last week, a far cry from the more than 900,000 garnered by imprisoned Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs in 1920. Debs, a railway fireman and union organizer, campaigned from his jail cell in a federal prison in Atlanta after being convicted of sedition for an anti-war speech. A famous button from that campaign depicted Debs with the eloquent statement: “For President, Convict No. 9653.”

A Good try

Since 1976, voters in Nevada have had the opportunity of selecting a “None of these candidates” option on presidential and statewide ballots. Three thousand, six hundred and forty-six voters thought “these guys stink,” a snub that must really have smarted for the three candidates who got even fewer votes.

Several states also provide for write-in ballots, although most do not bother to count unregistered names. (Goofy and Mickey Mouse are popular write-in choices.) Among those campaigning but not registering was a 44-year-old character who calls himself His Royal Majesty Caesar St. Augustine de Buonaparte, Emperor. (His name brings to mind Monty Python’s Silly Party candidate, Tarquin Fintimlinbinwhinbimlim Bus Stop F'tang F'tang Ole Biscuit-Barrel.) Buonaparte, of Malibu, Calif., is the self-described president of the United States of Turtle Island. The Good Party candidate claims to have predicted the events of Sept. 11 several years earlier.   Despite his many titular honours, the itinerant politician filed some paperwork earlier this year for a run at the White House.

Ohio’s darkest horse

One of six registered write-in candidates in Ohio was Tom Zych of Cleveland Heights, a 46-year-old lawyer whose slogan was a conversation stopping: “What, you’ve got a better idea?” His Rhinoceros-inspired platform calls for mandatory double-coupon Thursdays to stimulate the economy and for the tourist trap of Branson, Mo., to be appropriated and turned into landfill. As a civil rights measure, Zych wants alphabetical order abolished, followed by “a program of affirmative action to redress the centuries of unspeakable harm its victims have suffered.”

Zych (pronounced zitch) wore a campaign button reading, “Switch to Zych. He’s someone else.” He got five write-in votes in Ohio, not quite enough to snare Ohio’s coveted 20 electoral college votes. The state’s telephone listings include 52 Zyches, so he’s going to have to reach out in 2008 to build a coalition broad enough to win a majority of his kinfolk.

Victoria reporter Tom Hawthorn is a regular Tyee contributor who once interviewed Harold Stassen.