The John-Donkey was created in 1848 in time for the presidential election of that year when Zachary Taylor beat two humans, a former president Martin Van Buren (1837-1841) and Lewis Cass. In 1848 you might not have expected to read an obituary in the NYT that was a well-worded, left-handed backhand for George Foster when he passed away. But someone was up to it when they described Mr Foster as a "remarkable example of a brilliant talent unguided by moral purpose or a decent regard for the conventions and proprieties of civilized society." Who needs friends?
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One might not think that someone who literally starts a religion, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints— Mormons—would be someone who would want to run for president. But Joseph Smith, credited with finding the golden plates in western New York did try and run for president in the 1844 election and qualifies for inclusion in Mark Stein's book.
Even a cursory glance back at history reveals that there can be little new under the sun. Think it's only because there's television, social media and money that creates so many candidates for the Oval Office? No, it's been going on for a long time.
There were numerous candidates vying for the nomination for president in 1844. Henry Clay for the Whig party was a given, but the Democrats were sporting former president Martin Van Buren, Lewis Cass, John C. Calhoun and James Buchanan.
Smith saw his chance to walk into the divided party after asking for, and not getting, commitments of protection from the candidates for the Mormon communities that were facing violence from non-Mormons. Mormons were not popular, and they were gaining strength in numbers. People were afraid they would start to become the majority. Non-Mormons did not like polygamy.
The Democrats eventually agreed to put James K. Polk up for president on the proviso he not run again. He won, and didn't run again. Think Joe Biden's pledge not to seek a second term if elected. Whew!
Joseph Smith was running, believe it or not, on a platform of religious freedom. However he kept getting arrested and thrown in jail, where he met death when a mob stormed the jail and killed him.
To show you how much, and for how long, Mormons were looked askance upon, consider the affidavit my grandfather signed in 1926 for his application for citizenship. Consider what he had to swear to:
"...it is my bona fide intention to renounce forever all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, and particularly to (filled in) The Present Government of Greece of whom I am now a subject...I arrived at the port of New York...
"I am not an anarchist; I am not a polygamist nor a believer in the practice of polygamy; and it is my intention in good faith to become a citizen of the United States of America and to permanently reside therein: SO HELP ME GOD."
The Mormon practice of polygamy was outlawed in 1890 in exchange for Utah being recognized as a state. Despite this, it obviously was still worried about in 1926.
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There are a few more candidates in this Part 1, Fringe Candidates in the Eighteenth to Early Twentieth Century, but to me they just don't grab my attention as being "fringe" in themselves. We do have a woman, Victoria Woodhull, in 1872, the first woman to run for president, despite not being able to vote herself. There is the first black candidate, George Edwin Taylor, in 1904, and an Anti-Masonic candidate, James B. Walker, in 1876 for the National Christian Association.
In Part 2, Mr. Stein takes us to those candidates he's lumped in Running onto the New Field of Radio and Television. Will Rogers and his Anti-Bunk party is the first one up.
As a kid I was interested enough in the life of Will Rogers that I bought a young adult biography of him, written by Shannon Garst. I suspect the book is somewhere.
You might define Will Rogers as an early Bob Hope, a humorist who skewered politicians and the government. He appeared in vaudeville shows and was on the radio, as well as writing a syndicated column. Rogers pretty much predicted the celebrity/comedian who would announce campaigns for the presidency. Following Rogers would be Gracie Allen, Pat Paulsen, Roseanne Barr and Steve Colbert. Tongues were being firmly planted in cheeks.
There was a Will Rogers Follies revue that was later re-staged as a Broadway musical that featured Marla Maples in the chorus, who soon became Donald Trump's second wife and is mother to Tiffany Trump. So, in a way, Donald Trump is connected to a man who ran on the Anti-Bunk party. There is irony everywhere.
As famous as Will Rogers was on radio, it apparently was Life magazine that propelled his candidacy in 1928, when Al Smith was running against Herbert Hoover.
I never knew Life started as a satiric magazine in 1883, and was somewhat like England's Punch magazine. Life magazine as most of us of a certain age remember it, was a photojournalism magazine, started in 1936 when Henry Luce bought the name and re-directed the magazine to become one of the most popular magazines of all time. There wasn't a home or a waiting room that didn't sport a copy.
Al Smith was a Catholic, and there was considerable push back on having a Catholic running for president. There were those who believed he would take directions from the pope and that Rome would rule Washington. This sentiment was still around in 1960 when John F. Kennedy ran for president, but the strength of the worry was considerably weaker. Kennedy of course was elected; Smith was not.
Will Rogers announced a platform that was Anti-Religion. He also appealed to all the dry tipplers in the country who couldn't legally buy liquor. "Wine for the rich, beer for the poor, and moonshine for the Prohibitionist."
Rogers presented an "aw chucks" cowboy demeanor when he appeared in chaps, western hat, and bandanna, twirling a lariat as he fed the audience his one-liners that went:
- If elected, he would be the first president in 62 years who was funny intentionally.
- About all I can say for the United States Senate is that it opens with a prayer, and closes with an investigation.
- It's a good thing we don't get all the government we pay for.
The poet Ogden Nash would write:
With gum and grin and lariat,
He entertained the proletariat.
This was a take on what Rogers said of himself:
I worked with gum and grin and lariat
To entertain the proletariat,
And with my Oklahomey wit
I brightened up the earth a bit.
Rogers was a big fan of the fast-growing aviation industry. It would cause his death when he rode in a plane with Wiley Post, an aviator, that disappeared in Alaska in 1935.
His son, Will Rogers Jr. like his father, appeared in movies, playing his father in the The Story of Will Rogers. He served nearly a full term in Congress while being on active duty during WW II. Painfully, he committed suicide at 81.
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Even before Mr. Stein put together his book Presidential Fringe I was in love with Gracie Allen; even before learning through a WSJ column by Cynthia Crossen umpteen years ago that Gracie formed The Surprise Party and "ran" again FDR in 1940.
Gracie has been an endearing favorite of mine ever since I used to watch her and George at the end of their TV show in the '50s and '60s go on a dizzying path of Gracie's relatives. I don't think even the best genealogist could have graphed how one of Gracie's relatives was related to another one of her relatives based on Gracie's description.
After reading the WSJ book review of Mr. Stein's book Presidential Fringe, I once again wrote about Gracie Allen's run for the higher office. And now that I've bought the book and have come across her chapter she remains my favorite fringe candidate.
She had the best slogans. She had the best name for her party: who doesn't like a surprise party? During her 34 whistle stopovers on the train ride from Los Angeles, California to Omaha, where she would be nominated, Gracie would ask the best rhetorical questions: "Anybody knows that a woman is much better than a man when it comes to introducing bills into the house."
The Union Pacific railroad after creating a celebration of the completion of the transcontinental railroad got the idea to put Gracie and George on a train that would make its way on their right-of-way to Nebraska.
Mr. Stein tells us—tongue in cheek I take it—that the "Golden Spike" celebration took place in Middleofnowhere, Utah. Is there really is a place named Middleofnowhere?
Well, not quite. The ever-used Google search reveals there is a place that gets designated as the "middleofnowhere" by a criteria that finds a place in the United States that has people, but is so sufficiently removed from any towns nearby that it is the Middleofnowhere. It's sort of like the place that is declared to be the geographic middle of the continental United States.
Right now the search tells us Glasgow, Montana fills in the blanks of where the middle of all the nowheres is. It may be where I get my next haircut during the coronavirus lockdown.
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Another fringe candidate in Part 2 is Homer Tomlinson, a Bishop from the Church of God, Jamaica, Queens. Homer was apparently a perennial candidate for president starting in 1952, and continuing to 1968.
I'm a bit surprised I never heard of Tomlinson. I grew up in Flushing, New York and was working full-time by 1968. And I've always read a daily newspaper. Often several.
I wasn't born in 1940 when at the New York World's Fair he performed a "parachute" wedding on a couple from the Bronx. As much as you might think the three jumped out of a plane and exchanged vows while plummeting to earth and timing the rip cord pull, the parachute was at the edge of the parachute jump at the Fair.
The three sat in parachutes, suspended in mid-air, witnessed by two other people who sat in another parachute. The ceremony was witnessed by 3,000 spectators. The groom certainly swept the bride off her feet.
Such was Mr. Tomlinson, a public relations man who worked in advertising in the 1920s, creating attention grabbing events. And nothing was more attention grabbing than when he sat in a beach chair holding a globe and wearing a crown when he announced he wanted he be "King of the World."
Obviously Mr. Tomlinson didn't make it onto a ballot, which is why I probably never heard of him. Interesting to note that in the 1952 presidential campaign there were the two major party candidates, General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson, and 17 other candidates for the office. What is it about the number seventeen? There were 17 candidates for the Republican nomination in 2016.
I don't remember the exact year—it was wasn't a presidential year—but the family flower shop at 206 Third Avenue became a polling place in for the general election. For years and years, the rival florist Sakas brothers at Third Avenue and 21st Street was the district polling place.
I don't know how my father managed to wrestle the venue away from Sakas Brothers, but he did for one year. I never really knew my father's political affiliation. My guess was that he was a Republican, liking Ike, since my father was a WW II vet. That I knew, my father never voted, probably wanting to stay clear of jury duty. In those days the jury pools were selected from registered voters. So, if you never registers, and certainly didn't vote, you couldn't be called for jury duty. Nowadays the jury pools are selected from DMV records, voter records and probably census records.
Given that, I suspect he was friendly with Vincent Albano from the East Side Republican club on Second Avenue, near where he grew up. Vincent Albano was a district leader and close protégé of Governor Nelson Rockefeller. We did the flowers for an Albano daughter. It was probably this influence that turned the store into a polling place.
I was in high school at the time, and of course in that era everyone got Election Day off. I hung out in the store with my great-uncle Pete and watched the traffic come in and vote.
It never seemed busy, and there was never a line. There was one voting booth. I think there was a ballot box for paper ballots for anyone who was selecting what then would be a candidate from other than the Republican, Democrat, or Liberal lines. Typically, these were the candidates for the Socialist Party, or even the Communist Party.
In high school we made fun of these fringe candidates by pretending to be them and announcing to our friends that we were so-and-so and were running for office.
These parties had their perennial candidates. I loved seeing the names of these parties on the ballot. Gus Hall was a four-time candidate for president for the Socialist Party.
At the time I didn't know it, but Alger Hiss lived in the building where the flower shop was. The residential part of the building was 157 East 18th Street. My father would recognize Hiss when he walked by. Hiss was the accused Communist spy in the famous Alger Hiss-Whittaker Chambers trail. Of course Hiss was not the name on the bell. I don't know what name he was using.
I do know the building has gone co-op and certainly someone is perhaps unwittingly living in Alger Hiss's old apartment.
My father wasn't in the shop the day it became a polling place. I've often wondered if Hiss came in and voted for a Socialist/Communist candidate. He probably didn't vote. When Hiss passed away in 1996, it was noted that he lived in the area and that he had become a stationery salesman.
My father thought getting to be the polling place would raise the shop's profile in the neighborhood, despite the fact the business had been at its location for probably 30 years by then, and went back even further when it was a block away and served as the cover for Pete's Tavern on Irving Place and 18th Street during Prohibition. The upshot was we didn't make a single sale that day, so in effect it killed business, at least for Election Day.
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As we go through the book chapter by chapter, Mr. Stein makes it clear who is a "fringe" candidate and who might be a Third Part candidate. There is a vast difference.
Ralph Nader of the Green Part would be a Third Party Candidate. Ross Perot, who ran as an independent in 1992 and ran as a member of the Reform Party in 1996, was not a fringe candidate. Perot's first run in 1992 was the most visible, as his presence at the debates and use of graphs is now the stuff of legend.
The chronological order of the book leaves us with the impression that it's not just the Internet and social media that creates a fringe candidate. They've been plying for votes for centuries.
But as we get to the last section, Part 4: Clowns and Quixotes Stampede the Internet and Cable TV, this is where the real fun begins, as we are reminded of, or hear of of those for the first time, those who might have lead esteemed positions in academia, but who for some reason ran as a "time traveler," telling the electorate that he knows he already won. (Jesus, I could use this guy tat the track. The Pick Six would be my daily hit.)
Andrew Basiago ran on what would charitably be called an Interplanetary platform, in as much as he claimed to have already commuted between Earth and Mars. He was a Time Travel candidate claiming that he, Barack Obama and Bill Richardson has participated in the CIA's Mars visitation program. How in 2008 and 2012 Barack Obama failed to mention this to any of us strikes me as a major résumé omission. He lied to the American public by the sin of omission.
I'm always interested in seeing if any of the wing nuts mentioned in Mr. Stein book got a tribute obituary treatment on their demise. Mr. Basiago is still with us, and has registered to run in 2020, just in case you're interested in his platform.
I looked up Homer Tomlinson, correctly figuring he's now no longer with us, at least in an earthy fashion, When he passed away in 1968 it wasn't the fashion to recognize those who lived an eccentric life. Therefore, I found no obituary from a major publication on Mr. Tomlinson. In death, he remained out there on the fringe.
Louis Abolafia, the World Love Party candidate in 1968, who ran nearly naked with a hat strategically placed over his groin—"What Have I Got to Hide?"—passed away in 2005. He did receive some newspaper mention on his passing due to a drug overdose in 2005.
The Naked Cowboy, Robert Burck, is still with us. He wasn't really naked, but he did ply a median pedestrian strip in Times Square wearing only Speedo briefs and strumming a guitar. I think he made an appearance at Trump Tower when Donald Trump was running in 2016.
One of my favorite pictures that was in my daughter Susan's bedroom was when she and her friend Donna posed with the Naked Cowboy, each facing the camera and he, displaying his best side, his rear end with the words NAKED COWBOY. Despite the coronavirus pandemic and New York City being a bit of a ghost town, I am heartened to read that Mr. Burck is fully committed to still appearing in Times Square.
Mr. Stein's book has sharpened my senses for looking out who might emerge from the fringes in 2020 and tell us how they can make things better, if only they are elected.
How much worse can things be?
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
Gracie has been an endearing favorite of mine ever since I used to watch her and George at the end of their TV show in the '50s and '60s go on a dizzying path of Gracie's relatives. I don't think even the best genealogist could have graphed how one of Gracie's relatives was related to another one of her relatives based on Gracie's description.
After reading the WSJ book review of Mr. Stein's book Presidential Fringe, I once again wrote about Gracie Allen's run for the higher office. And now that I've bought the book and have come across her chapter she remains my favorite fringe candidate.
She had the best slogans. She had the best name for her party: who doesn't like a surprise party? During her 34 whistle stopovers on the train ride from Los Angeles, California to Omaha, where she would be nominated, Gracie would ask the best rhetorical questions: "Anybody knows that a woman is much better than a man when it comes to introducing bills into the house."
The Union Pacific railroad after creating a celebration of the completion of the transcontinental railroad got the idea to put Gracie and George on a train that would make its way on their right-of-way to Nebraska.
Mr. Stein tells us—tongue in cheek I take it—that the "Golden Spike" celebration took place in Middleofnowhere, Utah. Is there really is a place named Middleofnowhere?
Well, not quite. The ever-used Google search reveals there is a place that gets designated as the "middleofnowhere" by a criteria that finds a place in the United States that has people, but is so sufficiently removed from any towns nearby that it is the Middleofnowhere. It's sort of like the place that is declared to be the geographic middle of the continental United States.
Right now the search tells us Glasgow, Montana fills in the blanks of where the middle of all the nowheres is. It may be where I get my next haircut during the coronavirus lockdown.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm a bit surprised I never heard of Tomlinson. I grew up in Flushing, New York and was working full-time by 1968. And I've always read a daily newspaper. Often several.
I wasn't born in 1940 when at the New York World's Fair he performed a "parachute" wedding on a couple from the Bronx. As much as you might think the three jumped out of a plane and exchanged vows while plummeting to earth and timing the rip cord pull, the parachute was at the edge of the parachute jump at the Fair.
The three sat in parachutes, suspended in mid-air, witnessed by two other people who sat in another parachute. The ceremony was witnessed by 3,000 spectators. The groom certainly swept the bride off her feet.
Such was Mr. Tomlinson, a public relations man who worked in advertising in the 1920s, creating attention grabbing events. And nothing was more attention grabbing than when he sat in a beach chair holding a globe and wearing a crown when he announced he wanted he be "King of the World."
Obviously Mr. Tomlinson didn't make it onto a ballot, which is why I probably never heard of him. Interesting to note that in the 1952 presidential campaign there were the two major party candidates, General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson, and 17 other candidates for the office. What is it about the number seventeen? There were 17 candidates for the Republican nomination in 2016.
I don't remember the exact year—it was wasn't a presidential year—but the family flower shop at 206 Third Avenue became a polling place in for the general election. For years and years, the rival florist Sakas brothers at Third Avenue and 21st Street was the district polling place.
I don't know how my father managed to wrestle the venue away from Sakas Brothers, but he did for one year. I never really knew my father's political affiliation. My guess was that he was a Republican, liking Ike, since my father was a WW II vet. That I knew, my father never voted, probably wanting to stay clear of jury duty. In those days the jury pools were selected from registered voters. So, if you never registers, and certainly didn't vote, you couldn't be called for jury duty. Nowadays the jury pools are selected from DMV records, voter records and probably census records.
Given that, I suspect he was friendly with Vincent Albano from the East Side Republican club on Second Avenue, near where he grew up. Vincent Albano was a district leader and close protégé of Governor Nelson Rockefeller. We did the flowers for an Albano daughter. It was probably this influence that turned the store into a polling place.
I was in high school at the time, and of course in that era everyone got Election Day off. I hung out in the store with my great-uncle Pete and watched the traffic come in and vote.
It never seemed busy, and there was never a line. There was one voting booth. I think there was a ballot box for paper ballots for anyone who was selecting what then would be a candidate from other than the Republican, Democrat, or Liberal lines. Typically, these were the candidates for the Socialist Party, or even the Communist Party.
In high school we made fun of these fringe candidates by pretending to be them and announcing to our friends that we were so-and-so and were running for office.
These parties had their perennial candidates. I loved seeing the names of these parties on the ballot. Gus Hall was a four-time candidate for president for the Socialist Party.
At the time I didn't know it, but Alger Hiss lived in the building where the flower shop was. The residential part of the building was 157 East 18th Street. My father would recognize Hiss when he walked by. Hiss was the accused Communist spy in the famous Alger Hiss-Whittaker Chambers trail. Of course Hiss was not the name on the bell. I don't know what name he was using.
I do know the building has gone co-op and certainly someone is perhaps unwittingly living in Alger Hiss's old apartment.
My father wasn't in the shop the day it became a polling place. I've often wondered if Hiss came in and voted for a Socialist/Communist candidate. He probably didn't vote. When Hiss passed away in 1996, it was noted that he lived in the area and that he had become a stationery salesman.
My father thought getting to be the polling place would raise the shop's profile in the neighborhood, despite the fact the business had been at its location for probably 30 years by then, and went back even further when it was a block away and served as the cover for Pete's Tavern on Irving Place and 18th Street during Prohibition. The upshot was we didn't make a single sale that day, so in effect it killed business, at least for Election Day.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As we go through the book chapter by chapter, Mr. Stein makes it clear who is a "fringe" candidate and who might be a Third Part candidate. There is a vast difference.
Ralph Nader of the Green Part would be a Third Party Candidate. Ross Perot, who ran as an independent in 1992 and ran as a member of the Reform Party in 1996, was not a fringe candidate. Perot's first run in 1992 was the most visible, as his presence at the debates and use of graphs is now the stuff of legend.
The chronological order of the book leaves us with the impression that it's not just the Internet and social media that creates a fringe candidate. They've been plying for votes for centuries.
But as we get to the last section, Part 4: Clowns and Quixotes Stampede the Internet and Cable TV, this is where the real fun begins, as we are reminded of, or hear of of those for the first time, those who might have lead esteemed positions in academia, but who for some reason ran as a "time traveler," telling the electorate that he knows he already won. (Jesus, I could use this guy tat the track. The Pick Six would be my daily hit.)
Andrew Basiago ran on what would charitably be called an Interplanetary platform, in as much as he claimed to have already commuted between Earth and Mars. He was a Time Travel candidate claiming that he, Barack Obama and Bill Richardson has participated in the CIA's Mars visitation program. How in 2008 and 2012 Barack Obama failed to mention this to any of us strikes me as a major résumé omission. He lied to the American public by the sin of omission.
I'm always interested in seeing if any of the wing nuts mentioned in Mr. Stein book got a tribute obituary treatment on their demise. Mr. Basiago is still with us, and has registered to run in 2020, just in case you're interested in his platform.
I looked up Homer Tomlinson, correctly figuring he's now no longer with us, at least in an earthy fashion, When he passed away in 1968 it wasn't the fashion to recognize those who lived an eccentric life. Therefore, I found no obituary from a major publication on Mr. Tomlinson. In death, he remained out there on the fringe.
Louis Abolafia, the World Love Party candidate in 1968, who ran nearly naked with a hat strategically placed over his groin—"What Have I Got to Hide?"—passed away in 2005. He did receive some newspaper mention on his passing due to a drug overdose in 2005.
The Naked Cowboy, Robert Burck, is still with us. He wasn't really naked, but he did ply a median pedestrian strip in Times Square wearing only Speedo briefs and strumming a guitar. I think he made an appearance at Trump Tower when Donald Trump was running in 2016.
One of my favorite pictures that was in my daughter Susan's bedroom was when she and her friend Donna posed with the Naked Cowboy, each facing the camera and he, displaying his best side, his rear end with the words NAKED COWBOY. Despite the coronavirus pandemic and New York City being a bit of a ghost town, I am heartened to read that Mr. Burck is fully committed to still appearing in Times Square.
How much worse can things be?
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
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