Third Party Watch

It is being reported that Former Senator Eugene McCarthy has died at the age of 89. McCarthy served 2 terms in the United States Senate as a Democrat and campaigned for the Democratic Presidential nomination on three occassions (1968, 1972, 1992).

In addition, McCarthy was an independent candidate for President in 1976 and again in 1988.

In his 1976 campaign, McCarthy placed third nationally with 740,460 votes or a little less than 1% of the popular vote. His best showing was in the state of Oregon where he captured roughly 4% and is frequently credited/blamed with costing Jimmy Carter a victory in that state. (Ford’s margin of victory was less than 2,000 votes and McCarthy polled more than 40,000 there.)

In 1988, McCarthy was the nominee of the Consumer Party in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, the Minnesota Progressive Party, and appeared on the ballot in Michigan as an independent. He received write-in support from several other states. His 30,905 votes placed him 6th nationally behind Bush, Dukakis, Ron Paul, Lenora Fulani, and David Duke.

This entry was posted by David Franke on Saturday, December 10th, 2005 at 5:37 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.