In 1848 John Donkey, a cartoon character (unrelated to the donkey that later represented the Democratic Party), announced his candidacy for the presidency.1 That same year a delegate to the Whig Convention proposed Gen. Zachary Taylor’s horse, Old Whitey, for vice president—though the delegates ultimately opted, for better or for worse, to nominate Millard Fillmore as Taylor’s running mate. That gag is also as old as those gag candidates. A news item from the time commenting on the convention’s choice of Fillmore as Taylor’s running mate told readers that the Whigs “have placed on the ticket with him, instead of a horse, a most consummate ass.”2
The supporters of the fictional John Donkey for president and of Zachary Taylor’s horse for vice president were, in fact, serious in their ridiculousness. If nothing else (though there was something else), they saw the circus that elections were becoming a few decades after the nation’s birth. These fringe candidates who “campaigned” as clowns sought to call the nation’s attention to this unfunny danger by taking the stage with the political equivalent of a big red nose. The more that mainstream candidates behaved as political equivalents of P. T. Barnum, the patriarch of American hucksters, the more clown candidates honked their noses.
In the years that followed John Donkey, fringe candidates used slogans appropriate to the age in which they lived, such as the arguably age-inappropriate “Lick Bush,” “Live Forever,” “We Want Our Money Back,” and “Just a common, ordinary, simple savior of America’s destiny.” Similarly such candidates represented a variety of political parties—often self-created—including the Universal Flying Saucer Party, the Theocratic Party, the Surprise Party, or the Rent Is Too Damn High Party. As some of these slogans suggest, not all fringe candidates were running for laughs.
While some fringe candidate were famous, such as Mark Twain, Will Rogers, Gracie Allen, and Stephen Colbert, most were not—and a few were virtually anonymous, such as presidential contenders Naked Cowboy and Inmate No. 11593-051. But before dismissing as lunatics the likes of Naked Cowboy and Inmate No. 11593-051, or other pseudonymous candidates for the Oval Office such as Vermin Supreme or Deez Nuts, keep in mind another quixotic character—in fact the granddaddy of quixotic characters—Don Quixote himself. He too was considered a lunatic. And maybe he was. But in that difficult distinction resided a quest to bring justice to the world that has remained significant since that gallant knight errant absurdly embarked on his “impossible dream” in 1605.
In the case of fringe candidates, not all the dreams at which they tilted in battle have been impossible. In the 1872 election, for example, Victoria Woodhull’s presidential campaign elicited laughs because she was a woman. Not so the later presidential quests of Shirley Chisholm, Jill Stein, or Hillary Clinton. In addition to exerting an influence on political substance, fringe candidates have also impacted political style. Guess which presidential candidate said, “Everything’s going to be beautiful. Everything is so tough in this country. We’re going to make it so easy—to get health care, so easy to get jobs. It’s so simple! . . . The answers are all so simple and they’re right in front of us.” Congratulations if you said Donald Trump, for the closest-to-correct answer. Trump amazed Americans, supporters and opponents, by his ability to sense not just discontents but also yearnings that were largely overlooked by the other presidential aspirants in 2016. The quote, however, was a statement made in 1992 by fringe candidate for president Joan Jett Blakk. She was (and as of this writing still is) the professional persona of Terence Smith.3 Who, by the way, is African American. And who, as we shall see, was attuned to—and used performances and a good deal of humor to convey—the feelings of a multitude of groups that felt left out.
Before embarking it’s fair to ask: What constitutes a “fringe” candidate? It is not only that they ran under banners other than those of the major political parties but also that, whether or not they sought laughs, their candidacies were received by the general public with laughs. Few people today remember Verne L. Reynolds, who ran for president in 1928 as the nominee of the Socialist Labor Party (not to be confused with that era’s Socialist Party), and few people voted for him. But even fewer ridiculed him or his party’s rejection not only of Wall Street but also of the Soviet Union. Hence, though he was a peripheral candidate, in terms of this book’s use of the term, he would be a “third party” candidate, not a “fringe” candidate. While this distinction separates “fringe” candidates from “third party” candidates, it remains subjective, as will be seen in several of the candidates included in this book.
Which, in turn, raises a final question: Who’s in and who’s not in this book? There have been countless fringe candidates in this nation—and not just recently. In 1872, for example, there were at least five fringe candidates for president in addition to the nonfringe nominees of the (are you ready?) Democratic Party, Republican Party, Liberal Republican Party, Liberal Republican/Democratic Party, and Southern Democratic Party.4 Jumping to the 2012 campaign, the Federal Election Commission recorded 439 candidates for president. In 2016 that number grew to 1,853.5
Included in this book are those fringe candidates who received widespread attention—but not simply for that reason. To the extent that a fringe candidate receives attention—even in the form of ridicule—it is because his or her candidacy resonates with something in the nation’s political landscape. By virtue of being on the fringe, the candidacy amplifies that aspect which is otherwise less, if at all, detected.
The greater that amplification, the greater the ability of fringe candidates to plant seeds in voters’ views. Over time a number of those seeds sprouted in the attitudes of mainstream candidates, subsequently spreading into realms that expanded opportunities for those lesser heard Americans, including those who’d been lesser heard presidential candidates—eventually blooming in the Oval Office.