
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 29, 1992                   TAG: 9203290272
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: F-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: SONNI EFRON LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

3RD-PARTY CANDIDATES USUALLY FAIL

It has been 140 years since the Republican Party overtook the Whigs, and no new political party has achieved mainstream status since. But the 20th century is littered with the political corpses of brave candidates who tried.

Historically, when third-party movements or independent candidacies have begun to gain acceptance, the major parties simply have absconded with their most potent ideas, said Leslie Southwick, author of the book, "Presidential Also-Rans and Running Mates."

Presidential candidates running as independents or on third-party tickets have argued that the major parties ignore the concerns of the average American and are too corrupt to reform themselves, Southwick said. But for the past 80 years, the bottom-line for these candidates has been deflating.

In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt ran for president as leader of the Progressive Party after the Republican Party rejected him and renominated President William Howard Taft. His "Bull Moose" ticket so split the GOP vote that Democrat Woodrow Wilson won.

In 1924, Robert La Follette again raised the Progressive Party standard against Republican Calvin Coolidge and Democrat John W. Davis. But La Follette got only 16.5 percent of the vote.

In 1948, Henry Wallace - who had served as Franklin Roosevelt's third-term vice president - ran for president on the Progressive Party ticket, while South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond ran under the banner of the States' Rights Party. Each got about a million votes - far behind the 24 million for Democratic President Harry Truman and the 22 million for Republican challenger Thomas Dewey.

The most successful third-party campaign in recent times was run by former Alabama Gov. George Wallace in 1968. He won 13.6 percent of the vote and carried five Deep South states in an election narrowly won by Richard Nixon.

In 1980, the independent candidacy of John Anderson polled just 6.7 percent of the vote. But in many states, the votes that he siphoned likely were crucial to Ronald Reagan's margin over then-President Carter. Without Anderson in the race, Reagan's electoral vote landslide win might have been much closer.

Keywords:
POLITICS

by CNB