Reception
The Chicago Tribune described They Also Ran as "a fascinating and challenging book." [2] The New York Times praised it as "a brilliant idea ... brilliantly executed". [3]
Boyd Lee Spahr, in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography , criticized the "lack of historical continuity" in the organization of the book, complaining that the grouping of candidates by profession did little to increase understanding. He particularly criticized the text for numerous errors related to several different candidates, and said that Stone did not reflect the consensus of historians on many candidates. He said:
Mr. Stone wields a trenchant pen but his penchant for striking sentences, and perhaps his prejudices, lead him into exaggerations and inaccuracies, with the result that some of the sketches seem like campaign propaganda, post-mortem pro or con, rather than impartial biography. In addition, factual errors are fairly numerous. [1]
Spahr concluded that while Stone was entitled to his opinions, the inaccuracies decreased the book's value as a reference. [1]
The 1936 United States presidential election was the 38th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 3, 1936. In the midst of the Great Depression, incumbent Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Republican Governor Alf Landon of Kansas. Roosevelt won the highest share of the popular vote (60.3%) and the electoral vote since the largely uncontested 1820 election. The sweeping victory consolidated the New Deal Coalition in control of the Fifth Party System.
The 1940 United States presidential election was the 39th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 5, 1940. Incumbent Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Republican businessman Wendell Willkie to be reelected for an unprecedented third term in office. Until 1988, this was the last time in which the incumbent's party won three consecutive presidential elections.
Harold Edward Stassen was an American politician, military officer, attorney, and member of the Republican Party who was the 25th governor of Minnesota from 1939 to 1943. He was a leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president of the United States in 1948, considered for a time to be the front-runner, but came second to New York governor Thomas Dewey. He thereafter regularly continued to run for that and other offices, such that his name became most identified with his status as a perennial candidate.
George Corley Wallace Jr. was an American politician who served as the 45th governor of Alabama for four terms. He is notoriously remembered for his staunch segregationist and populist views. During Wallace's tenure as governor of Alabama, he promoted "industrial development, low taxes, and trade schools." Wallace sought the United States presidency as a Democratic Party candidate three times, and once as an American Independent Party candidate, being unsuccessful each time. Wallace opposed desegregation and supported the policies of "Jim Crow" during the Civil Rights Movement, declaring in his 1963 inaugural address that he stood for "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."
The 1992 presidential campaign of Bill Clinton, then the governor of Arkansas, was announced on October 3, 1991, at the Old State House in Little Rock, Arkansas. After winning a majority of delegates in the Democratic primaries of 1992, the campaign announced that then-junior U.S. senator from Tennessee, Al Gore, would be Clinton's running mate. The Clinton–Gore ticket went on to defeat Republican incumbent President George H. W. Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle in the presidential election on November 3, 1992, and took office as the 42nd president and 45th vice president, respectively, on January 20, 1993.
Joseph Sill Clark Jr. was an American writer, lawyer and politician. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 90th Mayor of Philadelphia from 1952 to 1956 and as a United States Senator from Pennsylvania from 1957 to 1969. Clark was the only Unitarian Universalist elected to a major office in Pennsylvania in the modern era.
David Peter Bergland was an American politician who was the United States Libertarian Party's nominee for President of the United States in the 1984 presidential election, and also served twice as the chair of the Libertarian National Committee.
William Warren Scranton was an American Republican Party politician and diplomat. Scranton served as the 38th governor of Pennsylvania from 1963 to 1967, and as United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 1976 to 1977. "Many who serve as governor today are still measured against Bill Scranton's leadership - some 50 years later," said former state Republican National Committeewoman Elsie Hillman when she learned of Scranton's death in 2013.
Irving McNeil Ives was an American politician and founding dean of the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. A Republican, he served as a United States Senator from New York from 1947 to 1959. He was previously a member of the New York State Assembly for sixteen years, serving as Minority Leader (1935), Speaker (1936), and Majority Leader (1937–1946). A liberal Republican, he was known as a specialist in labor and civil rights legislation. Ives voted in favor of the Civil Rights Act of 1957.
Louis Fisher was the Socialist Labor Party of America candidate for United States President in the 1972 Presidential election and he was "the party's top vote-getting presidential candidate." His vice presidential candidate was Genevieve Gunderson.
Darlington Hoopes was an American politician and lawyer who served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives as a member of the Socialist Party of America. He served as chairman of the Socialist Party of America from 1946 to 1968.
Lawrence Joseph Sarsfield Daly, a.k.a. Lar "America First" Daly, was a fringe American politician who ran unsuccessfully for a variety of political offices, often campaigning wearing an Uncle Sam suit.
The Constitution Party, or the Christian Nationalist Party or America First Party in some states, was a loosely organized far-right third party in the United States that was primarily active in Texas, founded in 1952 to support former General Douglas MacArthur for president and drafted other prominent politicians for presidential elections, or attempted to. The party gave its support or presidential nominations to other right-wing presidential candidates or military figures until its dissolution sometime in the 1970s.
From March 9 to June 1, 1948, voters of the Republican Party elected delegates to the 1948 Republican National Convention, in part to choose the party nominee for president in the 1948 United States presidential election.
The 2012 United States Senate election in Pennsylvania was held on November 6, 2012, alongside a presidential election, other elections to the United States Senate in other states, as well as elections to the United States House of Representatives and various state and local elections. Incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Bob Casey, Jr. ran for and won re-election to a second term, defeating Republican nominee Tom Smith, and Libertarian nominee Rayburn Smith.
David Evan McMullin is an American political candidate and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer. McMullin ran as an independent in the 2016 United States presidential election and in the 2022 United States Senate election in Utah.
The 1972 United States Senate election in Georgia took place on November 7, 1972, as one of that year's United States Senate elections. It was held concurrently with the 1972 presidential election. This seat had opened up following the death of Richard B. Russell in 1971. Shortly thereafter, Governor of Georgia Jimmy Carter appointed David H. Gambrell to fill Russell's vacant seat. The Democratic Party nominee was Sam Nunn, a conservative Democrat and member of the Georgia House of Representatives, and the Republican Party nominated Fletcher Thompson, the Representative from the Atlanta-area 5th congressional district of Georgia. In the primary, Nunn emerged victorious from a crowded field of Democratic candidates, including Gambrell and former Georgia Governor Ernest Vandiver. Despite President Richard Nixon defeating George McGovern in Georgia in the presidential election on the same day, Nunn defeated Thompson in the general election 54% to 46%.
In 1872, Horace Greeley ran unsuccessfully for President of the United States. He served as the candidate of both the Democrats and the Liberal Republicans, in the 1872 election. In the run-up to the 1872 United States presidential election, major changes occurred in the United States. Specifically, the 15th Amendment gave African-Americans the right to vote for the first time, while the government cracked down on the Ku Klux Klan. In addition, the economy was still in good shape and President Ulysses S. Grant's corruption scandals for the most part were still not public knowledge. With this background, the incumbent U.S. President was able to decisively defeat Greeley.
In the Chicago mayoral election of 1897, Democratic nominee Carter Harrison Jr. was elected, winning a majority of the vote and defeating independent Republican John Maynard Harlan, Republican nominee Nathaniel C. Sears, independent Democrat Washington Hesing, as well as several minor candidates. Harrison carried a 26.7 point lead over second-place finisher Harlan, a margin greater than Harlan's vote share itself.
