It was sad to hear of the passing of Eugene McCarthy. He was the only presidental candidate that proved that there was such a thing as a free lunch(or even dinner), at least to him. Since, I believe he never paid for a meal in his whole life. He just ate off every other persons plate at the table he sat at.

Sincerely, Mark Seidenberg, Vice Chairman, American
Independent Party of California.

It seems that America’s third-party presidential aspirants are a hardy lot. Their longevity is astounding. In addition to the other nonagenarians mentioned above, a few others spring to mind, including Barry Commoner, the Citizens Party candidate for president in 1980, who is actually a year older than Mr. Hospers. Of course, there was also Dr. Benjamin Spock, the People’s Party candidate in ’72, who passed away six weeks before his ninety-fifth birthday in 1998.

The Prohibition Party’s Enoch A. Holtwick, who first ran for public office on the Prohibition ticket in 1912 and headed his party’s ticket in the Eisenhower-Stevenson rematch of 1956, lived to be ninety-one. The CP-USA’s Gus Hall also lived to be ninety, as did Thomas J. Anderson, the American Party’s presidential nominee in 1976.

Sadly, Eugene McCarthy, who at the age of 72 described himself as “middle age” and hoped to live as long as his father and grandfather, both of whom lived into their nineties, succumbed to Parkinson’s at the age of 89, a few months shy of his ninetieth birthday.

Hoping that the two major parties would eventually die out, I guess they all tried to outlive ‘em.