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LIBERAL PARTY PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS, 1948-2000
...continued from page 2
 In New York's 14th Congressional District, the party issued one of its more desirable items,
a 1 1/2" round tab with the wording "Column 'D' McGovern Lowenstein" and an image of a Liberty
Bell. Allard Lowenstein was a revered figure of the anti-war movement and the 1968 McCarthy
campaign who had won election to the House in 1968 in New York's 5th Congressional District.
That was to be his only term in the House, as in 1970 he lost his campaign for re-election
to Republican Norman Lent. After redistricting changed the boundaries of New York's districts
in 1972, Lowenstein challenged a Democratic incumbent, John Rooney, as well as a Republican candidate,
but received only 28 percent of the vote.
Although Jimmy Carter was the Liberal Party nominee in 1976, apparently the party did
not issue a button for his campaign. In 1980, in its one deviation from supporting the
Democratic presidential nominee, the Liberal Party supported the independent candidacy of
John Anderson and Patrick Lucey. The party also shunned the Democratic candidate for U.S.
Senate that year, Elizabeth Holtzman, and instead supported incumbent Republican Jacob Javits,
as it had done in 1968 and 1974. The party issued a 1 3/4" celluloid "Anderson Lucey Javits
Liberal Party" name button, which was made by N.G. Slater.
Anderson received over 417,000 votes on the Liberal Party line in New York, and the state
went for Ronald Reagan by a small margin over President Carter. The party's support of Senator
Javits - who had been defeated by Alfonse D'Amato in the Republican primary - was at least an
important factor in D'Amato's defeat of Holtzman. Javits took over 664,000 votes, or 11 percent
of the total.
It seems the Liberal Party did not issue any presidential campaign buttons for
either the Mondale campaign of 1984 or the Dukakis campaign of 1988. This
omission seems strange, since both of those candidates were unabashedly
liberal. In 1992 the party issued a 1 3/4" size name button supporting Bill
Clinton and Robert Abrams, the Democratic/Liberal candidate for the U.S. Senate
against incumbent Al D'Amato. That year the party also issued a clever 1 1/4"
"hopelessly Liberal" button that includes the Liberty Bell image. For what may
have been the party's last presidential campaign, in 2000, there is a 1 3/4"
celluloid "Gore Lieberman Hillary Liberal Party" name button with the Liberty
Bell image, also made by N.G. Slater.
WENDELL WILLKIE AND THE DREAM OF A NATIONAL LIBERAL PARTY
Dubinsky's autobiography
recounts another little-known episode in American politics: the discussions and planning
that took place during 1944 aimed at establishing a national liberal party that would be
headed by none other than the 1940 Republican presidential candidate, Wendell Willkie.
After the 1940 election, Willkie, who was a moderate liberal, gained much stature as an
internationalist, and by the time these discussions took place, Willkie's candidacy for
the 1944 Republican presidential nomination had been ended by his crushing defeat in the
Wisconsin primary. By that time, Willkie was as hostile to traditional, conservative Republicans
as they were to him.
At the same time, FDR, who had been consistently frustrated by the conservative Southerners
in the Democratic Party, was also toying with the idea of establishing a new, liberal party
sometime after the 1944 elections. Dubinsky knew that for such a party to have a chance, it
had to have a strong, attractive leader, and he also knew that because of FDR's failing health,
that leader would not be FDR. To Dubinsky, the bright, charismatic Willkie was a logical choice
to lead the new party.
Dubinsky also knew that in order for the party to be successful, it had to grow gradually.
With the expectation that Mayor Fiorella LaGuardia of New York would not run for re-election
in 1945, Dubinsky thought that the place for Willkie and the party to begin was with a Willkie
candidacy for mayor. Dubinsky states that Willkie was excited by the prospect, and that he
too believed that the New York mayor's office would be an excellent springboard for a national
liberal party.
These plans were not to be, as ill health claimed Willkie before it claimed FDR. Willkie
passed away, suddenly and unexpectedly, on October 8, 1944. Dubinsky
states that the hopes and plans for a new national party died with him, as
no other figure who could lead such a party ever appeared.
* * *
This country and its politics have changed dramatically in the six decades
that have passed since the New York Liberal Party was first established.
Certainly the differences between the two major parties have become far more
pronounced, and while there are still conservative Democrats and liberal
Republicans, by and large, they do not hold significant power in their
respective parties. Whether this trend has been a good thing for American
politics is a subject that is well beyond the scope of this article.
It seems another hurdle to the efforts to re-establish the Liberal Party is
the establishment in New York, in mid-1998, of the Working Families party -
a party that enjoys, like the American Labor and Liberal parties enjoyed at
their prime, strong union support. (The snappy slogan of the Working
Families party is, "The minor party with major possibilities.)
Whether or not the New York Liberal Party is revived, there is a rich
material legacy of the party's efforts in support of the ambitious liberal
agenda of the last half of the 20th century, including advocating strong
governmental efforts to promote economic security and human rights both
domestically and around the world. And to reiterate a point that was made
above, while this article focuses on the presidential campaign efforts of
the Liberal Party, it seems that most of the party's efforts by far were
made in state and local campaigns in New York. That subject is more than
worthy of review by a collector whose interests extend to those campaigns
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