John B. Anderson

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John Bayard Anderson (born February 15, 1922) is a fiscally conservative, socially progressive politician who was previously a member of the Republican Party. He was a U.S. Representative from Illinois and an Independent candidate in the 1980 presidential election.

Contents 1 Education and career 2 1980 Presidential campaign 3 Later career 4 Further reading

[edit] Education and career

Anderson was born to a Swedish American family in Rockford, Illinois, where he grew up. He then attended University of Illinois, but his education was interrupted by World War II, when he enlisted in the Army in 1943. He served as a staff sergeant in the U.S. Field Artillery until the end of the war. After the war, returned to complete his degree, receiving a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree from the University of Illinois College of Law in 1946. He was admitted to the Illinois bar the same year, and commenced the practice of law in Rockford.

Soon after, he moved east to attend Harvard Law School, obtaining an LL.M. degree in 1949. While at Harvard, he served on the faculty of Northeastern University School of Law in Boston. From 1952 to 1955, he served as the Economic Reporting Officer in the Eastern Affairs Division, as an adviser on the staff of the United States High Commissioner for Germany. In 1956, he was elected State's Attorney in Winnebago County, Illinois, that is the prosecuting attorney in county courts.

In 1960 Anderson ran for the House of Representatives in the solidly Republican 16th District of Illinois. He won the election, serving in Congress from 1961 to 1981. In 1969, he became Chairman of the House Republican Conference. He was one of the most articulate of the liberal Rockefeller Republicans.

[edit] 1980 Presidential campaign

In the 1980 presidential election, Anderson entered the Republican primary for the U.S. presidential election, in a crowded field that included Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. That spring, he dropped out of the primary race to run as an independent candidate for the fall general election. His campaign manager was New York media strategist David Garth. Anderson started out very well in the polls — over 25%. But as a top advisor reported, "Instead of rising to something on the order of 30 percent, he fell, steadily, about one percentage point every week and a half, down to 22 percent, then 20 percent, then 18 percent, and progressively worse." [Bisnow, p 214]

Most of Anderson's original support came from Rockefeller Republicans who were more liberal than Reagan, but it bled away. Many prominent intellectuals, including the author and activist Gore Vidal and the editors of the liberal magazine The New Republic, also endorsed the Anderson campaign. He also had the support of many independents. Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury ran several strips sympathetic to the Anderson campaign[1]. The hope that Anderson would score when the Democrats split in their support of Ted Kennedy and President Jimmy Carter faded when Kennedy endorsed Carter and the Democrats held together. Anderson's choice of little-known Democrat Patrick Joseph Lucey, a former Governor of Wisconsin, as his running mate signaled that Anderson was unable to win over any prominent Democrat. His poll numbers kept falling, despite a spirited debate with Reagan. He stayed in the race because he would receive federal election subsidies only if he received 5% of the vote, and millions of unpaid debts had been accumulated. [Bisnow p 308] In the end he received 7% of the vote in the election, with a total of about 6 million votes. He did not carry a single precinct in the country.

His inability to achieve the spoiler effect in that election would later lead him to become an advocate for Instant Runoff Voting. Four years later in 1984 he supported the Democratic candidate Walter Mondale.

See Reagan Coalition for vote details.

[edit] Later career

By the end Anderson's support was on college campuses, and he capitalized on that by becoming a visiting professor at series of universities: Stanford University, University of Illinois College of Law, Brandeis University, Bryn Mawr College, Oregon State University, University of Massachusetts, and Nova Southeastern University (his most recent post). He served as Chair of the Center for Voting and Democracy from 1996 to the present (as of 2006), as President of the World Federalist Association, on the advisory board of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and is of counsel to the Law Offices of Greenberg & Lieberman, LLC.

In the 2000 U.S. presidential election, he endorsed Ralph Nader.

[edit] Further reading

• Mark Bisnow; Diary of a Dark Horse: The 1980 Anderson Presidential Campaign. Southern Illinois University Press. 1983.

Preceded by Leo E. Allen

U.S. Representative Illinois 16th District 1961–1981

Succeeded by Lynn Martin