John Bayard Anderson (February 15, 1922 – December 3, 2017) was an American lawyer and politician who served in the United States House of Representatives, representing Illinois's 16th congressional district from 1961 to 1981. Initially a member of the Republican Party, he also served as the Chairman of the House Republican Conference from 1969 until 1979. In 1980, he ran an independent campaign for president, receiving 6.6% of the popular vote.

Born in Rockford, Illinois, Anderson practiced law after serving in the Army during World War II. After a stint in the United States Foreign Service, he won election as the State's Attorney for Winnebago County, Illinois. He won election to the House of Representatives in 1960 in a strongly Republican district. Initially one of the most conservative members of the House, Anderson's views moderated during the 1960s, particularly regarding social issues. He became chairman of the House Republican Conference in 1969 and remained in that position until 1979. He strongly criticized the Vietnam War as well as President Richard Nixon's actions during the Watergate scandal.

Anderson entered the 1980 Republican presidential primaries, introducing his signature campaign proposal of raising the gas tax while cutting Social Security taxes. Anderson established himself as a contender for the nomination in the early primaries but eventually dropped out of the Republican race, choosing to pursue an independent campaign for president. In the election, he finished third behind Republican nominee Ronald Reagan and Democratic President Jimmy Carter. He won support among Democrats who became disillusioned with Carter, as well as Rockefeller Republicans, independents, liberal intellectuals, and college students.

After the 1980 election, he resumed his legal career and helped found FairVote, an organization that advocates electoral reform, including an instant-runoff voting system. He also won a lawsuit against the state of Ohio, Anderson v. Celebrezze, in which the Supreme Court struck down early filing deadlines for independent candidates. Anderson served as a visiting professor at numerous universities and was on the boards of several organizations. He died at the age of 95 in December 2017.

Early life and career

Anderson was born in Rockford, Illinois, where he grew up, the son of Mabel Edna (née Ring) and Ernest Albin Anderson. His father was a Swedish immigrant, as were his maternal grandparents. His father was born in 1885 in Eriksberg parish, Västergötland.

In his youth, he worked in his family's grocery store. He graduated as the valedictorian of his class (1939) at Rockford Central High School.

Anderson was admitted to the Illinois bar the same year, and practiced law in Rockford. Soon after, he moved east to attend Harvard Law School, obtaining a Master of Laws (LL.M.) in 1949. While at Harvard, he served on the faculty of Northeastern University School of Law in Boston. In another brief return to Rockford, Anderson practiced at the law firm Large, Reno & Zahm (now Reno & Zahm LLP). first winning a four-person race in the April primary by 1,330 votes and then the general election in November by 11,456 votes. After serving for one term, he was ready to leave that office when the local congressman, 28-year incumbent Leo E. Allen, announced his retirement. Anderson joined the Republican primary for Allen's 16th District seat—the real contest in this then-solidly Republican district based in Rockford and stretching across the state's northwest corner. He won a five-way primary in April (by 5,900 votes) in April and then the general election in November (by 45,000 votes). He served in the United States House of Representatives for ten terms, from 1961 to 1981. The bills died quietly but later came back to haunt Anderson in his presidential candidacy. Anderson voted in favor of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968, as well as the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Initially supportive of Barry Goldwater's candidacy for president in 1964 and believing Goldwater to be an "honest, sincere man", Anderson came to believe that most of his ideas would not work on a national scale, and described Lyndon B. Johnson's victory over Goldwater in the 1964 election as a vote for moderation, believing that the Republican Party needed to go in a moderate direction. Other factors such as attending the funerals of Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney, as well as the street riots happening in America at that point, led to Anderson shift from the right to the left on social issues, although his fiscal positions largely remained conservative.

thumb|Anderson in 1974

In 1964, Anderson won appointment to a seat on the powerful Rules Committee. In late 1977, a fundamentalist television minister from Rockford, Don Lyon, announced that he would challenge Anderson in the Republican primary. It was a contentious campaign, where Lyon, with his experience before the camera, proved to be a formidable candidate. Lyon raised a great deal of money, won backing from many conservatives in the community and party, and put quite a scare into the Anderson team. finding little public or media interest. In late April 1979, Anderson made the decision to enter the Republican primary, joining a field that included Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, John Connally, Howard Baker, George H. W. Bush, and the perennial candidate Harold Stassen. Within the last weeks of 1979, Anderson introduced his signature campaign proposal, advocating that a 50-cent a gallon gas tax be enacted with a corresponding 50% reduction in Social Security taxes. Anderson built state campaigns in four targeted states—New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Wisconsin. He began to build support among media elites, who appreciated his articulateness, straightforward manner, moderate positions, and his refusal to walk down the conservative path that all of the other Republicans were traveling.

Anderson often referred to his candidacy as "a campaign of ideas". He supported tax credits for businesses' research-and-development budgets, which he believed would increase American productivity; he also supported increasing funding for research at universities. He supported lowering interest rates, antitrust action, conservation, environmental protection and limiting oil companies from absorbing small businesses through legislation. He opposed Ronald Reagan's proposal to cut taxes broadly, which he feared would increase the national debt and the inflation rate (which was very high at the time of the campaign), believing it to be "Coolidge-era economics". He supported the Equal Rights Amendment, gay rights and abortion rights generally; he also touted his perfect record of having supported all civil rights legislation since 1960. He opposed the requirement for registration for the military draft, which Jimmy Carter had reinstated. This made him appealing to many liberal college students who were dissatisfied with Carter. However, he also voiced support for a strong, flexible military and support for NATO against the USSR, as well as several other positions associated with Republicans, including deregulation of some industries such as natural gas and oil prices, and a balanced budget to be achieved mainly by reductions in government spending.

Republican primary

On January 5, 1980, in the Republican candidates' debate in Des Moines, Iowa, unlike the other candidates, Anderson said lowering taxes, increasing defense spending, and balancing the budget were an impossible combination. but the following morning ended up losing both primaries by a slim margin. Anderson was a strong supporter of both. Pollsters were finding that Anderson was much more popular across the country with all voters than he was in the Republican primary states. Without any campaigning, he was running at 22% nationally in a three-way race. A critical issue for Anderson was appearing in the fall presidential debates after the League of Women Voters invited him to appear due to popular interest in his candidacy, although he was only polling 12% at that time. In late August, he named Patrick Lucey, the former two-term Democratic Governor of Wisconsin and Ambassador to Mexico as his running mate. Also, Anderson submitted his petitions for his fifty-first ballot. Anderson did well, and polls showed he won a modest debate victory over Reagan, but Reagan, who had been portrayed by Carter throughout the campaign as something of a warmonger, was seen as a reasonable candidate who carried himself well in the debate. and then CNN interspersed Anderson's live answers with tape delayed responses from Carter and Reagan.

Anderson's support continued to fade down to 5%, although rose up to 8% just before election day. going into the election and it was clear that many would-be Anderson supporters had been pulled away by Carter and Reagan. Former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, actor Paul Newman, and historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. also supported Anderson.

Although the Carter campaign feared Anderson could be a spoiler, Anderson's campaign turned out to be "simply another option" for frustrated voters who had already decided not to back Carter for another term. Polls found that around 37% of Anderson voters favored Reagan as their second choice over Carter. Anderson did not carry a single precinct in the country. Anderson's finish was still the best showing for a third-party candidate since George Wallace's 14% in 1968 and stands as the seventh-best for any such candidate since the Civil War (trailing James B. Weaver's 8.5% in 1892, Theodore Roosevelt's 27% in 1912, Robert La Follette's 17% in 1924, Wallace, and Ross Perot's 19% and 8% in 1992 and 1996, respectively). He pursued Ohio's refusal to provide ballot access to the U.S. Supreme Court and won 5–4 in Anderson v. Celebrezze. His inability to make headway against the de facto two-party system as an independent in that election would later lead him to become an advocate of instant-runoff voting, helping to found FairVote in 1992. In 1984, Anderson endorsed Walter Mondale over Ronald Reagan in the presidential election. He was chair of FairVote from 1996 to 2008, after helping to found the organization in 1992, and continued to serve on its board until 2014. He also served as president of the World Federalist Association and on the advisory board of Public Campaign and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, and was of counsel to the Washington, D.C.–based law firm of Greenberg & Lieberman, LLC.

He was the first executive director of the Council for the National Interest, founded in 1989 by former Congressmen Paul Findley (R-IL) and Pete McCloskey (R-CA) to promote American interests in the Middle East. In the 2000 U.S. presidential election, he was briefly considered as possible candidate for the Reform Party nomination but instead endorsed Ralph Nader, who was nominated by the Green Party. In January 2008, Anderson indicated strong support for the candidacy of a fellow Illinoisan, Democratic contender Barack Obama. In 2012, he played a role in the creation of the Justice Party, a progressive and social-democratic party organized to support the candidacy of former Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson (no relation) for the 2012 U.S. presidential election. On August 6, 2014, he endorsed the campaign for the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA), one of only six persons who served in Congress ever to do so.

Death

Anderson died in Washington, D.C., on December 3, 2017, at the age of 95. He is interred at Arlington National Cemetery on June 22, 2018.

References

Citations

Sources

  • Arlington National Cemetery

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