A perennial candidate is a political candidate who frequently runs for an elected office but seldom wins. The term is not generally applied to incumbent politicians who successfully defend their seats repeatedly.
Perennial candidates can vary widely in nature. Some are independents who lack the support of the major political parties in an area or are members of alternative parties (such as "third parties" in the United States). Others may be mainstream candidates who can consistently win a party's nomination, but because their district is gerrymandered so that the party can never win a general election, the candidate likewise never gets elected (thus these types are often paper candidates). Still others may typically run in primary elections for a party's nomination and lose repeatedly. Numerous perennial candidates, although not all, run with the full knowledge of their inability to win elections and instead use their candidacy for satire, to advance non-mainstream political platforms, or to take advantage of benefits afforded political candidates (such as campaign financing and television advertising benefits).
Edwin Bellchambers, contested the Division of Barton several times between 1966 and 1987, usually polling a negligible proportion of the vote.
Ben Buckley, a farmer, has unsuccessfully contested Gippsland in the House of Representatives on 10 separate occasions. He first contested the seat in 1984, and has contested every election since 2001. An independent on six occasions, Buckley ran as a One Nation candidate in 2004, and has run as a Liberal Democrat in the past three elections (2008, 2010, and 2013). His best result came in 2010, when he polled 5.52% of the vote.
Shirley de la Hunty (née Strickland), a multiple Olympic gold medallist in athletics, unsuccessfully contested six state elections in Western Australia and seven federal elections. Her candidacies spanned from 1971 to 1996, and included runs for the lower and upper houses at both state and federal level. She stood a number of times for the Australian Democrats, while the rest of her runs were made as an independent candidate.
Terry Duguid, is a Manitoba politician who has run multiple times for city council, mayor and MP in Winnipeg. He lost the 1995 Winnipeg Civic election, and lost the 2004 and 2006 federal election in Kildonan St-Paul before running and losing in Winnipeg South in 2011, where he will run again in 2015.
Patricia Métivier contested 24 Canadian federal, provincial or municipal elections from 1972 to 2001.
David Popescu has run for federal, provincial and municipal office multiple times since 1998 on an extreme anti-abortion and anti-homosexual platform. While campaigning in the 2008 election, he advocated the execution of homosexuals, which precipitated charges under Canada's hate crime laws.[3]
John "The Engineer" Turmel is in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the candidate who has the "most elections contested" and lost: 84 as of August 2015 (he also ran in a by-election canceled due to a general election).
Harry Bradley ran for the Toronto Board of Control 24 times between 1930 and 1964. He also ran for mayor in 1960 and 1962, and for city council in 1969.
Kevin Clarke is a homeless person who has unsuccessfully contested municipal, provincial and federal office in Toronto numerous times from the 1990s to the present, often as leader of The People's Political Party.
Régent Millette is a teacher in Quebec who has run for public office at the municipal, provincial, and federal levels over 25 times since the year 2000
Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Front, has been a candidate for President five times (1974, 1988, 1995, 2002 [in which he unprecedentedly finished second in the first round of voting, proceeding to the second round of voting which he lost to the incumbent, Jacques Chirac], in 2007).
Palmer's house in Geradstetten boasted some of his election percentages
Helmut Palmer (1930–2004) stood without any success for about 250 elections as mayor in villages and cities in southwestern Germany and various times as independent candidate for the Bundestag.[4] His son Boris Palmer became mayor of Tübingen.
Hotte Paksha Rangaswamy was a political leader from the Indian state of Karnataka, who had a penchant for contesting elections. He is a Guinness World Record holder for having contested the highest number of elections - he unsuccessfully did so 86 times.
Kaka Joginder Singh (alias Dharti Pakad meaning "one who clings to the ground", earned after several unsuccessful runs for President of India.[5]) was a textile owner who contested and lost over 300 elections in India. Although his nomination papers were usually disregarded by the election commission, he reached his high-water mark during the 1992 presidential election, in which he earned fourth place in the polling with 1135 votes, eventually losing to Shankar Dayal Sharma.
Nicolás Zúñiga y Miranda was a presidential candidate ten times: 1892, 1896, 1900, 1904, 1910, 1911, 1913, 1917, 1920 and 1924 and also tried to run for a seat in the Congress of Mexico at least twice. The eccentric Zúñiga never got more than a few votes, but always claimed to have been the victim of fraud and considered himself to be the legitimate President.
Bill Boaks contested general elections and by-elections for a period of 30 years under various descriptions, most famously under the "Public Safety Democratic Monarchist White Resident" banner. Boaks's main concern was public safety on the roads and believed that pedestrians should have the right of way at all times. In the 1982 Glasgow Hillhead by-election he received only 5 votes, one of the lowest recorded in a modern British parliamentary election. He died in 1986 from injuries sustained in a car accident two years earlier.
Arthur Hunnable's name never appeared on a ballot paper, but he campaigned and announced that he would stand in almost every by-election from 1907 to 1909, and also in Jarrow at the 1918 general election.
Winston McKenzie who now stands as a UKIP candidate has previously stood since 2002 as an independent candidate in the Brent East by-election and in the 2008 Mayoral election, and for Veritas, and founded his own Unity Party.
Guy Carbone,[citation needed] a Massachusetts Democrat turned Republican, has run for Northern District District Attorney in 1978 and 1982, Governor of Massachusetts in 1986, Massachusetts Attorney General in 1990, 1994, and 2010, the U.S. House of Representatives in 1996, and the Massachusetts Senate in 1998. He also ran for Governor in 1982 and 1990 before dropping out to pursue another office.
Doug Cloud, a Washington Republican, has run for a seat in congress from Washington's sixth congressional district five times (in 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2012). He has also sought a vacancy appointment to the Washington House of Representatives.
Jacob Coxey best known for his 1894 March on Washington DC, Coxey ran 3 times for US Senate for Ohio, and twice as the People's Party nominee for Governor of Ohio in 1895 and 1897. Coxey also was the Mayor of Massilon, OH from 1931 to 1933 in addition to losing numerous congressional races.
Jack Davis, founder of a heating element manufacturing company and protectionism advocate, has unsuccessfully run for the seat representing New York's 26th congressional district four times in five elections between 2004 and 2011, three times as a Democrat and the fourth as an independent. He has not ruled out future runs for office.
Eugene V. Debs was a presidential candidate for the Social Democratic Party in 1900 and thereafter for the Socialist Party in four more elections: 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920. In the 1920 election, while in federal prison for violating the Espionage Act of 1917 with a speech opposing the draft, he received 913,664 votes, the most ever for a Socialist Party presidential candidate.
Earl Dodge, a long-time activist in the temperance movement, was the Prohibition Party's presidential candidate in six consecutive elections, from 1984 to 2004. He was also that party's vice-presidential candidate in 1976 and 1980. He ran for Governor of Colorado on five occasions (1970, 1974, 1982, 1986, and 1994) as well. He also ran for Senator of Kansas in 1966.
Jack Fellure ran for the Republican Party nomination in every presidential election from 1988 to 2012. In the 2012 campaign, he withdrew from the Republican nomination race, and become the presidential nominee of the Prohibition Party.
Gatewood Galbraith, a political gadfly known for his outspoken advocacy of civil liberties and legalization of marijuana, ran unsuccessfully for state and federal offices in his home state of Kentucky no fewer than nine times. He ran twice for the U.S. House, once for state agriculture commissioner, once for state attorney general, and five times for governor. His final run for governor ended less than two months before his death in January 2012.
Kevin Gaughan, an advocate for municipal downsizing, has run unsuccessfully for office six times, in addition to his mixed record at spearheading referendums to eliminate municipalitiets and reduce the number of elected officials.
Goodspaceguy, who legally changed his name from Michael George Nelson, has run for local, state, and federal office in Washington state more than a dozen times.
John Hagelin, a physicist and co-founder of the Natural Law Party, was that party's only presidential candidate in its history. Hagelin ran three times (in 1992, 1996 and 2000) before the party folded in 2004.
James Harris has been the Socialist Workers Party's nominee for President five consecutive times since the 1996 election in at least a handful of states; three times he has run as an active candidate through the entire country, and the other two times he appeared as a dummy candidate substituting for the constitutionally ineligible candidacy of foreign-born Róger Calero, who was the party's official nominee, in states that would not allow Calero on the ballot.
Howie Hawkins, co-founder of the Green Party, ran unsuccessfully for 20 political offices between 1993 and 2014.
John Jay Hooker, a Tennessee Democrat, ran for several Tennessee offices, in later years mainly to gain standing for lawsuits against more serious candidates on the grounds of campaign finance violations.
Keith Russell Judd, who is currently serving a 17-year federal prison sentence, has run for office at least five times, including one-state runs in Democratic Presidential primaries in 1996, 2008 in 2012. Judd's 2012 run, in the West Virginia Democratic presidential primary, was a surprisingly strong showing, as he (being one of only two people on the ballot, the other being incumbent President Barack Obama) finished with over 40% of the vote, winning several counties primarily as a protest vote.
Alan Keyes, has run for U.S. President in 1996, 2000, and 2008. He ran for the U.S. Senate from Maryland in 1988, 1992, and, in 2004, against Barack Obama in Illinois.
Luther Devine Knox, a Louisiana Democrat, sought several Louisiana offices between 1963 and 1999, never winning, and only coming close once (his first election, losing to Lantz Womack by 18 votes). By the 1980s, Knox had legally changed his name to "none of the above" because of his desire for voters to have that option on their ballots.
Lyndon LaRouche, a fringe political figure, ran for president of the United States in eight elections, beginning in 1976. He ran once as a U.S. Labor Party candidate and seven times as a Democrat. In 1992, he campaigned while in federal prison. Many of his followers have also run for office repeatedly, including Sheila Jones and Elliott Greenspan, both of whom made eight campaigns for a variety of offices.
Stan Lippman, an attorney and physicist, has unsuccessfully run for office more than eight times in the state of Washington.
Andy Martin (also known as Anthony Martin-Trigona), a journalist and self-described consumer advocate has run for several local, state and federal offices dating back to at least 1977, including two runs for president and six runs for Senate. He has run as a Democrat, a Republican and as an independent.
James D. Martin, one of the first Republican politicians to make an electoral impact in the once solid-Democratic state of Alabama, ran for the U.S. Senate three times and governor of Alabama once in the 1960s and 1970s, and also unsuccessfully sought the office of state treasurer in 1994. By the time of Martin's 1978 Senate campaign, his opponent had already acknowledged him as the "Harold Stassen of Alabama."
Eugene McCarthy,[citation needed] Senator from Minnesota, though successful in multiple campaigns for the U.S. Congress, was a perennial presidential candidate. He ran for the Presidency five times, in 1968, 1972, 1976, 1988, and 1992. He tried (unsuccessfully) for the Democratic Presidential nomination in three of those years (1968, 1972, and 1992), and ran as an Independent in the other two years.
Mike the Mover, who was born Michael Shanks but legally changed his name, has run for public office in Washington state more than 17 times to help promote his furniture moving business.
Ralph Nader, previous Green Party of the United States Presidential candidate, ran as the Green Party nominee in 1996 and 2000, and as an independent candidate in 2004 and 2008.
Mark Neumann, a former Republican congressman from Wisconsin. He ran for Congress unsuccessfully several times in the 1990s, finally winning election in 1994. Since then, he has gone on to lose a Senate general election in 1998, a gubernatorial primary election in 2010, and a Senate primary election in 2012.
Jim Oberweis,[citation needed] Illinois dairy magnate, unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Senate in 2002 and 2004, Illinois Governor in 2006, and U.S. Representative in the Illinois 14th district in 2008 in the special election to replace retiring Dennis Hastert as well as in the November election. In his fifth attempt at elected office, he succeeded at winning a seat in the Illinois Senate in November 2012. He is currently the 2014 Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate.
Pat Paulsen, a comedian best known for his appearances on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, first ran for President in 1968 as both a joke and a protest. He ran again in 1972 and in succeeding elections until 1996, one year prior to his death.
Merrill K. Riddick, ran for Montana governor in 1968, U.S. Congress in 1972, and was a presidential candidate in 1976, 1980, and 1984, but never won an election.
Jack E. Robinson, a Republican turned Independent who has unsuccessfully run in Massachusetts for United States Senate in 2000 and 2010, Secretary of the Commonwealth in 2002, United States Congress in 2006.
Jim Rogers, an Oklahoma Democrat notorious for his secrecy and almost complete lack of campaigning, has run for the state's two U.S. senate seats every election since 2002; he also ran in the 2012 Oklahoma Democratic presidential primary, finishing in third place with 15% of the vote.
Joe Schriner, a journalist, ran for President as an independent in 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2012.
Al Sharpton ran for the United States Senate from New York in 1988, 1992, and 1994. He also ran for Mayor of New York City in 1997 and for the Democratic nomination for President in 2004.
Harold Stassen is perhaps the most famous and distinguished perennial presidential candidate in U.S. history, along with Ralph Nader. A one-time Governor of Minnesota and former President of the University of Pennsylvania, he ran for the Republican nomination for President twelve times between 1944 and 2000. While Stassen was considered a serious candidate in 1944, 1948 and 1952, his persistent attempts were increasingly met with derision and then amusement as the decades progressed. He also ran in 10 other races for lower offices.
Glen H. Taylor, a Democrat known as "The Singing Cowboy," ran for Congress in Idaho seven times (1938, 1940, 1942, 1944, 1950, 1954 and 1956). His 1944 Senate run was his only successful campaign. Taylor was also the Progressive Party vice presidential nominee in 1948.
Randall Terry is an anti-abortion activist who has run for numerous positions in the national and state governments, including President. He is notorious for getting glitterbombed by candidate Vermin Supreme at the 2012 lesser known Democratic Presidential debate.
Jeffrey C. Thomas a physician and former Janesville, Wisconsin city council member, lost 4 consecutive races for Wisconsin's 1st Congressional seat between 2000 and 2008, losing all four times to the same candidate, incumbent Paul Ryan.
Norman Thomas was the Socialist Party's candidate for President of the United States on six occasions from 1928 to 1948 inclusive. Unlike most other perennial candidates, Thomas influenced American politics to a considerable degree with many of his policies being appropriated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal.
Don Wright, as president of the Alaska Federation of Natives during the early 1970s, played a major role in the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. However, Wright is far better known as a perennial candidate, having run for statewide office in Alaska 15 times since 1968. Wright has run for governor of Alaska 11 consecutive times since 1974. Wright ran 7 of those campaigns under a major party, but lost in the primary election each time. The remaining four times (1978, 2002, 2006 and 2010), he was the nominee of the Alaskan Independence Party.
^Jan Knauer: Bürgerengagement und Protestpolitik. Das politische Wirken des „Remstalrebellen“ Helmut Palmer und die Reaktionen seiner Mitmenschen. Dissertation. Tübingen 2012
^Eaklor, Vicki L. (2008). Queer America: A GLBT History of the 20th Century. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. p. 212. ISBN0-313-33749-7. Retrieved 2010-10-20. The nineties also saw the first openly transgender person in a state office, Althea Garrison, elected in 1992 but serving only one term in Massachusetts' House.
^Long, Tom (January 7, 1995). "Robert Hagopian, ran for office about 20 times in Hamilton; at 83". Boston Globe.|access-date= requires |url= (help)
^Langner, Paul (September 29, 1974). "Hagopian says he'll fight move by Saugus selectmen to fire him". Boston Globe.|access-date= requires |url= (help)