Utah’s first serious presidential candidate was not Mitt Romney, of course, or even Sen. Orrin Hatch, who ran a weak race in 2000 that ended after he received 1 percent in the Iowa caucus.
I’ll bet most have no idea that 90 years ago, Utah fielded a presidential candidate that many newspapers — incorrectly — thought might have a shot at winning a few states. His name was Parley Packer Christensen. The Salt Lake City resident was a bachelor, a Unitarian, a former Salt Lake County attorney, and former candidate for U.S. Congress. He was also the Farmer-Labor Party’s 1920 nominee for U.S. president.
A fascinating article by Gaylon L. Caldwell from the October 1960 Utah Historical Quarterly provides loads of great historical information on Christensen’s candidacy. The Salt Lake Tribune mostly criticized and ridiculed Christensen as a defender of labor unions. The Deseret News afforded him more respect. However, according to the article, the Tribune predicted Christensen would carry six states.
Of course, history records that Christensen carried no states. In a days when polls were nonexistent, third parties still under-performed. On election day, Christensen tallied 265,411 votes, finishing fourth behind Republican Party winner Warren Harding, 16,152,200 votes, Democratic Party nominee James M. Cox, 9,147,353 votes, and Socialist Eugene V. Debs, who was in prison, with 919,799 votes. Finishing fifth was Prohibition Party candidate Aaron S. Watkins with 189,408 votes.
As Caldwell points out, “the final tally ... reinforced the old axiom of American politics that new parties begin with a burst of enthusiasm only to fade away.” There is a parallel between the Farmer-Labor Party of 1920 and the post-H. Ross Perot Reform Party. Once a dynamic personality or symbol leaves a third party, the bloom is gone.
How Christensen grabbed the Farmer-Labor nod is really interesting. As Caldwell recounts, it was big news in the summer of 1920 in Chicago at the Farmer-Labor convention, which was populated by a smorgasbord of political movements — left and right — looking for an alternative to the two main parties.
Christensen was a convention leader. There was a “committee of 48” that tried unsuccessfully to recruit a consensus candidate. That’s not surprising since two major contenders were ultra-right-wing automobile maker Henry Ford and the Socialist Debs.
Christensen, a persuasive leader, saw his opportunity and arranged alliances with lesser candidates. He finished second on the first ballot, which eliminated all but the two top finishers. On the second ballot, Christensen easily garnered the nomination.
Christensen ran an energetic campaign and attracted nationwide press. In the Aug. 1, 1920 New York Times, reporter Charles Welles Thompson wrote, “The Republicans are getting a little uneasy over the unlimited activity of Parley Packer Christensen, the candidate of the Farmer-Labor Party. He seems a most virile and extensive person. ...”
Christensen also criticized the imprisonment of Debs, saying, “Mr. Debs may be utterly wrong in his ideas as how best to conduct the affairs of society, and so may I be and so may you, but my conception of liberty includes the right to think wrong.”
After reading Caldwell’s excellent account, I think another reason Christensen under-performed is that he was too moderate for a third party. Although clearly a liberal, he was not socialist enough to take many votes from Debs, but he was too liberal for Ford supporters, who returned to the Republican Party in the general election.
Nevertheless, Parley Parker Christensen is an individual worthy of our respect. I doubt, however, that his name is mentioned in any school rooms below the college level.
-- Doug Gibson
This column was previously published at StandardNet.
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