The Running Man Trivia Quiz

Answer: William E Miller

William Miller was a seven term US Congressman from Albany New York and a Conservative Republican. When Republican Presidential nominee Barry Goldwater selected Miller to be his running mate against Lyndon Johnson in the 1964 Presidential election, a national chorus of "who is that?" followed. Miller was rarely seen on the campaign trail and proved to be of little interest to the press. Goldwater/Miller lost to Johnson/Humphrey by what was then the largest margin in history. Goldwater lost the electoral vote 486-52 and the popular vote 61.1% to 38.5%.

In the aftermath of the crushing defeat, Miller dropped out of elective politics and returned to the life of a country lawyer. In 1975 credit card company American Express began an innovative marketing campaign to draw attention to its charge card. In one of the most famous commercials, an older man in a suit asks the question "Do you know who I am? I ran for the Vice President of the United States in 1964." Mr. Miller then proceeds to say that anyone carrying the Am Ex card would get instantly recognized. The scene fades with the charge card typing his name.

Miler again returned to blissful anonymity and died in 1983 at the age of 69.

Answer: Adlai Stevenson

In 1948 Adlai Stevenson, a Liberal Democrat, was elected governor of Illinois. His administration of the state proved to be ambitious and combative as he was blocked by a majority Republican legislative opposition. Nevertheless, Stevenson attracted wide attention through his eloquent speeches and scholarly articles, urging restraint in the face of the hunt to label all liberals as Communists. Stevenson so impressed the Democratic party that he was nominated as the 1952 Democratic Presidential Candidate. Stevenson was savagely attacked as a pro-communist "intellectual" by conservatives, in particular Vice Presidential candidate Richard Nixon and Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy. Stevenson lost the 1952 election to Eisenhower by a significant margin (442 to 89 Electoral Votes.

Though defeated, Stevenson was undaunted. He continued to attack the McCarthy red-baiting program and was vindicated in 1954. Stevenson maintained his place as leader of the Democratic party and ran against Eisenhower again in the presidential race of 1956. The US economy was booming, Eisenhower was popular and more charismatic than the cerebral "highbrow" Stevenson, and the 1956 election was not as close as 1952. Stevenson lost the electoral vote by 456 to 73.

A strong supporter of John F Kennedy, Stevenson ended his political career as the US Ambassador to the United Nations, serving until his death on July 14, 1965.

Answer: Screaming Lord Sutch

David Edward Sutch was a musician, entertainer and would-be political candidate. Sutch was born in 1940 and died after committing suicide in 1999. He grew up poor in North London living with his working mother and no father. Beginning in the early 1960s, Screaming Lord Sutch performed a horror-inspired rock and roll show, often dressing up as Jack the Ripper and setting a tone that heavy metal and Goth acts have followed over ensuing decades. As a musician, Sutch's career can be summed by the fact that while Jimmy Page, John Bonham and Jeff Beck performed on the 1970 album "Lord Sutch and Heavy Friends" the album was selected by the BBC as the "worst album of all-time" in 1998.

But it was in politics that Sutch distinguished himself, or perhaps it would be better to say made a spectacle of himself. Sutch ran for the Stratford-Upon-Avon seat in Parliament in August 1963 immediately after John Profuma resigned due to his sex scandal. Sutch pulled 209 votes, coming fifth out of five candidates, but apparently was encouraged enough to try again. From then until 1983 Sutch ran in three other elections and gathered little support.

The Thatcher Era in England seemed to galvanize Sutch to concentrate on getting elected. From 1983 until 1997 Sutch ran in 35 different parliamentary elections. Sutch formed his own party "The Official Monster Raving Loony Party" and even stood in opposition to Margaret Thatcher in her home constituency. Sutch never won a single election and the best he did was in 1994 when he polled 4.2% of the vote in a by-election in Rotherham.

Candidates who finished behind Sutch often retired from politics. When Lord Sutch finished ahead of a candidate from the Social Democratic Party in 1990, the party (a splinter of the Labour party founded by former Foreign Secretary David Owen) ceased to exist within days of the humiliation. It was never really understood whether Sutch ran to promote his music or whether he performed music to earn money for his political ambition. Either way, Screaming Lord Sutch was an outrageous fixture in elections, running fruitlessly in England for decades.

Answer: Lyndon Larouche

Lyndon Larouche is hard to explain. He was born in 1922 and never graduated from college, but was a college educator. He never held elected or appointed office, but ran as either a third party candidate or for the Democratic nomination for President in every US election from 1976 to 2004. Larouche never won a primary or polled more than .04% of the popular vote; yet raised over 40 million dollars in campaign funds and received over five million in US tax dollars for his political efforts as part of "matching funds". Despite being convicted of tax and election funding fraud in 1988, in 1992 he became the second person to conduct a US Presidential campaign from a jail cell (the first was socialist Eugene Debs).

What Larouche stands for is even harder to define. His political philosophy seems to be captured in a battle between "platoists" or meta-physic truth-seekers (good) and "aristotilians" who accept empirical truths (bad). Apparently the world is being ruined by these "aristotilians", who include the Rockefellers, Bnai-Brith Anti-Defamation League, Nazis, Russian spies, Catholic Jesuits, Freemasons and Shriners, Communists (but not all), Trilateralists and the ACLU all under the control of the British and Queen Elizabeth II in particular. More a cult than a political philosophy, Larouche and his Larouche Movement remain active and claim amongst other things to have predicted the international banking crisis and the Bernie Madoff scandal.

Answer: Jesus Christ

Mitsuo Matayoshi is a Japanese activist, theologian and would-be politician who goes by the candidate name of "The only God Mitsuo Matayoshi Jesus Christ". Matayoshi grew up and preaches in Ginowan City on Okinawa. His teachings have strayed from traditional Christianity and morphed into a strange blend of pop culture and end of the world fatalism. Beginning in 1997 he determined to seek political office so that he can bring about the "Last Judgment" from a position of legal power. To achieve universal salvation he first needs to become Prime Minister of Japan, before assuming the role of benign world dictator.

Matayoshi has run in nine elections including several times for Mayor of Ginowan and Governor of Okinawa; oddly he has not won yet. Part of his charm is to urge political opponents to commit ritual suicide by hara-kiri (disembowelment). Matayoshi is also known for his often humorous (unintentional) campaign slogans delivered in a "kabuki voice" from a minivan with mounted speakers.

Answer: Mexico

Nicolás Zúñiga y Miranda was dubbed the "Perennial Candidate" in late 19th and early 20th Century Mexico. Zúñiga never came close to winning but he declared victory at the end of each of the ten times he ran for Presidency between 1892 and 1924. Zúñiga claimed he was the legitimate winner but was "robbed" of his victory by fraud.

Zúñiga was trained as a lawyer and grew up the son of a wealthy Mexican landowner. In his youth he claimed to have invented a machine to predict earthquakes and other natural disasters. Apparently Zúñiga had some success in guessing an earthquake would hit Mexico City; but when a dire prediction of devastation to Mexico City failed to materialize in August 1887 Zúñiga was disgraced and forgotten. Zúñiga returned to public life as a Presidential candidate in the 1892 election.

Zúñiga had such commitment that he was often encouraged by citizens, who would invite him to parties or public events in his Presidential sash and trademark monocle.

Answer: Homosexuals

Since 1999 David Popescu, an unemployed itinerant preacher in Sudbury Ontario, has been running for office. He ran for Mayor of Sudbury, Sudbury city council, Ontario provincial posts and federal parliamentary positions. It is fair to say his candidacy has not been successful and his largest share of votes in any election was .06%.

While professing to be a fundamentalist Christian, Popescu was nonetheless convicted of assault on his own mother in 2003. In 2008 during debates for candidates for the Canadian House of Commons, Popescu responded to a question about same-sex marriage by stating that "homosexuals should be executed". Given a chance to recant on local radio Popescu instead repeated his call for violence. In 2009 Popescu was arrested charged and convicted of two counts of willful promotion of hatred under Canadian Criminal Law. Given only probation Popescu was able to return to losing elections in 2010.

Answer: Bus

William "Bill" Boaks once received five votes in a 1983 parliamentary election, yet he was an undaunted campaigner and fixture in English elections throughout the 1970-1980s. Unlike many fringe candidates, Bill Boaks had both a distinguished background and an often coherent agenda. Boaks was a thirty-year veteran of the British Royal Navy, receiving a Distinguished Service Cross for his role in the Dunkirk action, as well as serving on HMS Rodney during the hunt for the Bismarck. Boaks campaigned mostly on a bicycle calling for more pedestrian rights and greater road safety.

That is not to say Boaks wasn't also quirky. Boaks formed the "Public Safety Democratic Monarchist White Resident Party" to summarize his views. To promote his safety first platform, Boaks often deliberately hold up traffic at busy crossings. Boaks went so far as to sit in a deckchair in the fast lane of a major highway in North Kensington, calmly reading the local newspaper. Such stunts earned him coverage in the press; but did not endear Boaks to constituent drivers or local police. Boaks also worked closely with Screaming Lord Sutch and was considered a key contributor to the Official Monster Raving Loony Party. Whether that was a good thing for Boaks' political career is debatable.

Boaks is credited with promoting the successful pedestrianization of several UK areas. Ironically, Boaks was injured in a traffic accident while getting off a public bus in 1984. The lingering injuries he suffered resulted in his death in 1986.

Answer: Harold Stassen

Harold Stassen was a lawyer and successful politician in his native Minnesota. Born in 1907 Stassen was elected Governor of Minnesota at the age of 30 in 1938. Stassen was reelected in 1940 and 1942 though he left office to serve as a Naval Officer during World War II, retiring with the rank of Captain in 1945. Thereafter Stassen sought to earn the Republican Party Presidential nomination in nearly every election from 1948 until 2000. Stassen had some early success in the 1948 election and was a participant in the first recorded presidential debate in the US. Unfortunately for Stassen his opponent Thomas Dewey was the debate winner and secured the 1948 Republican nomination. Dewey later lost to Harry Truman.

Stassen served as President of the University of Pennsylvania in the 1950s and was a part of the Eisenhower government. After a time Stassen's repeated attempts to rekindled his political career and secure a presidential nomination became more a staple for late night talk show jokes then serious challenge. Stassen died in 2001.

Answer: Jean-Marie Le Pen

Jean-Marie Le Pen is one of the most polarizing figures in Post-war French political history. Le Pen is admittedly socially conservative and ultra-nationalist, but his pro-France and xenophobic stance on immigration and world issues draw unwanted comparisons to Fascism. Le Pen is the founder of the National Front party and has served as a French National Assembly and European Parliament Member. Both bodies have sought to censure and fine Le Pen for perceived inflammatory rhetoric on race, religion and sexual freedom issues.

Le Pen has run for the French presidency five times beginning in 1974. In 2002 in a frightening example of the enduring danger caused by fragmented and polarized electorates, Le Pen came in a surprised second place, polling more votes in the first round than the main Socialist candidate. Horrified that the ultra-right fringe candidate might become President of France conservatives and socialists banded together to elect Jacques Chirac with the largest margin in French history. Le Pen ran in the 2007 French presidential election and finished fourth to Nikolas Sarkozy.

Le Pen remains a controversial figure in France. A staunch Roman Catholic, Le Pen has been fined and convicted of inciting racial hate for his comments about Jews and Muslims and even extended his vitriol to the French World Cup team claiming the team has too many "non French" (not white) players. He has passed leadership of the National Front to his daughter Marine Le Pen who has continued both the anti-foreign and ultra-Nationalistic rhetoric but also carried on the family tradition of losing French presidential elections with her unsuccessful bid in 2010. A third generation of Le Pen's is now active in politics as Jean-Marie's grand-daughter Marion Maréchal-Le Pen became one of the youngest people to be elected to the French Parliament in 2012 at the age of 23.