Teaching About Third Party Candidates By Craig Regester A Master s Project For ED 7999 Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies Graduate Division of Wayne State University Detroit Michigan in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts in Teaching May 2007 Major Social Studies Minor Spanish Approved by Bob Pettapiece Date 2 Chapter One Introduction to the Project Mention the name Ralph Nader to just about anyone who voted in the last two U S Presidential elections Republican Democrat or Independent and you are likely to get an emotional reaction Considering the long time consumer advocate received less than 3 of the popular vote in both elections combined you might wonder what the fuss is all about Not once did Nader gain entrance to a single official debate he was on only 36 state ballots in the 2004 election and he is yet to win his first electoral vote Leip 2005f A closer look at the Nader phenomenon however raises many fascinating questions worth exploring in the social studies classroom These inquiries point towards a deeper examination of how social studies educators are equipped and trained to teach about democracy itself Is Nader a mere anomaly in US history or are his recent candidacies symptomatic of more fundamental contradictions in American democracy When teaching about American Presidential elections why is the focus almost always on the winning candidate What hidden but important historical lessons may be learned by teaching about failed third party candidacies It is not necessary to go far back in the history of American democracy to learn more about the significance of third party Presidential candidacies it is sufficient to look back to the 1996 Presidential election That year the same Democrats who aggressively opposed Nader in 2000 and 2004 were probably ecstatic when Ross Perot announced his second consecutive presidential candidacy on the Reform Party Why They knew all too well that Perot s entry into the 1992 election may have steered just enough voters away from Bush Sr to allow Clinton into 3 the White House In 1992 Perot received nearly 19 of the popular vote his 8 in 1996 while signaling the end of his Presidential ambitions was still enough to insure Bill Clinton would not receive a mandate from the majority of American voters Leip 2005c 2005d There were many others before Perot who challenged the domination by the two major political parties John Anderson in 1980 George Wallace in 1968 Eugene Debs in 1912 a Socialist who received 6 of the popular vote and even Teddy Roosevelt on the 1912 Progressive Party ticket though he eventually returned to the Republican Party What do these alternative political campaigns tell us about their respective historical period Furthermore what can they teach us about participation in American democracy Does the American system of democracy provide an equal playing field to all political parties that form in this country If the essence of American democracy is rule of by and for the people then why have popular thirdparty movements and political parties failed repeatedly to gain a foothold in the political power structure Other than brief textbook references most American high school students hardly learn anything about the historic and contemporary experience of third parties This project aims for answers to these questions within the larger context of how American schools teach students about the roles and responsibilities of citizenship The central thesis of this paper is that by neglecting to teach about third party political candidacies and their associated movements social studies textbooks and the teachers who use them miss important opportunities for educating America s young people about citizenship The outline of this paper is as follows Chapter Two will provide a literature review of the current theory and research on citizenship education and explore reasons why it is important to teach about elections Chapter Three will closely examine how four social studies textbooks two American history and two civics treat the subject of third parties and then provide a historical case for why third parties 4 are educationally relevant Chapter Four will provide resources for teachers on three presidential elections with spotlights on the third party candidacies who played important yet too often neglected roles Finally Chapter Five will conclude by sharing personal observations on the importance of teaching about third party candidacies and movements 5 Chapter Two Review of the Literature Introduction There has been only one instance in America s history when a third party political candidate won the nation s presidency Abraham Lincoln won on the upstart Republican Party ticket in 1860 Lincoln s victory made possible by an unprecedented North South split in the Democratic Party was followed only three months later by the secession of seven southern states and set the stage for the long and bloody Civil War His victory was the result of a unique convergence of political economic social and cultural events in America s history not the harbinger some may have hoped for however of a new wave of third party political success Nearly 150 years later in the 110th Congress there are only two members out of 535 not affiliated with the Democratic or Republican parties Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders a longtime independent admitted socialist and former congressional representative of that state and Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman a long time Democratic Party member and one time vice presidential candidate who declared himself an independent in the summer of 2006 after failing to win the Democratic Party state primary Of the nation s 50 governors 28 are Democrats and 22 Republicans The highest public office ever achieved by a candidate of a minor party in the 20th century was former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura Reform Party member and previously known best for being a championship wrestler With these facts in mind what argument possibly could be made for encouraging the serious teaching and study of third party political candidates in the American secondary educational system Do they really matter 6 The Case for Citizenship Education Smith 2005 provides important preliminary context for these questions by pointing towards the larger purpose of schools she believes they should be the breeding grounds of democracy p 1 The school environment according to her is where students should be challenged