2024 Election Controversy: Will History Repeat with Another Imprisoned Candidate?
A Century Later: Will the 2024 Presidential Race Mirror Debs’ Defiant Bid?
There’s a possibility that one of the major party candidates for President in 2024 will be in prison. Eugene V. Debs was a labor leader who ran for president on the Socialist ticket. Although imprisoned for opposing American entry into World War I, he ran for the fifth time in 1920 and garnered more than 900,000 votes in a notable test of democratic institutions in the United States.
The 1920 American presidential election was notable for several reasons. It ended the “Progressive Era” that had been inaugurated by President Theodore Roosevelt and was extended by President Woodrow Wilson on the domestic front. In foreign policy, it endorsed the “return to normalcy” campaign theme of Republican candidate Warren Harding in reaction to American participation in World War I and Wilson’s failed effort to join the new League of Nations. It was the first of three consecutive landslide victories for the Republican candidates.
Less well remembered from that campaign is that a third-party candidate serving time in a federal prison won more than 900,000 votes, or over 3 percent of the total cast. Eugene V. Debs ran as the candidate of the…
