Quixotic Candidate Stassen Dies

Perennial presidential candidate Harold E. Stassen, whose name became a synonym for political futility despite a distinguished career as a governor, diplomat, and university president, died Sunday.

Stassen, 93, died of natural causes early Sunday at Friendship Village, a retirement community in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington where he had been living for the last few years, said his granddaughter, Rachel Stassen-Berger.

Stassen, a liberal Republican, sought his party's nomination for the White House nine times, the first in 1948 and the last in 1992.

His later campaigns were regarded as little more than political curiosities, although he pushed a serious platform including global disarmament, national health care, and full employment through public works projects.

Though he had not won an election in half a century, Stassen bristled at being labeled a political Don Quixote.

"I feel it's really been a winning life," he said in December 1991 as he filed for the 1992 New Hampshire primary. "Every one of the nine times there has been some solid result."

Born April 13, 1907, on a farm near St. Paul, Stassen started his political career as a county prosecutor. His glory days began in 1938 when, at age 31, he was elected to the first of three two-year terms as governor.

The 1942 election was Stassen's last successful campaign.

He resigned the governorship in April 1943, four months after beginning his third term, and joined the Navy, where he served in the Pacific as assistant chief of staff to Adm. William Halsey.

Stassen was one of the founders of the United Nations and helped draft its charter. He had been the last survivor of the eight U.S. signatories of the charter.

"We should best remember him as one of the seminal figures of Minnesota and national history of the 20th Century," said Hy Berman, a history professor at the University of Minnesota.

Stassen made his first presidential bid in 1948, traveling across the country to seek the support of GOP convention delegates. He ran on a liberal platform of federal funds for housing, limited regulation of labor, international cooperation, and adjustment of federal taxes and spending to prevent boom-or-bust swings in the economy.

But he lost the nomination to Thomas E. Dewey, who in turn was defeated by Democratic President Harry Truman.

After a four-year stint as president of the University of Pennsylvania, Stassen again jumped into the Republican presidential race in 1952, facing Dwight Eisenhower and conservative Ohio Sen. Robert Taft. Stassen swung the convention to Eisenhower by releasing the Minnesota delegation to him at the end of the first ballot.

Stassen also ran for president in 1964, 1968, 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, and 1992. In 1992, he won one delegate in the Minnesota primary. He later released the delegate to vote for whomever he wished, and tassen did not get any votes at the convention.

Stassen said he regarded his campaigns as a form of expression.

"You have to run, to be willing to put yourself on the line before you can be really effective," he said in a 1978 interview.

"You can talk or write about something and it has some meaning, but to be effective you have to lay it on the line. It's my life."

Said Gov. Jesse Ventura, paying tribute to Stassen on Sunday: "As Minnesotans, we can be proud of a statesman who never gave up his fight for a better state, a better country, and a peaceful world."

Stassen's wife of 70 years and childhood sweetheart, Esther, died last October. They had a son and a daughter, seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

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