Our header shot is of wife Keke putting the last makeup touches on husband John’s presentation for NYC television in 1980.
An Immigrants’ Son
John Bayard Anderson was born on Feb. 15, 1922, in Rockford, Ill., a son of Swedish immigrants at 8:55PM CST according to Michel Gauquelin’s Book of American Charts. Valedictorian of his class at Rockford Central High School, Anderson went on the University of Illinois for a bachelor’s and law degrees and then a master of laws at Harvard University.
In World War II he earned four battle stars as a staff sergeant in the field artillery in Europe and later worked in the Foreign Service in Berlin and Washington, where he met Keke Machakos, a Greek national who was working as passport photographer. They married in 1953, had five children, and were still at his death on December 3rd, 2017. His obit from the Rockford (Illinois) Registrar Star is here.
Anderson left Congress, where he was a Rockefeller Republican 1 named after New York’s governor Nelson Rockefeller, a multimillionaire who was similar to the Progressive Wing of the Democratic Party, believing in big government programs and moderate taxes. This difference in the Republican Party came to head first with Arizona’s Barry Goldwater in 1964, then California’s Ronald Reagan in 1980 and Anderson’s and George W. Bush’s opponent and most recently New York’s Donald Trump. Most other post World War II Republican Presidents were all in the Rockefeller camp. so he could seek the presidency in 1980.
He considered another presidential run in 1984, but ended up supporting Mr. Reagan’s Democratic challenger, Walter F. Mondale of Minnesota, part of the Humphrey founded Farmer Labor Party of Minnesota, as their politics were quite similar. Anderson also thought Mondale, former vice president under Jimmy Carter and thus much better known and bankrolled, had a better chance of defeating the immensely popular incumbent Ronald W. Reagan.
True to form, in 2000 he backed Ralph Nader’s run, but that was an utter failure with Nader’s run barely getting off the ground.. When the Tea Party, a populist version of Goldwater/Reagan politics, movement erupted in 2009, Anderson told the sympathetic New Yorker in 2010, “I break out in a cold sweat at the thought that any of those people might prevail.”
The Third Candidate
While Anderson lost in the 1980 election, his impact came in the courts enabling third-party candidates like H. Ross Perot and Mr. Nader to get on the ballot. This was because of the Scotus 1983 ruling that threw out Ohio’s filing deadline of March 20 for independent candidates. (Mr. Anderson had not decided to run as an independent that early in 1980, but got on the ballot when a Federal District Court ordered Ohio to let him run. Read the details here.)
Though Mr. Anderson’s candidacy had little impact on the outcome of the 1980 election, his campaign was memorable for its candor. Appearing in Des Moines with six rivals for the Republican nomination, Mr. Anderson was alone among when asked if there was anything in his career he would recant. Perhaps it was the
“… the vote I cast in favor of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution,” he said, referring to the 1964 congressional measure that gave President Lyndon B. Johnson license to widen the war against North Vietnam. Not long after entering the Capitol, he proposed a constitutional amendment declaring that “this nation devoutly recognizes the authority and law of Jesus Christ, Savior and Ruler of nations.” He recanted that too.
Click here for the debate between Anderson and Reagan. Reagan beat him handily and won the general election against incumbent Jimmy Carter.
Champion of the Fair Vote
With homes in his hometown of Rockford, Illinois, Washington, DC, where he practiced intellectual property law, and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where he taught law at Nova Southeastern University, Anderson remained keyed into Progressive Liberal politics. He served as president of the World Federalist Association, promoting international democracy, world open borders, and global government similar to the United National or World Trade Organization running the world, no difference than what he had run on in in 1980.
Another farseeing nonprofit group he chaired was the FairVote, that champions ranked-choice voting. This method is popular down under in Australia employs, called preferential voting. In this method you have several votes and do not have to cast all of them for one candidate but can break them up into “preferences.”
If no candidate receives a majority, the candidate with the fewest first choices is eliminated and voters that gave that candidate the #1 slot, now have their ballots instantly counted for their second choice. This process repeats itself until until one candidate reaches a majority and wins. Your vote counts for your second choice only if they have eliminated your first choice. In Australia, they actually have None of the Above though NoTa has yet to win.
Astrologically Speaking
With no planets in earth, he was naturally antithetical to the conservative mindset of Ronald Reagan and even the moderate Jimmy Carter. His preponderance of air signs makes a Grand Trine in Air and gives Anderson an Utopian worldview. With Pluto in Cancer right at the midheaven he could popularize that, particularly with those in trade unions, very well.
He has a major opposition from Neptune to Mercury and creates a T-Square in Mars in Scorpio that it essentially rules but is now its fall in the second house of Taurus.. Mars naturally here would make Anderson very interested in farming, as this is the house of Taurus, but since Scorpio shows up instead, it gives it the strange twist of more interested in farming politics and trade than in the actual practice. Hence his alliance with Mondale and the Democratic Farmer Party in 1984 makes all the more sense. An interesting footnote is when the 1980 election occurred, Anderson was facing his second Saturn return in the twelfth, suggesting that his political career as a dominant player was over.
Download the chart for John bayard anderson.pdf
Footnotes:
- 1named after New York’s governor Nelson Rockefeller, a multimillionaire who was similar to the Progressive Wing of the Democratic Party, believing in big government programs and moderate taxes. This difference in the Republican Party came to head first with Arizona’s Barry Goldwater in 1964, then California’s Ronald Reagan in 1980 and Anderson’s and George W. Bush’s opponent and most recently New York’s Donald Trump. Most other post World War II Republican Presidents were all in the Rockefeller camp.
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