Who Says You Can't Run for Vice President?

When voters go to the polls in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, Reddington “Red” Jahncke ’72 wants them to remember that he can’t win.

That, he says, is his best shot.

While the Democratic frontrunners crisscross the Granite State hoping for the chance to face President Bush, this investment banker turned anti-war crusader has a different target: Vice President Dick Cheney.

Jahncke is one of two candidates on the Republican ballot in the nation’s sole vice presidential primary.

Because under the current electoral system, the presidential nominee picks his own running-mate, win or lose, Tuesday will be the end of the campaign trail for Jahncke, of Greenwich, Conn.

But Jahncke says that’s what makes him the perfect protest candidate.

“I’m an efficient vote. I’m a 30 second decision,” he says. “No one has to evaluate me and my character.”

Jahncke portrays his candidacy as a referendum that will bring together an anti-war vote that would otherwise be split among the Democratic candidates.

“One does not do this with any illusion that you’ll be a vice presidential nominee,” he says. “I’m the equivalent of a ballot initiative to oppose and change the current administration’s foreign policy doctrine of unilateralism as expressed in the Iraq war.”

He offers voters the option of a protest vote that won’t cost them their chance to choose among the high-profile presidential candidates.

“For an unknown to offer himself as a president is a quixotic adventure,” Jahncke says. “But the vice-presidential slot allows them to still vote for a major national candidate and vote for me.”

Though he describes himself as an independent, Jahncke says he chose to run on the Republican Party’s primary ballot to make it explicit that he is a direct challenge to Cheney, whom he calls the “principal architect” of America’s foreign policy. He suggests Democrats vote for him as a write-in.

But in another twist of the New Hampshire political wheel, Cheney’s name won’t even be on the ballot; Jahncke’s sole opposition will be another anti-war candidate, Flora Bleckner of Hewlett Harbor, Long Island.

Anatomy of a Plan

The idea behind Jahncke’s bid for the nation’s second highest post took root last year, but the sentiment behind it is decades old.

As he cast around for a way to voice his opposition to foreign policy developments, he thought back to the idealism of his life as an undergraduate at Harvard in the early 1970s.

A government concentrator, Jahncke had opposed the Vietnam War and followed the primary process in New Hampshire with deep interest.

“[Eugene] McCarthy had just launched an extraordinary campaign where he challenged his own party,” Jahncke says of the historic contest. “He lost in the New Hampshire primary by a hair to Lyndon Johnson, but that tally unseated LBJ.”

“With that background I knew the New Hampshire primary to be a fairly wide-open fair—a race where challenges of all kinds are launched. So I started looking around, and lo and behold I found it,” he says. “When I actually discovered there was something that could be done…I felt an obligation to meet.”

Since then, the campaign has pushed other obligations to the side, including the investment and consulting firm that he founded.

In the last month, Jahncke has spent all but four days on the road, working with no advertising budget, and a small staff of volunteers dedicated to getting out his message.

“I have spoken where I have been able to find an invitation to speak,” Jahncke says.

Jahncke has begun to receive donations solicited through his campaign website, an “incredibly positive sign,” he says.

And Jahncke says that unlike some minor candidates in the crowded presidential primary field—which originally boasted 37 candidates—his pet-issue is familiar to voters.

“Most people are conversant on this issue,” he says. “I’m not running on some esoteric health-care plan that has been documented in 150 pages. Voters know the issue [and] have a position.”

A Road Less Travelled

Despite Jahncke’s efforts, his campaign continues to draw puzzled looks, even from political experts.

Texas A&M Professor George C. Edwards III, editor of Presidential Studies Quarterly, was taken aback by the idea that a candidate could actually run for the vice-presidency.

“This is so unusual for anyone to be doing this that there is no literature on this question. I’ve never seen a single article on the broader question of running for vice-president,” he says.

Edwards predicted that the protest behind Jahncke’s candidacy would be drowned out by the hurly-burly of the last days of campaigning.

J. Mark Wrighton, assistant professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire, was another expert surprised that Jahncke’s bid was even possible.

“This is actually news to me that you could actually file for vice president,” he says. “This is going to be interesting.”

Jahncke has succeeded in flying beneath election officials’ radar as well.

“Usually the position of vice-president is to raise an issue, but I haven’t paid a lot of attention to it,” New Hampshire Deputy Secretary of State David Scanlon says.

The election system is designed to be participatory, according to Scanlon. The sole requirements were that candidates pay $1,000 and file before the Nov. 3 deadline.

The result, says Garrison Nelson, a professor of political science at the University of Vermont, is the potential for self-aggrandizement.

“Mr. Red Jahncke may have a nice time printing up lots of buttons and posters, but it sounds like more of an ego trip than anything else,” he says.

The End of the Road

Jahncke insists that his campaign is nothing more than a way to empower the voters of New Hampshire. “This is not about Red Jahncke. I’m not going to run a victory lap.”

Jahncke has never before dabbled in politics. He says his wife is supportive, but concerned that he this will be a springboard into other political adventures. But he promises that this bid is the end of the road.

“Normally when one ventures into politics there is a career objective, but not with me,” he says.

Alternately ignored and derided by critics, Jahncke says his campaign is an opportunity to tap into the activism he felt so strongly about as a student—to connect the activists of today at Harvard and beyond with their baby-boomer predecessors.

“Students through the generations complain about how to make a difference. With all humility I would nevertheless say that this is a chance to make a difference,” he says.

And besides, Jahncke adds, “There are four Elis in the race. It’s about time.”

—Staff writer Jonathan P. Abel can be reached at abel@fas.harvard.edu.