Theodora "Tonie" Nathan Remembered

Nathan for Lane Co. Commission Card

The state of Oregon lost one of its most interesting political figures of the last fifty years when Tonie Nathan passed away today. She was a founding member of the national Libertarian Party and the first woman in United States history to receive an electoral vote in the 1972 presidential election. She was also the first Jewish American to receive an electoral vote. Beating both Geraldine Ferraro and Joe Lieberman to those historic firsts.

While her electoral exploits from 1972 are mostly remembered for good trivia for Oregon political junkies today; her victory of a single electoral vote in 1972 are due to the thanks of elector Roger MacBride.

The Universal Party's Oregon Connections

I was doing some reading of some old Keynoter magazines that I was able to find and found an article by Stephen K. Hauser in the Summer of 1998 issue. His article is about the several campaigns ran by the Universal Party of the 1960s and early 70s. The Universal Party was founded by various UFO enthusiasts and contactees (for those of you who have never seen the X-Files, this was a term popularized in the 50s and 60s for individuals who have supposedly have contact with extraterrestrials).