Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

Third Parties Week rolls on our look at what role third parties have played in American

political history, who runs for a third party, who votes for a third party, and who have

been some of the most interesting and influential third party candidates over time.

Of course we did Ralph Nader last episode, perhaps the most discussed third party candidate in American history,

and here's a name that comes up much less often but I find

fascinating and particularly resonant to this moment so please welcome to the

stage John B Anderson candidate for the National Unity Party in 1980, running against Carter

at the incumbent and Reagan, and not to the right or to the left, but really trying to forge a center normal lane for himself.

He peaked at 26% in a Gallup poll in the early summer,

ended up with about 6.6% of the vote, not huge, but maybe actually kind of sort enough to have an impact

on the final outcome.

We'll see it's contested, as it often is, with third party candidates.

But in an election remembered for Carter's Malaise and Ronald Reagan arriving on the scene to take control of a new vision for the Republican Party,

there was John B Anderson. And here are, as always, Nicole Hammer of Vanderbilt and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wesley.

Hello there, welcome back to Third Parties Week.

Hello, Jovi. Hey there!

Very fun. And we'll have plenty of things to say about Anderson and what political

lane he was trying to carve out but I got to say the thing and I mentioned this on

a previous episode the thing that jumps out most to me about him is if you look at the history of third party candidates in this country they do tend to let's be honest be a little out there, so to speak, interesting personality, sometimes cult of personality,

and John B Anderson's whole cult of personality, if you could say that was built around hey I'm just normal

...