Howard Schultz, Independent Candidate for President

Howard Schultz announced yesterday in an interview with the New York Times that he is considering running for president in 2020 as an independent. His announcement prompted two very predictable responses. Democrats complained that his candidacy could hand Donald Trump a second term by splitting the anti-Trump vote. And Trump tweeted that “Howard Schultz doesn’t have the ‘guts’ to run for President!”

The Times interview was with Andrew Sorkin, who commented in his report that “Few independent candidates have mounted successful challenges for the White House.” Sorkin is a business reporter, not a politics reporter, so we’ll give him a break on this one. But the fact is that only one independent candidate for president has ever won – George Washington, who belonged to no political party. (Technically, even Washington didn’t mount a successful campaign “for the White House,” since the White House wasn’t finished until Washington’s successor, John Adams, was in office. Washington’s official residences were first in New York and then in Philadelphia, pending completion of construction of the White House.)

Arguably there are two kinds of “independent” candidates. There are “true” independents, like Washington, who belong to no political party. And there are “third-party” candidates, who belong to a party that is not one of the two predominant national parties – since 1856, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Sorkin clearly used the second definition, since he referred to Theodore Roosevelt’s 1912 candidacy as an independent campaign. Roosevelt ran as the nominee of the Progressive Party, which he formed as a vehicle for his campaign after he lost the Republican nomination to incumbent President William Taft.

True independents have never done well, at least not since the Father of our Country. Since Washington, no true independent has won even a single state. In 2016, for instance, anti-Trump establishment Republicans prevailed upon Evan McMullin to run as an independent. He did respectably in only one state, Utah, his home state, at 21.5 percent of the vote, but even there he finished third. His next best showing was in Idaho, at just 6.7 percent.

The best popular vote tally by any true independent candidate was Ross Perot in his first run, in 1992. (His second, less successful run, in 1996, was as the nominee of the Reform Party.) Perot won 18.9 percent of the vote in 1992, but won no states. His high water mark was in Maine, with 30.4 percent of the vote, where he took second place over George H. W. Bush by 316 votes.

After Perot, the most successful true independent was John Anderson, a moderate Republican who ran as an independent in 1980 after losing Republican primaries to the eventual nominee, Ronald Reagan. Anderson took just 6.6 percent of the popular vote, and zero electoral votes.

Third-party candidates have a better record than true independents, but none has ever been elected president. Not since 1968, when George Wallace ran for president as the nominee of the American Independent Party, has a third-party candidate won any states. Wallace ran on southern sectionalism and won 13.5 percent of the popular vote, five states, and 46 electoral votes. Another southern sectionalist, Strom Thurmond (States’ Rights Democratic Party, known as the Dixiecrats, in 1948), won 2.4 percent of the popular vote, four states, and 39 electoral votes.

Some other third-party candidates who did well ran as progressive alternatives to the two main parties. Robert La Follette (Progressive Party, 1924) won 16.6 percent of the popular vote and 13 electoral votes. James Weaver (People’s Party, known as the Populists, 1892) won 8.6 percent of the popular vote and five states, for 22 electoral votes.

In general, an independent candidate, whether a true independent or a third-party candidate, can’t do well unless there is broad dissatisfaction with the two predominant national parties. It might seem that dissatisfaction with the presidential nominees of the two predominant parties would be enough, but that hasn’t been the case. For instance, the leading third-party candidate in 2016 – when the two major party nominees were probably the least popular in modern times – was Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party nominee. Johnson took 3.3 percent of the popular vote, and his best state was New Mexico, his home state, at just 9.3 percent. Certainly Johnson was boosted by the unpopularity of the two main parties’ candidates – by comparison, in 2012, Johnson pulled less than 1 percent of the vote, and just 3.6 percent in his home state. But still, he never could have been a contender.

Howard Schultz is positioning himself as a centrist running on dissatisfaction between two extreme national parties: the extreme right of Donald Trump’s Republican Party and the extreme left of Democrats’ “free government-paid college, free government-paid health care and a free government job for everyone.” But his description of an far left Democratic Party is made up.

There are prominent Democrats who advocate tuition-free public college education, but do Democrats advocate government-paid private college tuition, or, for that matter, government payment of non-tuition college costs, that would make college education “free for everyone”? And, while some national Democrats call for “Medicare for all,” has anyone called for elimination of Medicare premiums, co-pays and deductibles, that would make health care “free for everyone”? And is there any national Democrat calling for guaranteed government employment “for everyone”?

Schultz’s caricature of the supposedly extreme positions of the Democratic Party is worthy of Donald Trump’s contention that opposition to his wall reveals Democrats to be pro-crime, pro-violence, and anti-security. Making stuff up is not a good start for someone who says he wants to run to fix our “broken political system.”

Schultz says he is a life-long Democrat, and he took some strong progressive positions during his business career, such as on same-sex marriage. During two long tenures as head of Starbucks, Schultz made a reputation for progressive corporate management – especially regarding part-time workers, who got full health benefits for themselves and their domestic partners, as well as participation in the company’s stock-option program.

Schultz was raised in public housing in Canarsie, and he was the first in his family to go to college. He started out in business as a Xerox salesman. Stories of humble beginnings can sell well in American politics.

On the other hand, Schultz became a billionaire at Starbucks. Forbes estimates his net worth at $3.4 billion, a mere fraction of Trump’s claimed net worth, but 10 percent higher than Forbes’s estimate of Trump’s net worth. A man who is richer than Donald Trump may have trouble selling a “humble beginnings” story. And a man of humble beginnings who contends that Democrats’ positions on social justice are “extreme” may end up looking like a man who, having climbed out of poverty, wants to pull the ladder up behind him.

It seems to me that voters who want an unconventional president already have him. I don’t think voters who want to send Trump packing want to replace him with another billionaire government neophyte.

Maybe Schultz is threatening to run to pressure Democrats not to nominate one of their most liberal primary candidates. Schultz himself implied that his candidacy might be contingent: “If you have a choice between President Trump and a far-left progressive Democrat, many people think President Trump will get re-elected.” But if that’s his goal, I would suggest he could be more effective by working for the Democrat he prefers, not by threatening to run as an independent.