A perennial candidate is one who runs for public office with a record of success that is infrequent, if existent at all. Perennial candidates are often either members of non-major political parties or have political opinions that are not mainstream. They may run without any serious hope of gaining office, but in order to promote their views or themselves instead. They may also overestimate their chances for election or have little in the way of campaigning skill or voter appeal. John C. Turmel is, according to the Guinness Book of Records, the most persistent perennial candidate, having run 77 and lost in 76 elections (the other being a by-election that was cancelled by a general election call).
Famous quotes containing the words perennial and/or candidate:
“Today, supremely, it behooves us to remember that a nation shall be saved by the power that sleeps in its own bosom; or by none; shall be renewed in hope, in confidence, in strength by waters welling up from its own sweet, perennial springs. Not from above; not by patronage of its aristocrats. The flower does not bear the root, but the root the flower.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“I have the greatest aversion to being a candidate on a ticket with a man whose record as an upright public man is to be in question—to be defended from the beginning to the end.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)