Political Career
He was the Prohibition Party’s candidate for Mayor of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, state legislature, State Treasurer, Governor of Pennsylvania.
He was also Party candidate for the position of President of the United States in 1904 election, running with George Washington Carroll. At 75, Swallow was the oldest man ever to be nominated for President (Ronald Reagan was 74 when re-nominated in 1984). Although both men on the 1904 Prohibition ticket were well known in the anti-alcohol community, Swallow's age, and the campaign of President Theodore Roosevelt, allowed little news of the Swallow-Carroll ticket to get out, and the ticket only received 258,000+ votes, a slight increase from the party's 1900 take. The election was won by Incumbent President Roosevelt of the Republican Party.
Swallow was also surpassed by two other unsuccessful presidential candidates:
- Alton Brooks Parker of the Democratic Party.
- Eugene Victor Debs of the Socialist Party of America.
Read more about this topic: Silas C. Swallow
Famous quotes containing the words political career, political and/or career:
“No wonder that, when a political career is so precarious, men of worth and capacity hesitate to embrace it. They cannot afford to be thrown out of their life’s course by a mere accident.”
—James Bryce (1838–1922)
“It has now become the doctrine of a large clan of politicians that political honesty is unnecessary, slow, subversive of a man’s interests, and incompatible with quick onward movement.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“Like the old soldier of the ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.”
—Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964)