Lyndon LaRouche U.S. presidential campaigns

Lyndon LaRouche's U.S. presidential campaigns were a controversial staple of American politics between 1976 and 2004. LaRouche ran for president on eight consecutive occasions, a record for any candidate, and has tied Harold Stassen's record as a perennial candidate. LaRouche ran for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States seven times, beginning in 1980. His current Political Action Committee is called "LaRouche PAC."

In 1971 LaRouche founded the U.S. Labor Party as a vehicle for electoral politics. In 1976 he ran for President of the United States as the U.S. Labor Party candidate, polling 40,043 votes (0.05%). According to LaRouche supporters, the major accomplishment of the campaign was the broadcast of a paid half-hour television address, which gave LaRouche the opportunity to air his views before a national audience. This was to become a regular feature of later campaigns during the 1980s and 1990s.

His platform included a reference to Vice President Nelson Rockefeller: "Impeach Rocky to prevent imminent nuclear war".

Since the autumn of 1979, LaRouche resigned from the U.S. Labor Party and founded the National Democratic Policy Committee (NDPC), a political action committee whose name drew complaints from the Democratic National Committee, who saw these efforts as infiltration.

LaRouche budgeted $150,000 for the first primary state, New Hampshire. That included air time on TV stations in overlapping markets such as Maine and Vermont, along with 1,928 radio advertisements on New Hampshire radio. LaRouche reportedly spent $4,000 on a half-hour broadcast on WBZ, and a total of $24,200 on all TV spots in the state.

The Democratic National Committee asserted that LaRouche is not a Democrat, but the U.S. electoral system made it impossible for the party to prevent LaRouche followers entering Democratic primaries. LaRouche himself polled negligible vote totals, but continued to promote himself as a serious political candidate, a claim which was sometimes accepted by elements of the media and some political figures.

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