Pop quiz: Who was the first woman to win an electoral vote? If you guessed 1984 Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, you're not only wrong, you're off by a dozen years.

In fact, it was Libertarian Party vice presidential candidate Tonie Nathan in 1972. That year, she and running mate John Hospers -- on the ballot in only two states -- picked up one electoral vote when a free-spirited Nixon elector cast his vote for the Libertarian ticket.

Nathan's libertarian credentials don't end with that one vote -- however historic it may have been.

Since her first run for office in 1972, Nathan has been a Libertarian candidate 10 more times, campaigning high (U.S. Senate) and low (Eugene, Oregon Utility Board). Although she has never won public office, her name on the ballot has given voters a chance to "vote for the candidate who best represents their values and views, and not the candidate they expect to win," she said. 

In 1973, she founded and became the first president of the Association of Libertarian Feminists. It was, she said, a freedom-oriented alternative to leftist women's groups that looked to big government as a "husband-father substitute."

In 1975 she became the first Libertarian to appear on national television (Today Show). In 1989 she became the first media relations director of the national Libertarian Party

Why is Nathan a libertarian? Because only libertarians, she explained during a 1996 campaign for U.S. House, stand "for the same commitment to freedom that earned America its greatness: economic freedom and a market economy which brings abundance and prosperity; the preservation of civil liberties and personal freedom which marks this country above all others; and a noninterventionist foreign policy which respects the freedom of other nations and maintains peace and free trade."

Professionally, Nathan has been the owner of an insurance agency and a music publishing company, the host and producer of an NBC-affiliate daily television show, and a public relations consultant. Her writings have been published in the Wall Street Journal, the Portland Oregonian, the Los Angeles Times, Insight magazine, and many others, and she is the author of a limited edition book, On Libertarianism, Historical notes and articles.

-- Bill Winter

Quotable

"Only the Libertarians support a policy of non-intervention overseas. Only the Libertarians promote the concept of a truly free market. Only the Libertarians are pledged to end the injustice that sets many citizens against their government." -- Tonie Nathan in LP News (September 1996)

Books & Tapes

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