# Eugene McCarthy **Eugene Joseph McCarthy** (1916–2005) was a Democratic U.S. Representative (1949–1959) and U.S. Senator from Minnesota (1959–1971), best remembered for his 1968 antiwar Presidential campaign that effectively drove [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] from the race. After his 1968 New Hampshire primary near-victory (42% to Johnson's 49%), Johnson announced on March 31, 1968 that he would not seek reelection. McCarthy ultimately lost the Democratic nomination to [[Hubert Humphrey]] at the chaotic Chicago convention; the 1968 general election was won by [[Richard Nixon]]. McCarthy left the Senate in 1971 and ran for President as an Independent in 1976, the campaign that made him a co-plaintiff in [[Buckley v. Valeo]]. He ran for President again as an Independent in 1988 and 1992 with progressively less impact. He was also a published poet — *Other Things and the Aardvark* (1970) and several later collections. ## Significance for the KB McCarthy is the principal co-plaintiff in [[Buckley v. Valeo]] (1976), the case that established the foundational framework of American campaign-finance law. His position complemented co-plaintiff [[James L. Buckley]]'s from the opposite political direction: the [[Federal Election Campaign Act]] Amendments of 1974 structurally disadvantaged third-party and independent candidates. The public-financing system gave funding only to major-party candidates; the contribution and expenditure limits applied to everyone. The combined effect was to entrench the two-party duopoly under the guise of post-Watergate reform. The Buckley-McCarthy alliance — Conservative Party Senator + antiwar Democratic former-Senator — is one of the cleanest illustrations of how the FECA framework had already broken the reform coalition by the time the law took effect. The political configuration that produced FECA in 1974 no longer existed in 1975 when the suit was filed. ## See Also - [[Buckley v. Valeo]] — the case - [[Federal Election Campaign Act]] — the statute McCarthy challenged - [[Lyndon B. Johnson]] — the President whose Vietnam-policy McCarthy challenged - [[Richard Nixon]] — the Republican who won the 1968 election after McCarthy's run divided the Democratic Party