Naturopaths Vote Themselves a Party

On July 28, 1947, five hundred delegates attending the American Naturopathic Association's convention at the Commodore Hotel in New York City founded the American Vegetarian Party. The push came from Symon Gould, assistant editor of the magazine American Vegetarian, who co-founded the party with naturopathic physician and restaurateur John Maxwell. The party never built real infrastructure. It held conventions, picked a presidential and vice-presidential nominee each cycle from 1948 through 1964, and then watched the results come in. What it was really doing was using the ballot, however symbolically, to put the word vegetarian in front of voters who had never had to think about it.