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The Write-in Candidate

Strom Thurmond
Library of Congress

When the executive committee of the South Carolina Democratic Party appointed a state senator to run in the primary for a vacant U.S. Senate seat in 1954, former governor Strom Thurmond declared his intention to run as a write-in candidate. Thurmond won with 63 percent of the vote becoming the first person elected to the Senate as a write-in candidate in a general election.

 
  

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