SF-Politics Tie-In of the Day

Greg Mitchell’s twitter feed reminds us of Upton Sinclair’s 1934 campaign for Governor of California.

Working on Sinclair’s campaign, as noted in an article we ran several years ago in NYRSF, was a former Naval Officer in his mid-20s whose career was cut short by tuberculosis: Robert A. Heinlein.

As Mitchell notes:

The champion of all dirty races in this century, in fact, was that 1934 contest. Like Barack Obama, Sinclair led a “change” campaign with masses of new or re-energized voters leading him to an upset victory for the nomination from the Democrats in dire economic times. Like Obama, he was pictured as mysterious interloper. And like Obama, he was labeled a “Socialist.”

Well, actually, that was mostly true in his case.

It’s always interesting to note that to all the people who say they became “libertarian” because of Heinlein.