QUESTIONS:
1. Authors have poor records at winning elective office. Although Upton Sinclair was a best-selling Pulitzer Prize-winning author, he was beaten when he was the Democratic nominee for a major office? Can you name it?
2. Clare Boothe Luce, famed as playwright and author, was successful in winning an office that eluded fellow authors Gore Vidal and James Michener. What elective office did Mrs. Luce hold?
3. In what states did Vidal and Michener make their unsuccessful runs?
4. Although his brother James was elected U.S. senator from New York on the Conservative Party ticket, William F. Buckley Jr. was unsuccessful in his own bid for elective office as a Conservative in the Empire State. What office did Buckley run for?
5. When he sought the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York in 1969, Norman Mailer had a fellow well-known wordsmith as his running mate. Can you name him?
ANSWERS:
1. Governor of California in 1934.
2. She was a Republican U.S. representative from Connecticut from 1942-46.
3. Vidal was an unsuccessful Democratic nominee for Congress in 1960 in New York and Michener ran his losing congressional race in 1962 in Pennsylvania.
4. Mayor of New York City in 1965.
5. Newspaper columnist Jimmy Breslin.
