Harland Sanders kentucky State Senate race

Factual Questions
1

Political, but has a factual answer.
KFC has a posted saying if not for 187 (or some small number) of votes , he would be a Kentucky Senator.
I’ve seen pics of a poster for him running as a kentucky STATE (not US) Senator in 1951,

  1. Did he really run?
  2. If so, what was the vote count?

1950s Kentucky State Senator races are hard to google.

Thanks,
Brian

2

Well here is this campaign poster shown on X. I think if he had the beard he might not have chickened out.

3

Using newspapers.com I could find interm results with 21 of 144 precincts reporting. At that point, the votes were:

Caleb McFadden 1451
Eugene H Clark 941
Harland Sanders 463

I’ll see if I can dig up anything else. This was just a cursory search.

4

Losing the state senate race was a mere blip in Harland Sanders’ political career, as he went on to become governor of Kentucky and to serve as vice president under Richard Nixon.

“A fried chicken on every plate” was one of the most successful political slogans of all time.

5

It’s looks like McFadden did win. This was for the 19th district in Kentucky. I still can’t find any final totals, though.

6

I find it interesting that his state senate run is not mentioned on wikipedia nor in any obits I could find.

Brian

7

Hmm, this very large PDF

for 1952 I see

| county | Senator | Party | district |
|:—|:—|:—|:—|
| Clay | Clark, Eugene H. | R-n | 19 |

Brian
(I tried to make a nice table – finally gave up)

8

Thanks. It’s weird, because looking through the papers, I see some having Clark as the winner in the August 1951 Republican primary, but others have Caleb McFadden, (when they list the ballots for the November general; the 19th district was unopposed by Democrats) and I can’t for the life of me figure out the discrepancy. (Looks like the Kentucky Post and Courier-Journal had McFadden, but The Lexington Herald had Clark – all reported on Aug 12. Looks like the election was on Saturday, Aug 4, 1951.)

9

Also, when he died his restaurants had a “Kick the Bucket” sale.

10

He never really had a beard, he had a mustache and a soul patch extending down his chin.

11

Wow, that took me down a disturbing rabbit hole. While I definitely like the idea that Fred Rogers is our president (you thought Biden was geriatric?!), and I was happy that Kennedy served two terms, missing out on Obama was quite the disappointment. And I shudder to think about what the Reagan, Romney, Ryan years were like.