In 1954, Thurmond won the Democratic primary as a write-in after the original party nominee passed away.
I haven’t found out how many votes that was, but there weren’t a whole lot of Republicans in South Carolina in 1954. Thurmond later won in the general election, presumably with his name on the ballot.
He resigned that seat in 1956 and ran again for the Senate. And he won that in a more conventional manner.
Packard won his race in 1982. I haven’t been able to find out how many votes he got in 1982, but in subsequent elections he usually polled about 70,000 votes in his district although he never had a serious challenger after his first election.
Carol Schwartz has sort of, reluctantly, come forward as the GOP challenger to Williams. She hadn’t planned on running but has said she’ll consider doing the job if people write her in.
Faith, to the best of my knowledge (enhanced by a Washington Post profile a month ago) , has never actually been a stripper. Rather, she started off as an actress and gained brief accolades as the stripper Miss Mazeppa (“If you wanna bump it, bump it with a trumpet!”) in both the Broadway and film (w/Natalie Wood) productions of Gypsy. She’s a colorful character who runs in every DC mayoral election. She shows up at gay pride every year, but it wasn’t until this year that I realized she’s not a drag queen but a biological woman, which should give you an idea of what she looks like. She frequently appears around town blowing a bugle and decked in a red, white & blue sequined outfit.
No, Thurmond won the general election as a write-in candidate.
Senator Burnet Maybank, who was up for re-election and had already been re-nominated in the Democratic primary, died on September 1, 1954. The South Carolina Democratic Party executive committee decided not to hold a second primary and nominated State Senator Edgar Brown to run in Maybank’s place.
Since the Democratic nomination was tantamount to election in that era, the party’s move effectively denied the state’s voters a choice. Strom Thurmond, a popular former governor and segregationist presidential candidate, decided to challenge Brown as a write-in candidate. Thurmond won, 143,442 votes to 83,525. (Source: Guide to U.S. Elections.)
Thurmond is the only Senator ever elected on a write-in vote. The only offices generally considered “higher” than senator in the United States are president and vice-president. Varying state laws and the existence of the electoral college make a write-in campaign for these offices problematic, to say the least. Ergo, Thurmond is and will probably remain the highest officer ever to win a write-in vote.