Henry Clay was a member. So were Daniel Webster and John Quincy Adams. Hundreds of other Whig Party members have been elected to Congress, but none since the 1850s. Now comes a first-time candidate giving it a try in Florida.
The Ocala Star-Banner is reporting today on Whig Party candidate Steve Gerritzen, who's not enamored of either major party and decided to give it a go as a Whig.
Gerritzen is running for the seat now held by first-term Democrat Alan Grayson. He appears to be all alone on the Whig side, but Grayson also has plenty of competition from the Republican Party.
Gerritzen favors replacing the federal income tax with a sales tax, and "he wants to remake the American education system in the model of that of Iceland, which emphasizes high rates of literacy, early childhood education and taxpayer-funded collegiate studies," the newspaper reports.
http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/eyeon2010/2010/04/why-not-a-whig-ask-floridas-ge.html