As he cast around for a way to voice his opposition to foreign policy developments, he thought back to the idealism of his life as an undergraduate at Harvard in the early 1970s.

A government concentrator, Jahncke had opposed the Vietnam War and followed the primary process in New Hampshire with deep interest.

“[Eugene] McCarthy had just launched an extraordinary campaign where he challenged his own party,” Jahncke says of the historic contest. “He lost in the New Hampshire primary by a hair to Lyndon Johnson, but that tally unseated LBJ.”

“With that background I knew the New Hampshire primary to be a fairly wide-open fair—a race where challenges of all kinds are launched. So I started looking around, and lo and behold I found it,” he says. “When I actually discovered there was something that could be done…I felt an obligation to meet.”

Since then, the campaign has pushed other obligations to the side, including the investment and consulting firm that he founded.

In the last month, Jahncke has spent all but four days on the road, working with no advertising budget, and a small staff of volunteers dedicated to getting out his message.

“I have spoken where I have been able to find an invitation to speak,” Jahncke says.

Jahncke has begun to receive donations solicited through his campaign website, an “incredibly positive sign,” he says.

And Jahncke says that unlike some minor candidates in the crowded presidential primary field—which originally boasted 37 candidates—his pet-issue is familiar to voters.

“Most people are conversant on this issue,” he says. “I’m not running on some esoteric health-care plan that has been documented in 150 pages. Voters know the issue [and] have a position.”

A Road Less Travelled

Despite Jahncke’s efforts, his campaign continues to draw puzzled looks, even from political experts.

Texas A&M Professor George C. Edwards III, editor of Presidential Studies Quarterly, was taken aback by the idea that a candidate could actually run for the vice-presidency.

“This is so unusual for anyone to be doing this that there is no literature on this question. I’ve never seen a single article on the broader question of running for vice-president,” he says.

Edwards predicted that the protest behind Jahncke’s candidacy would be drowned out by the hurly-burly of the last days of campaigning.