Roger MacBride
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Roger MacBride (6 August 1927 - 5 March 1995) was a U.S. lawyer, political figure, and television producer.
He became the first presidential elector to cast a vote for a woman when, in 1972, he voted for the Libertarian Party candidates John Hospers for President and Theodora Nathan for Vice President. MacBride went on to be the Libertarian Party candidate for President in 1976.
MacBride attended Harvard University and was elected to the Vermont Legislature as a Republican. He cast his famous electoral vote in 1972 and instantly became a hero to the fledgling Libertarian Party, which had only begun the previous year. As the Libertarian presidential candidate in 1976, he achieved ballot access in 32 states; he and his running mate, David Bergland, received 173,011 popular votes.
MacBride rejoined the Republican Party in 1983 and helped establish the Republican Liberty Caucus, a group promoting libertarian principles within the Republican Party. He chaired this group in 1994.
MacBride was the adopted grandson of writer and political theorist Rose Wilder Lane, the daughter of writer Laura Ingalls Wilder, and as such inherited the substantial Ingalls-Wilder's literary estate, including the "Little House on the Prairie" franchise. He wrote three additional "Little House" books, and began the "Rocky Ridge Years" series, describing the Ozark girlhood of Rose Wilder Lane. He also co-produced the 1970s television series Little House on the Prairie.
Controversy came after MacBride's death in 1995, when the local library in Mansfield, Missouri, contended that Wilder's original will gave her daughter ownership of the literary estate for her lifetime only, all rights to revert to the Laura Ingalls Wilder Library after her death. The ensuing court case was settled in an undisclosed manner, but MacBride's heirs retained the rights.
| Preceded by: John Hospers | Libertarian Party Presidential candidate 1976 (lost) | Succeeded by: Ed Clark |