Darcy G. Richardson

Bio of Darcy G. Richardson Candidate for President

Darcy G. Richardson (D-POTUS)

Biography from DARCY RICHARDSON 2012

A former senior specialist in the insurance industry-turned-entrepreneur, Darcy G. Richardson was born one of ten children to William and Shirley Richardson in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania. The son of a career U.S. Air Force officer and municipal manager, Darcy and his nine siblings grew up in various parts of the United States and West Germany before returning to western Pennsylvania — the birthplace of both of his parents — in the early 1970s.

Darcy, 56, has authored six books, including five volumes of a planned seven-volume history on independent and third-party politics in the United States, and is completing several other books. He is currently finishing a book about the country’s current economic crisis, tentatively titled, Collapse: How the Managerial Class Plunged the Nation into the Greatest Depression, which will be published next spring. He is also working on a biography of the late Harold E. Stassen of Minnesota.

A freelance writer and former editor of Consumers Voice, the bi-monthly publication of the Philadelphia-based Consumers Education & Protective Association (CEPA), Darcy is also the author of A Nation Divided: The 1968 Presidential Campaign, published in 2002.

Long active in American politics, Darcy Richardson has rubbed shoulders with some of the best-known political figures of the past three decades. In addition to managing one of the late Minnesota Senator Eugene J. McCarthy’s presidential campaigns and serving as a senior advisor in another, Darcy ran for Pennsylvania Auditor General in 1980 and for the U.S. Senate eight years later. He also served as campaign manager for Dr. John J. Logue, founder and director of Villanova University’s Common Heritage Institute, during his 1982 bid for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination from Pennsylvania.

A former Democratic precinct committeeman, Darcy co-founded the “New Democrats” in 1989, a progressive faction within the national Democratic Party whose advisory board included ex-Senator McCarthy, Larry Agran, the former mayor of Irvine, California, and longtime left-wing political activist Zolton Ferency, a former Michigan State University criminal justice professor.

In a 1991 special election in Pennsylvania’s 2nd congressional district, Darcy gave up a coveted spot on the ballot so that U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah, then a young African-American state senator from West Philadelphia, could run for the seat being vacated by Democratic Majority Whip William H. Gray, who resigned from Congress to become president of the United Negro College Fund. Fattah, a longtime community activist, captured the seat three years later and is currently serving in his ninth term in the U.S. House of Representatives.

In addition to writing for numerous local and national publications, Darcy has also been a guest on several nationally-syndicated radio talk shows, including the progressive Thom Hartmann Show. He has also appeared on dozens of local talk shows, including “Arnie” Arnesen’s popular radio program in New Hampshire.

Richardson’s books on American history and politics — one of which earned an Outstanding Academic Title (OAT) from scholarly Choice magazine in 2005 — were cited in Newsweek’s “What You Need to Read” section in July 2010.

Disappointed by President Obama’s abandonment of many of the progressive values that he articulated so eloquently — and passionately — during the 2008 presidential campaign, coupled with the President’s capitulation to the GOP on issue after issue and his glaring inability to pull the country out of the ever-prolonged “Great Recession,” Darcy announced his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination on October 25th.