Larry Agran  

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Lawrence Alan Agran (born February 2, 1945) is a former mayor and city councilman of Irvine, California.

In 1992, Agran unsuccessfully sought the Democratic Party nomination for president. Agran was generally ignored by the media during his candidacy, a topic heavily covered in the 1995 Brian Springer documentary Spin.

The media did not report his polling numbers even as he met or exceeded the support of other candidates such as Jerry Brown. Party officials excluded him from most debates on various grounds, even having him arrested when he interrupted to ask to participate. When he managed to join the other candidates in a forum, his ideas went unreported.

Despite holding only a local office and being unknown outside California, in a poll on January 22, 1992, he tied with two well-known national politicians: Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa and the former governor of his home state, Jerry Brown.

ARG pollster Dick Bennett thought that, had that surprise strength in the polls been played up by news organizations, the result might well have been a further rise in the polls. However, Bennett said, the press completely ignored the story, and he began to sink.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors led to the first significant mention of his campaign in The New York Times. In a January 24 article, Richard Berke noted that, after listening to the candidates, "dozens of Mayors . . . seemed to agree on one thing: the single candidate who truly understands urban needs is Larry Agran". Some major candidates also participated. Although Agran was regarded by his colleagues as the most experienced in the urban area themes, his performance did not meet a big response in media.

According to Carole Florman, organizer of the Global Warming Leadership Forum in Tallahassee in February (in which Agran participated), "the audience "was more enthusiastic about Larry Agran than about Bill Clinton".

Despite his success in these events, Agran performed poorly in the New Hampshire primary, but did pick up modest support in later primaries as a protest candidate with appeal to those unhappy with the other candidates. He received three votes at the 1992 Democratic National Convention.

Agran was excluded from every TV debate, along with some other minor candidates, such as Eugene McCarthy.




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Larry Agran" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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