Story Created:
Feb 4, 2009 at 8:47 PM PST
Story Updated:
Feb 4, 2009 at 8:49 PM PST
Democratic activist Stephen L. Zetterberg, whose unsuccessful 1948 bid for Congress bolstered Richard M. Nixon's political ascent in the 1950s, has died of natural causes. He was 92.
Zetterberg died Friday at his Claremont home, one of his sons told the Los Angeles Times.
The Claremont attorney ran against Nixon, then a first-term congressman from Whittier, when a practice called cross-filing was in wide use in California, The Times reported.
It allowed Republicans to run in Democratic primaries and Democrats in Republican primaries without naming their party affiliation. The system favored incumbents, who were listed first on the ballot.
Zetterberg, pushed to take on Nixon when no other credible Democrat could be enlisted, refused to cross-file because he thought it was unethical, but Nixon apparently had no such scruples and was listed as the incumbent on both parties' ballot, The Times reported.
"I encountered many voters who thought that Rep. Nixon was a Democrat, and some showed me their sample ballots to prove it," Zetterberg recalled in a 1972 article for The Times.
Nixon defeated Zetterberg by more than 4,000 votes and won reelection in the general election, according to The Times. He later won a U.S. Senate seat in 1950, the vice presidency under Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 and the White House in 1968.
Years later, Zetterberg called himself ``the sacrificial lamb" who was "dispatched so mercilessly" early in Nixon's steady march toward the nation's highest office.
Zetterberg is survived by three sons, a daughter and nine grandchildren. His wife of 67 years died in 2007.
A memorial service is planned in about a month for Zetterberg, who was cremated, The Times reported.
RSS Feeds 
