Adlai Estes

Blue text on a white background with a blue outer edge

This button is supporting the 1956 Democratic presidential ticket of Adlai Stevenson and Estes Kevauver. Stevenson and Kefauver lost the election to incumbent President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Vice President Richard M. Nixon 57.4% to 42%. 1956 was the second time Stevenson lost the election for U.S. president. In 1952, he and Senator John Sparkman of Alabama lost to Eisenhower and Nixon, 55% to 45%.

Stevenson had served as Governor of Illinois from 1949-1953 and, following his presidential runs, served as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations from 1961-1965. During the October, 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Stevenson presented U-2 spy plane photos to the UN Security Council that showed evidence of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba.

Kefauver, a US senator from Tennessee, still held his senate seat after the 1956 defeat. He was named chair of the U.S. Senate Antitrust and Monopoly Subcommittee in 1957. He co-authored the 1962 Kefauver-Harris Amendments, which required drug manufacturers to disclose drug side effects and allowed their drugs to become available generically after the patents expired.