When voters go to the polls in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, Reddington “Red” Jahncke ’72 wants them to remember that he can’t win.

That, he says, is his best shot.

While the Democratic frontrunners crisscross the Granite State hoping for the chance to face President Bush, this investment banker turned anti-war crusader has a different target: Vice President Dick Cheney.

Jahncke is one of two candidates on the Republican ballot in the nation’s sole vice presidential primary.

Because under the current electoral system, the presidential nominee picks his own running-mate, win or lose, Tuesday will be the end of the campaign trail for Jahncke, of Greenwich, Conn.

But Jahncke says that’s what makes him the perfect protest candidate.

“I’m an efficient vote. I’m a 30 second decision,” he says. “No one has to evaluate me and my character.”

Jahncke portrays his candidacy as a referendum that will bring together an anti-war vote that would otherwise be split among the Democratic candidates.

“One does not do this with any illusion that you’ll be a vice presidential nominee,” he says. “I’m the equivalent of a ballot initiative to oppose and change the current administration’s foreign policy doctrine of unilateralism as expressed in the Iraq war.”

He offers voters the option of a protest vote that won’t cost them their chance to choose among the high-profile presidential candidates.

“For an unknown to offer himself as a president is a quixotic adventure,” Jahncke says. “But the vice-presidential slot allows them to still vote for a major national candidate and vote for me.”

Though he describes himself as an independent, Jahncke says he chose to run on the Republican Party’s primary ballot to make it explicit that he is a direct challenge to Cheney, whom he calls the “principal architect” of America’s foreign policy. He suggests Democrats vote for him as a write-in.

But in another twist of the New Hampshire political wheel, Cheney’s name won’t even be on the ballot; Jahncke’s sole opposition will be another anti-war candidate, Flora Bleckner of Hewlett Harbor, Long Island.

Anatomy of a Plan

The idea behind Jahncke’s bid for the nation’s second highest post took root last year, but the sentiment behind it is decades old.