Although Byrd never again formally sought the presidency nor became his party's candidate, Southern Democrats drafted him in several campaigns between 1944 and 1960. At the 1944 Democratic National Convention, Southern delegates opposed to Roosevelt's New Deal and racial policies nominated Byrd as the party's presidential candidate. He was nominated by Ruth Nooney of Florida, who said she did so without his knowledge or consent. He won 89 delegate votes to Roosevelt's 1,086 (James Farley of New York got one vote). All the convention delegates from Louisiana, Mississippi and Virginia, and 12 of the 36 delegates from Texas voted for Byrd. In 1952, both the Constitution Party and the America First Party nominated Byrd for vice president, and Douglas MacArthur for president, without the consent of either. The slate got 17,205 votes nationwide. In 1956, the year that Byrd initiated the "massive resistance" campaign, the States' Rights Party of Kentucky named Byrd as a presidential candidate. He received 2,657 votes in that state; in South Carolina, in the same election, he received 88,509 votes as the choice of an independent (i.e. unpledged) slate of electors with the endorsement of former governor James Byrnes and Senator Strom Thurmond.