Editing Hiram Johnson (section)

===1912 vice presidential campaign===
{{Main|1912 United States presidential election}}
[[File:Roosevelt and Johnson after nomination LCCN2001697254 Trim.jpg|thumb|right|[[Theodore Roosevelt]] and Johnson shake hands after their nominations as president and vice president, respectively]]
In 1912, Johnson was a founder of the national [[Bull Moose Party|Progressive Party]] and ran as the party's [[Vice President of the United States|vice presidential]] candidate, sharing a ticket with former President [[Theodore Roosevelt]]. Roosevelt and Johnson narrowly carried California but finished second nationally behind the Democratic ticket of [[Woodrow Wilson]] and [[Thomas R. Marshall]]. Their second-place finish, ahead of incumbent Republican President [[William Howard Taft]], remains among the strongest for any [[Third party (politics)|third party]] in American history.

Johnson was [[1914 California gubernatorial election|re-elected governor of California in 1914]] as the Progressive Party candidate, gaining nearly twice the votes of his Republican opponent [[John D. Fredericks]].<ref>{{cite news |title=The only successful progressive leader |url=https://archive.org/stream/independen79v80newy#page/241/mode/1up |newspaper=The Independent |date=November 16, 1914 |access-date=July 24, 2012}}</ref> In 1917, as one of his final acts as governor before ascending to the U.S. Senate, Johnson signed Senate Constitutional Amendment 26, providing health insurance for all in the Golden State. Then it was put on the ballot for ratification. A coalition of insurance companies took out an ad in The Chronicle, warning it "would spell social ruin to the United States." Every voter in the state, as recounted in a recent issue of the New Yorker, "received in the mail a pamphlet with a picture of the Kaiser and the words 'Born in Germany. Do you want it in California?'" The ballot measure failed, 27%-73%.