In 1988, he accepted the Green Party nomination for governor of New York saying, "we don't inherit the world from our ancestors, we borrow it from our kids".
Although he lost to incumbent Republican Governor George Pataki, he still managed to collect more than 52,000 votes with his name on the ballot as "Grandpa Al Lewis."
Lewis' first political work was for the Sacco and Vanzetti defence committee. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian anarchists, were executed in Massachusetts in 1927 for a double murder and robbery amid doubts about their guilt.
Lewis worked in the 1930s to free the Scottsboro Boys - nine black teenagers accused of raping two white women in another highly publicised case.
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