RIP. He helped Reagan score the electoral vote landslide in 1980. As a “moderate” Republican he syphoned off dissatisfied Democrat votes from Carter, especially in Carters home south.
My only quibble is, whatever he may have been intending to do, he sort of helped get Reagan elected -- although had he not run, and every last vote had shifted to Carter (which is damned unlikely), Reagan would still have beaten Carter by 3 or 4 percent -- assuming they'd have shown up, which I doubt. Even Eugene "Clean Gene" McCarthy, arch-lib, and a POTUS candidate in 1968, 1972, and 1976, had endorsed Reagan over Carter due to Jimmuh's incompetenece.
The Libertarians ran Ed Clark with David (of the Koch brothers) for VP, and had a plank in favor of gay rights and illegal alien amnesty (the Wiki-aholes call them "undocumented non-citizens"), and abolition of the NLRA and Right to Work, as well as the war on drugs, the draft, and what JFK had called "brushfire wars". They pulled about one percent.
The obnoxious leftist demagogue and all-around loudmouthed **** Barry Commoner scooped up some more Carter votes, but even his activists probably relented when they got to the ballot box.