Forget DeSantis or Trump And Give Me Wavy Gravy and Albert ‘The Impaler’ Sharkey
The fascist in waiting, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, wants to kill drug traffickers with no due process.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Democratic candidate for president, insists. among other crazy conspiracy theories, that the COVID-19 pandemic was a plot to overthrow the government.
And trump, you know about trump and Boebert and Greene and Gaetz, and all the rest: BORING. We can do better.
Give me Wavy Gravy, the famous Ficus, Jello Biafra, Joan Jett Blakk or Deez Nuts, or I could support Vermin Love Supreme or Jonathon Albert “The Impaler” Sharkey or even that perennial losing favorite, “Nobody for President.” At least none of these previous candidates for high office put you to sleep or scared the democracy out of you.
Wavy Gravy, aka Hugh Nanton Romney Jr., 87, is an entertainer and peace activist best known for his role in helping to run the Woodstock festival, as well as for his hippie persona and countercultural beliefs. As the official clown of the Grateful Dead, Wavy Gravy founded or co-founded several organizations, including the activist commune the Hog Farm, Camp Winnarainbow and the Seva Foundation.
The “Nobody for President” movement began in 1975 with a conversation about voter apathy between anti-war activist Curtis Spangler and Wavy Gravy, at the United State Cafe, in, where else, Haight Street in San Francisco. Spangler pointed out that many people were not registering to vote and around half of those who could vote, did not show up at the polls.
“You mean ‘Nobody’ is winning Presidential elections?” Wavy Gravy said, sparking the eventual creation of the “Birthday Party” and the “Nobody for President Campaign,” with Wavy Gravy as the face of the campaign, playing “Nobody’s Fool” and Spangler as the “Birthday Party” campaign manager.
Wavy Gravy had earlier led a mock campaign to elect a rock as president with a dinner roll as the rock’s running mate was a dinner roll. The campaign slogan was “Rock and Roll Forever.”
Spangler and Wavy Gravy launched a cross-country tour on Oct. 12, 1976, with a rally at San Francisco’s Civic Center Plaza. Wavy Gravy wore clown makeup, a blue track suit, and a propeller cap. In addressing the crowd, Wavy Gravy was represented by a pair of plastic, wind-up teeth that chattered away before a microphone as people asked questions about domestic and foreign policy.
A “Nobody for President” campaign rally was held across from the White House on Nov. 4, 1980. Yippies and a few anarchists gathered to promote the option of “none of the above” choice on the ballot, as in, “Nobody’s Perfect,” “Nobody Keeps All Promises,” “Nobody Should Have That Much Power” and “Who’s in Washington right now working to make the world a safer place? Nobody!”
The Nobody campaign continues to this day at nobodyforpresident.org, promoting the belief that “Nobody” should be included as an option on all ballots so that voters wouldn’t be forced to choose between the lesser of two evils.
“None of the above”, or NOTA for short, is actually a ballot option in some places designed to allow voters to indicate disapproval of all of the candidates.
“None of the Above” is on ballots in India, Greece, the state of Nevada, Ukraine, Belarus, Spain, North Korea, Colombia, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bulgaria. If “None of the Above” wins, a variety of procedures are invoked, such as having the office remain vacant, having the office filled by appointment, re-opening nominations or holding another election. Or it may have no effect, as in India and Nevada, where the next highest total wins.
Vermin Love Supreme is a performance artist who campaigned for president in 2012 when he walked around with a boot on his head while carrying an enormous toothbrush. He promised a new law requiring all Americans to brush their teeth, research devoted to the concept of time travel, a free pony to everyone in the nation, and zombie apocalypse awareness. He vowed to harness “the awesome power of zombies for energy sources” by dangling brains in front of zombies to lure them into turning turbines.
Supreme, whose former birth name is unclear, ran in every presidential election from 2004 to 2020. He is a registered Republican but his political views are somewhere between Republicanism and Libertarianism. He is a movie producer and actor, both of little renown, and was a nuclear disarmament activist, participating in the 1986 Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament.
Joan Jett Blakk, aka Terence Smith, is a Chicago drag performer who ran in the early 1990s for Mayor of Chicago and President. In running on the Queer Nation Party ticket, her 1992 presidential campaign slogan was “Lick Bush in ‘92!” and in 1996 she challenged Bill Clinton with the slogan “Lick Slick Willie in ‘96!”
The African-American actor and writer was an outspoken critic of America’s healthcare crisis saying, “The U.S. is the only industrialized nation without a national health care policy. That’s a joke.”
In 2019, Blakk received the Queer Art Prize for Sustained Achievement for her “memorable presidential campaign and for her powerful dedication to the lives of Black, LGBTQ+ communities across the nation.”
Jello Biafra, born Eric Reed Boucher, was a singer with the Dead Kennedys punk rock group who first ran against Dianne Feinstein for mayor of San Francisco in 1979. His platform included banning cars from city limits, making police run for reelection in the neighborhoods they patrolled and establishing a “Board of Bribery” in an attempt to set standard public rates. Biafra came in fourth out of 10 candidates.
Biafra was drafted in 2000 for the Green Party Presidential primary and chose as running mate, Mumia Abu-Jamal, an activist and journalist who was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. If elected, Biafra promised to enact a maximum wage, abolish the military, and lower the voting age to five. The Green Party, however, selected Ralph Nader as the presidential candidate with 295 of the 319 delegate votes. Biafra received 10 votes.
Biafra was active in the Nader campaigns in 2004 and 2008. He said his mission was to help “bring the spirit of punk into the Greens — (and) make the party rock.”
“Deez Nuts” was actually 15-year-old Brady Olson from Wallingford, Iowa. He scored fairly high polling numbers as a third party candidate in the 2016 presidential election but his campaign ended because he was too young to legally run for office. He ran because he said he was “frustrated with the two-party system.”
In 2015, Deez Nuts announced on his Facebook page his intention to run for Speaker of the House of Representatives, citing his eligibility despite not being a member of the House and the scarcity of candidates. A poll in mid-August 2016 showed Deez Nuts slightly edging out Jill Stein, with 3 percent of the vote. Harambe, a dead gorilla, finished third. Stein also unsuccessfully ran for President in 2012 and 2016.
Olson later enrolled at the University of Iowa to study finance and said in 2019, “I don’t foresee ever running again.”
Jonathon Albert “The Impaler” Sharkey, 59, is a self-professed vampire and former professional wrestler also known as Rocky Adonis Flash and Lord Ares. Sharkey ran for president as a reform candidate in 2000 and as an independent in 2004 and 2008.
Originally a boxer, Sharkey began wrestling in 1988. He said he first drank blood when he was 5 and consumed the blood of his girlfriends and mistresses twice a week. He described his vampirism as “a very healthy thing to do” and drinks only women’s blood because “women are beautiful… they have such beautiful necks and arms.”
Sharkey was a Luciferian who “turned against God” because he would not worship a God who “caused the deaths of innocent children” and “allowed his only son to be used as a sacrifice on the cross.”
Luciferians worship the essential characteristics of Lucifer, not as the devil, but “as a destroyer, a guardian, liberator, light bringer or guiding spirit to darkness, or even the true god as opposed to Yahweh.”
Sharkey ran for President twice as an Independent candidate in 2004 and 2008 and once as a Republican in 2012. He ran for Congress in New Jersey in 1999, Indiana in 2000, Florida in 2001and ran in 2006 for governor of Minnesota.
Sharkey called President George W. Bush a “wuss” and a communist who was responsible for the deaths of innocent Americans in Saudi Arabia and Iraq. He said Bush should have been tried, convicted and impaled.
Regarding his policy on crime, Sharkey said, “Certain criminals, instead of being put in jail, they should be brutally tortured and impaled…. Upon them being found guilty of their crimes I’ll beat them, torture them, dismember them and decapitate them.”
A potted plant called a “Ficus” was a write-in, congressional candidate in 2000 in New Jersey’s 11th District. The chief campaign strategist was satirical filmmaker Michael Moore.
“Most candidates run unopposed in their primaries and 95 percent are re-elected every time in the general election. What we get from these Congressmen-for-life is a lot of hot air, a bunch of promises that are never kept, problems like health care and education that are never addressed, more taxes for a bigger military when there are no wars, and a bigger paycheck for Congress when they don’t deserve it,” Moore said in promoting the Ficus.
Moore said in an interview with Democracy Now, that the Ficus “will never vote to put the U.S. into any sort of war or invade a country. This Ficus will never try to block a woman’s right to choose what to do with her own body. This Ficus will not cause any harm to the environment. In fact, just the opposite, this Ficus does something that no politician can do: it creates photosynthesis, so, you know, it gives us oxygen.”
It was the unfulfilled hope that the New Jersey Ficus could spark a new branch of government as more than 20 Ficus plants were challenging incumbents around the country.
The Ficus got 11 more signatures than were required to be on the N.J. ballot but the state Election Division rejected the plant as a candidate because it wasn’t a New Jersey resident and was never registered to vote.
And the incumbent, Republican Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, breathed a sigh of relief.