Vermin Supreme: “Vote early. Vote often.”
Manchester, N.H. —A presidential candidate pulled into a rival’s diner campaign stop and promised, if elected, to re-invade Iraq and make it the 51st state. “Where do you stand on the free ponies for all Americans program?” he demanded
The prankster rhetoric issued from the bullhorn of 62-year-old Vermin Supreme, who has run for president every four years since 1988. He ran again on Tuesday in New Hampshire’s presidential primary.
He wasn’t the only outside-the-box character you never heard of whose name was on the ballot, and whose antics left something of an impression on the trail.
Amid the pursuit of presidential power this weekend in New Hampshire, a variety of other crusaders sought support for causes of their own, from national defense against electromagnetic nukes to free ponies for everyone and custom-fit bras with Wooster Square roots.
A total of 44 Democratic and Republican candidates courted voters, alongside citizen activists and entrepreneurs pushing their products and pet causes. They showed up at a variety of campaign events to siphon off media attention for themselves.
One of the biggest splashes was made by perennial presidential hopeful Supreme.
The Mandatory Tooth-Brushing Platform
As cameramen and TV reporters swarmed all over Texas U.S. Rep. Ron Paul’s SUV outside a morning campaign stop at a MoeJoe’s diner in Manchester, Supreme arrived with his inverted-boot headgear and nick-tie panoply.
“We are the media!” he called into a bullhorn. “We have you surrounded.”
He then challenged Ron Paul and Barack Obama to arm wrestling, leg wrestling, and pony wrestling.
Supreme said he’s the best in the field of candidates. “All politicians are vermin. I’m the Vermin Supreme, the friendly fascist, the tyrant you can trust.”
After heckling Paul’s motorcade out of the lot, Supreme laid out his four-part platform: mandatory tooth-brushing, zombie preparedness, time travel research (so he can go back in time and personally assassinate baby Hitler), and, of course, free ponies for all.
Click here to see his pun-riddled stump appearance at a candidate forum, complete with musical closing statement and fairy dust.
He pulled out his Massachusetts driver’s license to prove that his legal name is Vermin Love Supreme. The license also shows that he’s an organ donor.
Supreme was one 14 candidates on the Democratic ballot Tuesday, including President Obama. “I’m his primary primary challenger,” Supreme said.
He said he opted for a spot on the Democratic over the Republican ballot because he could pick up more votes in a less contested race.
“Freaks are my natural constituency,” he said. “I should have the freak vote all sewn up. … We’re winning by a landfill. We’re surging. We’re spewing Santorum all over the place.”
Jobs For All & An End To Rudeness
O’Donnell fields questions from the press.
Supreme shared the ballot with a 13 other Democratic candidates. Among the other contenders who put up $1,000 for a spot was 63-year-old Ed O’Donnell Jr.
On Sunday, the Delawarian spent some time at Occupy The New Hampshire Primary at Veterans Park in Manchester. He wore a homespun blue hat and pink sweater, an orange coat, and bright red loafers. The whole outfit was free from his local charity clothing outlet in Delaware, he said proudly.
O’Donnell said he runs a private charity in Delaware and also sells books and maps. He doesn’t own a cell phone, he said. “I live in the 17th century.”
Like Supreme, O’Donnell has been running for president since the ‘80s. His platform is similarly simple: No guns, no war, and guaranteed jobs for all Americans.
He said he’d accomplish the last point by convincing private charities to channel their money into providing housing and $40,000-per-year jobs to the nation’s homeless and prostitutes.
O’Donnell said he also has set of 30 “micro-issues” as part of his platform, like putting a stop to littering and ending rudeness everywhere.
O’Donnell acknowledged he’s a longshot for president. He’s more likely to make it to the oval office through an official appointment by Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, who will likely hand him the reins after the country’s imminent collapse, he said.
“They know who I am,” O’Donnell said. He said he’s known Biden for years through Delaware connections.
Greene Technology
Greene makes his pitch.
Also making a pitch at Occupy was Bob Greene, another name on the Democratic ballot. He had one issue: Thorium energy.
It’s nuclear power based on thorium instead of uranium, he said. Thorium is close to uranium on the Periodic Table, but it’s much more abundant, and safer and cleaner to work with, he said. Converting to thorium technology would save money, create jobs, fix the economy, and stop global warming, said Greene.
Thorium, unlike uranium, is naturally not radioactive, he said. That makes it a safer source of nuclear power, he said. “You do nothing and it will shut itself out.”
It’s been called “the new green nuke.”
The United States could develop the thorium technology, shut down all other power plants nationwide, end all oil imports, and then export the technology, creating an entirely new industry to rescue the economy, Greene said.
“We could replace all the fossil fuel plants in 50 years,” he said.
Greene, a 65-year-old retired engineer from Mountain View, California, said he’s been stumping in New Hampshire for about six weeks, staying at his sister’s place in Nashua.
Greene has no illusions about actually becoming president. He said he’s simply trying to make thorium a part of the conversation about national energy policy.
“A Nightmare Scenario”
Popik.
Outside a Jon Huntsman campaign event in Nashua on Monday, one man sought to raise the profile of another high-tech concern: electromagnetic warfare.
If someone sends a nuclear weapon to explode in the atmosphere over Kansas, it would send out an electromagnetic pulse that would fry electronics throughout the country, plunging the nation into darkness and chaos, Tom Popik warned.
Popik, who said he’s an economic researcher, pulled out a federal agenda for Monday that listed “Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Threat — Lessons Learned and Areas of Vulnerability” on the agenda of the Homeland Security Advisory Council.
Everyone knows the threat is real, but no one wants to talk about it, said Popik. “Elected officials don’t want to talk about it.” Politicians are afraid of alarming people and bring attention to their previous inactivity on the problem, he said.
Newt Gingrich was “savaged” in a December New York Times article for his concern about EMP, Popik said. He produced an “official rebuttal” to the Times article with several important names printed at the bottom, including former CIA director R. James Woolsey and an article from Russian news source Pravda, called “A Nightmare Scenario For America.”
Popik has created an organization to promote awareness of the threat of EMP, and he was hitting campaign events to get the word out.
“I’m going to every single campaign rally I can,” Popik said. He said he hadn’t managed to talk to any of the candidates yet, but had buttonholed a lot of reporters.
Ten Points For The First Lady
Ohly displays his wares by the side of the campaign trail.
Derek Ohly was also making the rounds of campaign events on Monday, traveling in a bus advertising his new bra company, Zyrra.
Ohly, who grew up in a “Pepe’s family” in Wooster Square and graduated from Hopkins Academy, said he said he’s developed a revolutionary 10-point measuring system that allows him to make custom-fit bras that fit like no other.
Unfortunately, his bras are now made in China, he said. He’d like to make them in the U.S., he said, hence his presence in New Hampshire. Ohly was trying to speak with candidates and reporters about the importance of making small business and manufacturing the center of economic policy.
Ohly said he got into the bra business after learning that 85 percent of women wear bras that don’t fit, and 95 percent don’t like bra shopping. Zyrra is based on a “party model,” in which bras are sold in women’s homes, like Tupperware.
He said his company now has five employees, plus 30 field sales staff who work on commission.
In a press release he was distributing, Ohly offered to make a custom-fit bra for the new First Lady to wear on inauguration day, if her candidate husband will meet with him to talk about entrepreneurship and U.S. manufacturing.
Previous primary coverage:
• Obama Wins In Landslide
• “Ron Paul Revolution” Brings Debate To Streets
• Romney Takes On The Occupiers
• Orthodoxy Broken; A Door Opens
• Occupiers Crash The Primary