Contentious candidates? USA has a way to go.
A candidate who claims that progressive taxes on the rich is socialism but then proposed a flat tax to tax the rich? Another who claims dealing with North Korea is best with Nukes? And who can forget the longest run up to the 2020 election, my man Yeezy? Has this Presidential race hit the peak of contentious candidates? I think not! America you have a long way to go.
The good ol’ US of A has had a number of outstanding individuals to hit the peak of impassioned, heated and down right cray-cray candidacies in the last few decades. Take Ficus, who Michael Moore stood for New Jersey’s 11th District. I’m not going out on a limb when I say the Ficus campaign stumped many, as it failed to seed a successful groundswell, particularly in the well rooted Democrat and Republican safe electorates. I’m knot joking at all! Haw-Haw… right, Dad jokes aside we’ll leaf this one alone.
Bob Quast is another outstanding example of a US candidate for 2014 Iowa Congress. He smiled when talking about blowing someones balls off and is ready to defend every article of that beloved constitution!
While those are some good solid examples of contentiousness we need to travel further afield to find some other Candidates who take the term ‘unique’ in a very literal sense.
Lord Toby Jug, not a real Lord nor a object to carry tea, but a serial campaigner and candidate ran for a number of seats for the UK ‘Official Monster Raving Loony Party’. While the party which scrapes in anti-establishment votes is not unusual or unique in terms of Jug, he was reportedly expelled from the party. This was due to an internal split with his attacks on UKIP leader Farage and his exception of media claims that UKIP are in fact loony. He now finds home in his new political party the ‘The Eccentric Party of Great Britain’.
Brits love their football, as do I, yet even I had not heard of the little known club of Hartlepool United F.C. which has its home in the small town of Hartlepool. The club sits in League Two in Britain, a place they pride after spending the majority of their 107 year existence in third division. Hartlepool was reportedly home to a recalcitrant monkey who was the sole survivor of an attempted invasion during the Napoleonic wars and was subsequently hanged for his unabashed Frenchness. The most sensible mascot then for the small Hartlepool United? H’Angus the Monkey of course!
H’Angus, or Stuart Drummond, decided as a stunt to run for Mayor of Hartlepool in 2002. Much to the exasperation of Labour the monkey swung to victory and famously declared a phrase that is unlikely to ever be matched “I am Stuart Drummond, I am the Mayor of Hartlepool, not the monkey”. Drummond was unable to achieve his non-core electoral promise of free bananas for schoolchildren but he reigned supreme of Hartlepool until a referendum ended the Mayoral post in 2012, 10 years after he was elected and subsequently re-elected twice, sans monkey suit.
Australia too has its round of eccentric candidates who are fielded from unexpected corners of the world. Take the Wikileaks champion himself Julian Assange, who I assume will get a copy of this in that giant techno-galaxy saved on some sort of hard drive in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Hi Julian! Anyway, Julian, an Australian, decided to form his own political party called the Wikileaks party in 2012 after hosting his own chat show on a Russian network. Needless to say he was not elected and may still be part of the ever expanding table cloth Senate voting paper that is one of the staples of Australian Federal democracy, along with the sausage sizzle supporting the local club of course.
Controversial or ill-advised candidates are not a new occurrence either. Take E.V.B. Sampson who ran in my own home area for the State seat of Wollondilly for the Independent Country Party. On a platform of appearing very Australian, so much so he decided in 1954 to parade his family in front of the new medium of television. Sampson was not elected and also couldn’t have his other sons with him because ‘too busy to be here’.
Finally a candidate from a galaxy far, far, away and further afield from Ukraine. The candidate for the mayor in the Ukrainian city of Odessa that takes the crown for the oddest is not the literal Peking Duck that ran against him rather it is the Sith Lord himself, Darth Vader. Launching his campaign that would doubtlessly end with annihilation of Alderaan, Darth saw the Lenin statue removal and replacement with a statue of himself.
So you see, dear reader, no matter where you are from in the world the candidates on the other side just get stranger and stranger. The likes of Bern, Carson, Hillary and Trump have a way to go before they take the mantle of controversy.
