Just days after Texas senator Ted Cruz announced that he would seek the Republican Party’s nomination in the quest to take the White House in next year’s US presidential election, Irish bookmakers Paddy Power have named Hillary Clinton, as yet undeclared, as the frontrunner to be seated in the Oval Office come January 2017.
But before Clinton can take up the office her husband occupied for almost all of the 1990s, not only will be have to secure the Democratic ticket, and spar with the Republican candidate, she’ll also have to poll better than New York’s Sydneys Voluptous Buttocks and Florida’s President Emperor Caesar, the rest of the other near 204 people who’ve already signed up with the US’ Federal Election Commission.
Buttocks' official registration documents [IrregularTimes]
On today’s Moncrieff, Sean will be chatting to Christina Bellantoni, the editor-in-chief of Roll Call, a newspaper reporting from Capitol Hill, about these fringe and fearless candidates, ordinary and extraordinary people who decide to stand for the highest political office in America, and what their candidacy represents.
Tune in live today at 2pm: http://www.newstalk.com/player/
The long-shot hopefuls have all earned the right to stand for commander in chief by filing the necessary paperwork with the FEC, and represent diverse political bodies and ideologies: as well as Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, the groups is also made up of members of the Libertarian Party, the American Party, the Green Party, and those claiming no affiliation to anyone but their candidacy.
The US magazine the National Journal first reported on the cavalcade of unusual candidates for the 2016 election, with the publication’s political pundit describing the pool as representing “the eccentric and, occasionally, the paranoid” underbelly of modern America.
Reaching out to several of the declared hopefuls from the official FEC registry, the magazine posed a number of questions to the candidates about their campaigns.
Larry Scarbourough, of Bakersfield, California, took the unusual strategy of replying to journalist Emma Roller by saying: “Ma’am, I don’t do phone calls. Goodbye.”
Libertarian candidate Marc Allan Feldman, an anaesthesiologist from Ohio, was far more talkative about his ambitions and what propelled his new career in politics: "It's a pretty low bar," he said about the ease he had officially registering his candidacy, which appears to be built on frugality and repairing broken electoral systems (and calculators, which he outlines on his Instagram account):
A photo posted by Marc Feldman (@votesnotforsale) on Mar 14, 2015 at 6:28pm PDT
The registration process is simple: provided you were born in the United States, you simply fill out the FEC form and return it to their offices, along with information regarding your name, address, party affiliation, and the office seat you wish to contend. If that is all done correctly, the FEC then assigns one of its analysts to your account.
Of course, the odds of one of these fringe candidates rising all the way to the White House are probably more than Paddy Power would be willing to pay out on, but after seeing Sydneys Buttocks campaign video – asking fans of love to give him their support – it might just be worth a punt:
