Megan A. Adams, December 19, 1955 (Chicago, Ill.) -
VP candidate for Independent (1992)
Running mate with nominee: Eileen Myles (b. 1949)
Popular vote: ? (0.00%)
Electoral vote: 0/538
The campaign:
Eileen Myles of New York described herself as, "a 41 year old American, a female, a lesbian, from a working class background, a poet, performer and writer." She ran for President starting in Apr. 1991 as a write-in with the belief the major parties were not addressing the Gay community, women, or the working poor.
More on her reason for entering the race (from Sept. 1991):
The initial impulse to run for office was spurred on by George Bush's speech at a college graduation in Ann Arbor, Michigan last Spring. He stated that "the politically correct" are the greatest threat to freedom of speech in America today. By that he means members of ACT-UP, victims of bias crimes: women, homosexuals, ethnic and racial minorities. He would like them to shut up. As President he functions as a grand employer who has a complaint box. Each of us may get our two cents in. Once. After that we're on our own because there is no special treatment for the vast majority of Americans today. There is very special treatment for white upper middle class heterosexual men and their spouses and children, there is such treatment for fundamentalist Christians and fetuses.
Myles sold enough bumper stickers and buttons as she incorporated her electioneering as part of her performance art circuit to help cover the cost, making it in her words "a break-even campaign."
Her platform ("What's a platform? It's just a wish list") included forcing candidates to write their own speeches, creating a Cabinet level Dept. of Culture, free health care, taxing assets and holdings rather than income, and she would refuse to live in the White House as long as there are homeless people in America.
A couple more quotes:
More Americans, far more Americans are like me than George Bush. Why is he ruling this country and our lives?
I'm running for president because I'm shocked awake by my life and yours & congress is not. They're bought. The presidency is sold every four years. I don't know why they bother. The same people always seem to buy it. Why don't they admit it's theirs. No matter how you feel about the New Alliance Party Lenora Fulani has gotten enough contributions to get federal funds but she's still not getting coverage. Black woman, forget that.
When you step in the booth on election day, do a write in vote. I think it's like this big blank wall on the border. How you do it--you illuminate it, your write in vote. Not Clinton, not Bush, not Perot, maybe me. You'll be alone in that booth, & it's so dirty, like a peephole or a dressing room or a confession. But you're really not so free-- until, pen in hand, you pull the lever, you push the button ... you spread the metal wings above the title "President," and an empty white space appears, empty as poetry, and this is your freedom of speech.
As a person who writes-in a name on the ballot at least once in almost every election, I must admit I love that last quote.
Myles' campaign-performance circuit ("an endurance performance piece," she later called it) was different than the parallel election efforts of Joan Jett Blakk and the Queer Nation Party. Her style was more personal, less flamboyant, and had more emphasis on economic class. Both campaigns were not adequately covered by the media.
The campaign took Myles through 28 states although it isn't really clear in how many of them she was a registered write-in. It does appear she was was a certified write-in in Montana where her running-mate was listed as Megan Adams. The VP nominee was a poet based in San Francisco and I could not locate much information about her role in the election.
Like many other write-ins, no votes were recorded or reported for the Myles/Adams ticket so we'll never know the true tally.
Election history: none.
Other occupations: poet, author, software company owner
Notes:
McAdams software
