Mary Michelle Nunn, November 16, 1966 (Macon, Ga.) -
VP candidate for Independent (2016)
Running mate with nominee: Gil Fulbright (b. 2014)
Popular vote: ? (0.00%)
Electoral vote: 0/538
The campaign:
RepresentUS is a Massachusetts-based nonprofit organization. Their elevator speech presented on their webpage reads: "We bring together conservatives, progressives, and everyone in between to pass powerful state and local laws that fix our broken elections and stop political bribery. Our strategy is central to dismantling the root causes of inequities in our democracy, and ending political corruption, extremism and gridlock."
In 2014 they cast actor Frank L. Ridley as satirical politician Honest Gil Fulbright and unofficially made him an Independent candidate for the US Senate in Kentucky, opposing solidly entrenched status-quo Republican Mitch McConnell. The Fulbright campaign was so successful in terms of garnering publicity it was clear before the 2014 electioneering was over that the 2016 Presidential campaign would be the next venue for delivering the anti-corruption message.
Fulbright's message in both the Senate and Presidential campaigns was delivered in the style of "If Politicians Were Really Honest." They were well produced and devastatingly funny. The candidate appeared in several social media platforms, made television appearances, speeches, and had a slick campaign website. Apparently in some polls he outperformed some of the lower tier professional politicians in the primary season. The package was presented in such a way that it could appeal to outsiders of all political stripes.
One of my favorite examples of his campaign style is found on a mock political ad posted on Youtube dated Sept. 21, 2015--
Hi, I'm Gil Fulbright, and the people who bankroll my political career tell me I'm running for President. So here I am.
Real hard-working Americans are important to me-- is a tagline I will be using throughout this entire campaign.
I may not be qualified to be President, but a dramatic camera angle can make me look like a President.
A President with the conviction to nod. The courage to point. And the experience to cram buzzwords into everything I jobs.
Ideas, policies, morals. These are things I don't need. What I need is two billion dollars.
Here's the part where I gloss over important issues. Issues like education, and making it, uh, good. The economy, and improving it by repeating the word "jobs." And bla bla bla, something to get votes from women and minorities.
I have a 5 step plan for making America better. [1] A field of special interests, billionaires and lobbyists behind closed doors [2] Raise two billion dollars [3] Promise you earnestly that it'll be different this time [4] Get elected [5] Break all my promises to you and work tirelessly for the big donors who bought my Presidency.
Any time I can pull a favor for special interests, it always gives me a huge donor. And at this point my political career, any time I can get a donor that lasts longer than four years, well ...
Every four years Americans are faced with a critical choice. Clinton, or, Bush. Or someone else. Well, I'm Gil Fulbright, with a big enough donor, I can be that someone else.
I'm Honest Gil Fulbright, and I approve of whatever my marketing team has put into this message.
It all reminds me of a comment an elderly man at a bus stop made to me about 45 years ago during election time. This gentleman had no doubt lived through two world wars, the Great Depression, the McCarthy era, the Korean War, JFK-MLK-RFK assassinations, Vietnam War, Teapot Dome and Watergate. He said, "Yes, it's a two-party system-- the Greedy and the Gullible."
The closest I could find to Fulbright's choice for a VP was in a post on his Facebook page created on July 29, 2014, when he was still running for the US Senate. Introduced with the declaration, "I think I found my running mate!" he provided a link to a Huffington Post article by Paul Blumenthal headlined "Leaked Memo Tells Senate Candidate To Spend 80 Percent Of Her Time Raising Money." The subject of the piece was centrist Democrat Michelle Nunn, who was making a run for the US Senate in Georgia. The memo outlined the relationship between raising money from targeted groups and political rhetoric, serving as a perfect real life example of what Fulbright was satirizing.
Nunn did not win the Senate election, and as far as I can tell, Fulbright never subsequently came up with another name for a running mate. As an aside, Michelle's father, Sen. Sam Nunn, had his own name bandied about as a potential third party Vice-Presidential nominee in 1996 for Ross Perot's second Presidential campaign under the Reform Party banner.
Although Nunn was certainly within the legal parameters of becoming Vice-President, Gil Fulbright as a fictitious character would have posed an interesting legal problem in the event of their victory.
Election history:
2014 - US Senate (Ga.) (Democratic) - defeated
Other occupations: president and CEO of CARE USA, CEO of Points of Light, President's Council on Service and Civic Participation
Notes:
In 2006 Michelle Nunn was named by Georgia Trend as one of the 100 most influential Georgians.
Ridley had a role in the most excellent film Birdman around the same time he ran as Fulbright for the US Senate.
