Cindy Lee Miller Sheehan, July 10, 1957 (Inglewood, Calif.) -
VP candidate for Peace and Freedom Party (aka Americans Elect aka Independent) (2012)
Running mate with nominee: Roseanne Cherrie Barr (b. 1952)
Popular vote: 67,477 (0.05%)
Electoral vote: 0/538
The campaign:
In late Jan. 2012 Roseanne Barr filed with the FEC for President as a candidate of the Green Party. A few months earlier the sitcom star had announced her intention to run while a guest on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. "I'm totally serious," Barr said, "'Cause I want to be part of the debates, because I want to represent the tax payer. In fact, I'm choosing the tax payers as my vice president ... I'm not for either party because they both suck and they're both a bunch of criminals ... So I made up my own party. It's the Green Tea Party."
Barr entered the Green Party primaries but lost the nomination to Jill Stein. However, Barr was able to parlay that momentum into gaining the Presidential nomination of the Peace and Freedom Party. Her running-mate was a PFP member, antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan.
Sheehan had become a national figure after her son Casey was killed in action in Iraq on Apr. 4, 2004 while serving in the US Army. The event radicalized Sheehan who staged a series of dramatic events protesting at first the Bush, then later the Obama administration military policies. Sheehan had progressively moved to the Left in the course of her political journey, starting as a California Democrat, then running against Nancy Pelosi in 2008 as an Independent, Sheehan found a home with the Peace and Freedom Party in 2010. Although she has sort of fallen off the radar in recent years, in 2012 Cindy Sheehan was a frequent name in the headlines. A faction of the Socialist Party USA had approached Sheehan to run as their VP, but the internal SPUSA politics prevented that from happening.
The Barr/Sheehan team did not last long. Living on her macadamia nut farm in Hawaii, Barr had an idea of running the campaign strictly online, admitting that she hated "to be around people or touch them," and "that there's going to be weirdos there that want to kill me."
Some of Barr's activities and statements as a PFP nominee made the Party uncomfortable and for sure Barr herself candidly acknowledged a long history of challenges with mental illness. It became evident she embraced a few unfounded conspiracy theories (e.g. she spoke at the The Consciousness Beyond Chemtrails Conference during the campaign) and also was one of the early Presidential candidates to find herself in trouble over messages she created on Twitter, an example being comments she wrote that resulted in charges that she was transphobic.
A month into the campaign, Sheehan posted this on her blog Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox--
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
No Longer on Campaign. Formal announcement
For personal and health reasons, I regret that I have to pull out of active participation in the Barr/Sheehan 2012 campaign. I strongly believe in the Platform as written, and the mission statement of the Peace and Freedom Party, and hope to continue my activism when my health improves. As to the personal reasons, Candidate Barr and I have irreconcilable differences on how best to serve the Peace and Freedom Party. I believe between my health issues and the disparity of our Political approach; both the Campaign, Ms Barr and the Party would be better served by my resignation. I wish nothing but good things for the Party and campaign.
UPDATE I: APPARENTLY, IT IS TOO LATE ACCORDING TO STATE POLICIES FOR ME TO RESIGN FROM THE TICKET, BUT I AM WITHDRAWING ACTIVE PARTICIPATION IN CAMPAIGNING. SO, I WILL STILL BE THE VP CHOICE ON BALLOTS (CINDY)
On Feb. 12, 2015, Sheehan elaborated a bit more on the subject in hindsight, including the following passages--
The few weeks that I was her running mate were devastating for me. I had known Roseanne for years before that star-crossed collaboration and I considered her a friend.
Roseanne was flawed, of course, as are we all. But I saw a person who I truly believed was committed to the same principles that I was, but Twitter is not Barr’s friend and she started to tweet some things that were 180 degrees from the platform of the party and my own personal platform, such as: “If people go on welfare, birth control should be mandatory.”
Side note: I also disagreed that our entire campaign should be by tweet, especially ones that were so contrary to what we, as a party, stand for.
Then some people have defended her most recent foray into outrageousness by saying exactly that, “She is famous for saying outrageous things.” Well, so am I, but I only consider what I say outrageous in the context of Imperial Capitalism like, “war of aggression is always wrong.”
The PFP actually went beyond the borders of California for the first time in awhile. The Barr/Sheehan ticket placed 6th nationally. They were on the ballot in three states: California (0.41%), Colorado (0.20%), and Florida (0.10%) as well as write-ins in 11 more states.
Barr would go on to promote numerous spurious conspiracy theories and then support Trumpism by the 2016 election.
Election history:
2008 - US House of Representatives (Calif.) (Independent) - defeated
2014 - Governor of California (Peace and Freedom Party) - primary - defeated
Other occupations: youth minister, antiwar activist, author, radio host
Notes:
Winner of the 2008 election was Nancy Pelosi.
2014 opponents included Jerry Brown (winner) and Luis J. Rodriguez.
I was not a viewer of her 1980s TV show, but thought Barr was great in She-Devil (1989)
