On Saturday, the annual Winter Holiday Stroll in Nashua, New Hampshire brought together residents for an evening illuminated by candles and holiday lights. Participants in the stroll tried food from different vendors, took pictures with Santa Claus, and gathered for a tree-lighting ceremony. But for a few attendees, the stroll was more than an occasion for merriment: it was a stop along the campaign trail.
With the New Hampshire presidential primaries slated to take place on January 23 of next year, two candidates took the event as an opportunity to meet voters. Vivek Ramaswamy smiled for pictures with locals as his campaign team and supporters touted signs that read “TRUTH” and, underneath that, “VOTE VIVEK.” Fifteen minutes after the tree-lighting ceremony, another group of signs appeared around Ramaswamy. Most of them displayed the word “TOOTH” in a dark-blue font on a white background—the same color scheme as the posters held by Ramaswamy’s contingent. Below “TOOTH,” another word was emblazoned: “VERMIN.”
Vermin Supreme, a perennial candidate known for wearing a boot on his head, brought a motley crowd with him as he approached Ramaswamy. Some of Supreme’s supporters carried poles with unicorn heads attached on top, while others held giant replicas of toothbrushes. The group also included three ponies, people wearing animal onesies, and a supporter who shouted, “Vivek votes for bad teeth!” The “Chicken Dance” played from a speaker.
A Facebook event advertised Supreme’s presence at the stroll as an effort “to recruit holiday revelers for the Santa Army to rise up against Narnia.” But Supreme also hoped the event would earn him more votes; his goal for the evening: “Vermin visibility, of course.”
Supreme says he has run in every presidential election since 1992, though he first got his start in politics in 1987, when he ran to be the mayor of Baltimore under his given name, which he did not disclose. He often drops out of elections in the primaries, and either does not vote or will vote for other underdogs, such as Ralph Nader and Jimmy McMillan.
Campaigns like Supreme’s are a distinctive and routine feature of the New Hampshire primary, whose first-in-the-nation status and low-barrier ballot access attract a slew of candidates each cycle. But the state tradition sparked controversy this year, with the Democratic National Committee attempting to revoke New Hampshire’s premiere slot in the primaries schedule—only for the state to defy the party’s request.
Now on his ninth presidential campaign, Supreme finds the process simple. “The politics portion of it, that’s pretty much like pissing on fish in a barrel,” he said. “It’s so relatively easy and low stress.”
Though he knows that some people think of him as a joke candidate, he sees his campaigns as having more weight than that. “It’s always been a serious joke,” Supreme said. “I think it’s safe to say that I’m a highly respected, uh, political satirist in America.”
Mark Twain, Deez Nuts, and Vermin Supreme
The US presidential election often boils down to a race between two candidates, but fringe and third-party candidates have long been standard features of the electoral race. In his book “The Presidential Fringe,” Mark Stein traces the first fringe candidates to 1828, when an estimated 0.40% of votes were cast neither for Andrew Jackson nor John Quincy Adams, but were classified as “Scattering” in news reports at the time.
Since then, the list of fringe and third-party candidates has expanded to include a few serious contenders, such as Ross Perot, and many more failed campaigns and satirical candidates: Mark Twain in 1879, Gracie Allen in 1940, the pig Pigasus in 1968, and more recently, the likes of Stephen Colbert, “Deez Nuts,” and Kanye West.
Relative to the scores of fringe candidates who enter presidential elections each cycle, Supreme stands out due to the amount of national attention he has received, Stein said.
He received a minuscule number of votes in some years—in 2008, he ran as a Republican in the New Hampshire primary and received only 43 votes, or 0.02% of the party vote—but has been more successful in recent election years. In 2012, Supreme ran as a Democrat in the New Hampshire primary and garnered 833 votes, or 1.37% of the party vote, coming in third place—after Barack Obama and Ed Cowan—out of the 14 Democrats on the ballot that year.
But he saw the most success in 2020, when he ran for the Libertarian Party nomination and won the party’s self-held primary in New Hampshire as well as the state-held Massachusetts primary; in California, he placed third among Libertarian candidates in the primary, receiving 3,469 votes—only 65 votes behind Jo Jorgensen, who placed second in the California primary and was the eventual party nominee that year. His campaign raised $87,124.96 in 2019 and 2020, which was more than all his previous campaigns combined.
Stein said that fringe candidates who gained prominence did not provide any effective resistance to the two-party system, but they were not simply clowning either.
“The attention they received was due to the fact that, intentionally or not, they provide a lens into underecognized or unrecognized issues of importance in the political landscape of their era,” he said.
Supreme’s sympathizers tend to agree that his comedic qualities point to more serious concerns in the US political landscape. For Stein, Supreme’s subversive powers lie in his signature traits, such as the boot on his head (“It suggested something is upside-down in our politics”) and his name (it “suggests politicians are, in fact, society’s supreme vermin”).
Steve Onderick, who directed a 2014 documentary about Supreme, said that the perennial candidate’s humor provokes thought among voters.
“Vermin certainly has a way with getting people to laugh and for socially disarming people in tense situations,” Onderick said. “But he also has a knack for getting them to think and reflect on the farcical elements that are already inherent to the political system.”
Onderick first encountered Supreme at the 2012 protests outside the NATO summit in Chicago. He had already heard of Supreme from his viral ‘glitter bomb’ incident—when, the year prior, Supreme threw glitter at fellow candidate Randall Terry at the “Lesser-Known Democratic Candidates Presidential Forum”—and in Chicago, he noticed Supreme holding a megaphone. Supreme was telling the police that he had them surrounded, Onderick soon realized.
Onderick said that he was impressed by Supreme’s ability to infuse a chaotic and potentially dangerous situation with light-heartedness. He saw it as a form of resistance, one that was perhaps more effective than traditional activist strategies.
“I had seen all of the ordinary activist tactics —marches, petitions, lining up places and getting purposely arrested— fall short in the context of the Occupy movement,” Onderick said. “I found myself wondering whether Vermin might be on to something with his bizarre, performance-based interventions.”
Prior to becoming a perennial candidate, Supreme developed an interest in anarchist politics in 1986, when the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament took over the nation. He thereafter became involved with mutual aid organizations like Food Not Bombs.
Supreme said that his campaign strategy is similar to his efforts facilitating freedom of assembly at protests such as the one in Chicago.
“I’m using this similar tactic of humor to release tension and communicate effectively and try and make things different,” he said. “I have discovered that I can sort of change reality. I can alter reality just by doing things, just by mixing it up, by throwing that curveball into the reality soup and seeing what changes.”
Desarae Lindsey, Supreme’s campaign manager for the 2020 and 2024 elections, said that he has had a talent for connecting with people for as long as she has known him. She recalled one supporter who called Lindsey because she was in tears after finding out that Supreme was coming to her town.
“She got to see Vermin, and now she’s feeling better,” she said. “He just has that way about him.”
“The antithesis of a national primary”
The New Hampshire presidential primary, which has been the first election of the cycle since 1920, tends to attract more candidates than any other state each year. The state has only two requirements for candidates seeking to get on the ballot: a $1,000 payment, and a declaration of candidacy. Candidates can also bypass the $1,000 fee by collecting 100 nomination signatures.
The state’s first-in-the-nation status came under fire in February, when the Democratic National Committee announced plans to place the South Carolina primary first in the calendar, to then be followed by New Hampshire and Nevada. In a letter to the DNC at the end of last year, President Joe Biden wrote that such a reshuffling would allow voters of color to have a say earlier in the election process.
“Too often over the past fifty years, candidates have dropped out or had their candidacies marginalized by the press and pundits because of poor performances in small states early in the process before voters of color cast a vote,” wrote Biden. “As I said then [in February 2020], 99.9% of Black voters had not had the chance to vote at that point, and 99.8% of Latino voters had not had the opportunity. That is unacceptable in 2024 and it must change.”
New Hampshire responded to the DNC’s plan with defiance. On November 15, the state announced that it would hold its primary on January 23. In an announcement of the date of the primary, New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan said that the state primary allows candidates to run who otherwise would not have the opportunity.
“New Hampshire is the antithesis of a national primary, or regional primary, or a large state primary, where only the wealthy, well-known, or politically anointed candidates can compete,” said Scanlan. “A small state geographically, with a population of 1.4 million citizens, it’s the one place where any, any qualified United States citizen can run for president and have a shot.”
Supreme’s consistent presidential campaigns embody the inclusive spirit of the primary in New Hampshire, a state where the license plates read “Live Free Or Die.” Scanlan said that Supreme’s presence on the ballot is appreciated.
“He has become part of the lore of the NH Primary,” Scanlan said. “He is a decent person who uses the Primary as a satirical soap box.”
New Hampshire State Representative Latha Mangipudi said that the DNC’s decision overlooks voters of color in the state. As of 2023, the United States Census Bureau estimated that 11.2% of New Hampshire’s population are non-white or Hispanic or Latino.
“These are registered voters,” Mangipudi said. “So tell me that there’s no diversity.”
Supreme also denounced the DNC’s attempt to push back the date of the New Hampshire primary, calling the move “anti-democratic.”
“Would it make any difference if, you know, South Carolina or every primary was like pay to play?” Supreme said. “No, it’d be great. It’d be wonderful. You’d have a lot more characters on board and a lot more people discussing a lot more issues, and that is democracy right there.”
Compared with the $1,000 filing fee of New Hampshire, South Carolina has at least a $20,000 filing fee for presidential candidates seeking nomination in either the Democratic or Republican Party.
Throughout his time spent with Supreme, Onderick has noticed that ballot access is a common talking point for the perennial candidate. While he believes the two-party system will remain a fixture during his lifetime, Onderick wishes the process would give more people a platform.
“Democracy only functions when the people actually have a voice, and the American political system as it exists today severely limits the degree to which the population can actually have an effect on decisions about the nation’s governance,” he said.
In response to New Hampshire’s disregard of the DNC’s plan, Biden did not put his name on the ballot for the state’s primary. But 45 other people —21 Democrats and 24 Republicans— have put their names on the ballot so far, compared with three Democrats and 10 Republicans in South Carolina.
Among the candidates is a friend of Supreme’s, Paperboy Prince, an artist and activist from New York who also filed as a Democrat. In a video that they posted on X after filing to run for president, Prince said to their 10.7k followers, “I did this to show you that anything is possible if you believe in you.”
“A campaign of infinite potential”
Winning the presidential office is not the primary goal for Supreme. He does not expect to win, and he does not believe that his presence on the ballot has an impact on elections.
“Just the fact that I’m at it again, that’s winning, the fact that I’m representing my constituents,” Supreme said. “That’s winning, the fact that I’m giving people someone that they can believe in or vote for in clear conscience.”
Supreme’s campaign plan is the same in many ways as that of his previous runs—he is running on his usual platform of giving everyone a pony and raising awareness about the zombie apocalypse—but he also hopes to get on the ballot in states other than New Hampshire. After disavowing the Libertarian party due to its alt-right shift in 2022, he plans to appear on the Democratic ballot in New Hampshire and as a write-in candidate on the Republican ballot in Colorado, and he is talking to some minor parties about appearing on their ballots. He is interested, for example, in the Legal Marijuana Now party in Minnesota and Nebraska, as well as the Natural Law Party in Michigan.
Lindsey said that the goal of the campaign is to spread Supreme’s message to combat the malaise people are feeling.
“A lot of people I think are really dissatisfied with the duopoly but don’t believe that there’s any way to rail against it,” she said. “That’s why Vermin wants to run in however many states we can run in—to raise awareness about third parties. At the end of the day, Vermin’s legacy is giving people hope.”
Onderick is happy that Supreme is persisting in his presidential campaigns. “I’m glad that he’s still out there tossing wrenches into the gears of the proverbial system in his own ridiculous way,” Onderick said.
Stein, meanwhile, thinks that the symbolism of Supreme’s upside-down boot is especially resonant this year. “Our politics seem to me more expansively upside down than any time in my life,” he said. “Voters would do well to pay attention to it.”
Polls in New Hampshire so far do not indicate a significant amount of support outside of the two-party system. Surveys conducted by both Emerson College and the University of New Hampshire earlier this month indicated that 5% of New Hampshire voters registered with the Democratic Party said they want to vote for someone other than Biden, Dean Phillips, or Marianne Williamson.
Andrew Smith, director of the UNH Survey Center and a contributor to the UNH poll, said that Supreme “has as much support as could be expected for a man with a boot on his head.”
Supreme said that his life is unremarkable when he is not running for president. He lives in a house with his wife in Rockport, Massachusetts, where he occupies himself with household chores. He said that he is always keeping an eye on the next election cycle. At this point, he sees campaigning as his “niche,” one that allows him to reach a lot of people.
“It’s a difference of saying, ‘Hi, I’m Vermin Supreme, I’m a poet,’ or like, ‘I’m Vermin Supreme, I’m running for president,’” he said. “People take it in a very different way. And I think that’s one of the advantages that I’ve had, becoming so well known around the world, if you will.”
Despite not having his sights set on winning an election, Supreme wants his campaign to continue to grow as it has in recent years.
“Every cycle, it seems to get a little bigger or better,” he said. “I mean, ultimately, one thing that I’ve always maintained is a campaign of infinite potential. Every year is like a rousing success, you know? Every time is pretty amazing.”