Rhinoceros Party on the ComeBack Trail ...

Supporting "anti" election candidates has a long and interesting history in this part of the world. In 1969 there was the "pig for president" caper with the late Abbie Hoffman; and older Canadians will remember the Quebec based Rhinoceros Party. The Rhinos under their latest and Glorious Leader Brian (Godzilla) Salmi have announced a $50-million lawsuit last August contesting an election reform law that stripped his party of its registered status in 1993. Due to a recent name change the suit is filed as Satan v. Her Majesty the Queen. I don't know what has come of this but the Rhinos were certainly the toast of the Untermensch in 1980s and 1990s. Anarchists in Regina also ran a candidate under the aegis of the Ceratomorpha label in the 1979 federal election. (The Tom Turkey party of Saskatchewan tailed after the big dumb animal ... broom in hand.) The Liberal government in the early nineties essentially bagged the Rhinos in 1993, passing a law saying registered parties must run candidates in at least 50 ridings, at a cost of $1,000 per riding, to keep their status. The fight against this display of traditional Lib arrogance ... no doubt heightened by the fact that in some Quebec constituencies the real comedians were actually starting to get more votes than the "natural governing party" ... went all the way to the Supreme Court. Here is some history:

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Promises, promises

Of course, elections can often hinge on what a party pledges to do. And looking at the Rhino party's history of campaign promises, it probably needn't worry about winning an election anytime soon.

Here's a short list of some Rhino party election pledges:

• Abolish the environment (because it's too big and too hard to clean).
• Provide higher education by building taller schools.
• Ban Canadian winters.
• Pave the Bay of Fundy to create more parking in the Maritimes.
• Turn Montreal's Ste-Catherine Street into the world's longest bowling alley
  
• Mandate three official languages: English, French and illiteracy.

For a party that doesn't take much seriously, the Rhinos once took a serious-sounding pledge: in 1980, the party promised to declare war on Belgium.

The threat was made after Belgian cartoon character Tintin killed a rhinoceros in the book Tintin in the Congo. However, the Rhinos promised to rescind the threat if Belgium delivered a conciliatory case of Belgian beer and mussels to Rhino party "Hindquarters" in Montreal. The Belgians acquiesced and war was averted.

A measure of individual success also come in 1980 when professional clown/comedienne Sonia Côté came second in Quebec's Laurier riding, beating both the New Democrat and Progressive Conservative candidates.

The party's most high-profile candidate ran for office in 1988. Former Montreal Expo and American League all-star Bill (Spaceman) Lee ran on the Rhino ticket — for president of the United States. Not surprisingly, he didn't make the ballot in a single state. That marked the last year the Rhinos ran as a party, fielding 74 candidates.

However, any party success could prove ultimately counter-productive as the party's long-time campaign promise has long been to dissolve as soon as it wins an election, thus forcing a second race

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Not to be outdone (or undone) some comrades in the Eugene/Springfield, Oregon area are "supporting" one of the local candidates for the Mayoralty. This has been going on for most of the decade (I think). Check out the video clip. These actors are really good. The fat guy seems to have no idea what is being done here.

We, Anarchists residing in the Eugene/Springfield area are endorsing Jim Torrey for Mayor of Eugene in the 2008 election. We hold that a Torrey regime would be sufficiently brutal and unresponsive to drive hordes of otherwise apathetic citizens to our cause. To this end we have resurrected Eugene Anarchists for Torrey (EAT). ---- Anarchists seek to replace the vertically organized, representative structures that dominate our society with horizontal, directly democratic ones. To achieve this requires a massive, popular rejection of the existing political and economic system. We hope that the election of Torrey will strip away the kind liberal veneer of the city government and re-energize the anarchist movement in Eugene. EAT member George Hayduke says, “The best political leaders are the ones who are lazy and corrupt.”

Though we will not actually be voting, anarchists have been long standing supporters of Torrey endorsing him in the 2000 mayoral race. Historical documentation of our support is available here: