Dead Man Running

by Pa Rock
Political Strategist

Political operatives from across the United States are beginning to sit up and take notice of a new trend in elections that is coming out of Missouri. While average candidates have average chances of winning elections (if they conduct well-financed, average campaigns), they become damned near invincible when they get lucky enough to die prior to the election!

Most people know the story of Missouri's Governor Mel Carnahan who was running a hard race to remove John Ashcroft from the U.S. Senate in 2000. Carnahan was killed in a plane crash three weeks before the election. It was too late to have his name removed from the ballot, and many believed that the reptile Ashcroft would be a shoo-in for re-election. But the voters of Missouri didn't think a little thing like an untimely death should serve as a forfeit for the election. Dead Governor Carnahan kicked Ashcroft's flabby ass, and put him in the history books as the first, and so far - only, sitting United States Senator ever to lose an election to a dead man!

The Show Me state made the news again this past Tuesday when the good citizens of Winfield re-elected their mayor to a fourth term a month after his death. The deceased Mayor Harry Stonebaker didn't just beat his opponent, Alderman Bernie Panther, he clobbered him by taking ninety percent of the vote.

There are so many advantages to running for office while dead that I'm shocked it hasn't come into fashion before now. Dead candidates run clean campaigns. They don't waste time lying about their opponents - and they can't be bought by special interests. They are also be very unlikely to steal from the public treasury after they are elected. And if a dead candidate or public official gets caught up in a sex scandal, chances are excellent that the poor bastard truly was an innocent victim of circumstance.

What if the country elected a dead Congress? Taxidermists could get the members all gussied up and park them at their desks. School children and church groups could visit the Capitol twenty-four seven and stroll through the chambers watching their leaders in action - or lack thereof. True, there wouldn't a lot of productive legislation getting passed, but would that be such a change from the way things currently work?

I've been giving it some thought, and since I am from Missouri I might just decide to be buried there. That would make me a permanent resident. After that, who knows? I'm thinking that when all the people who know me have died off, I might just attempt a run for governor - 2076 ought to be as good a time as any!