The unenviable third party spot on American ballots pretty much demands some sort of quirk of its candidates. After all, you have to be at least a little, um, eccentric to run against not only two popular candidates, but also the entire two-party system itself.
So this year, in addition to their Gail “for Rail” Parker senate campaign (complete with a rhyming platform that involves a bullet train line from Danville to D.C.), the Virginia Independent Green Party has put up Joe Oddo as their 5th District congressional candidate, and he is certainly…eccentric.
Oddo sent out a press release last week detailing his platform. Among changing fonts and terse sentences about our national “addiction to a new drug called fear,” Oddo promises to “defend his country from his government” and to take action against apathy. How? Well, in addition to the Gail for Rail initiative, Oddo supports such quaint third party ideas as making it easier to get to the polls on Election Day, balancing the federal budget, reducing military expenditures, withdrawing from Iraq, repealing the Patriot Act, ending domestic spying programs, and…wait a second! Could Joe Oddo be on to something? The man himself may be quirky, but it seems Oddo’s ideas aren’t that odd after all.
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