He’s a registered independent who supports a balanced budget, same-sex marriage equality and the Iran nuclear deal as well as the deportation of undocumented immigrants, children excepted. He’s been the number one trending topic on Twitter in the past day.
Who’s that, you ask?
Deeeeez Nuuuts
If you listen to old school hip-hop, specifically Dr. Dre’s 1992 masterpiece The Chronic, you probably know who that is. If not, well, it’s no one, actually; just something to say to bug or bamboozle someone.
Example:
“Sir, you cannot dine in our fine restaurant without a jacket.”
“It’s OK, Dee said I was dressed fine.”
“Dee who?”
“Deeeeeez Nuuuuts!”
According to the most recent Public Policy Poll, the fictitious candidate is more popular than all but four others in the important, ahem, swing state: mirroring national trends, Donald Trump leads all GOP candidates with 24 percent support in the Tarheel State, followed by neurosurgeon Ben Carson (14 percent) and former Florida governor Jeb Bush (13 percent).
Mr. Nuts, with 9 percent support, is tied with Florida Senator Marco Rubio and is polling ahead of GOP heavyweights including Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and all the other Republicans running for president. He also leads Democrat candidates including former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley and former Virginia senator Jim Webb.
How did an imaginary candidate manage to insert himself into a major national presidential poll? First, we must identify the brains behind the balls. He’s Brady Olson, the 15-year-old son of soybean farmers Mark and Teresa Olson, from Wallingford, Iowa, population 197. Olson registered Deez Nuts (he’s even got a Facebook page) with the Federal Election Commission last month, hence his appearance in the poll.
Olson, who starts his sophomore year at Graettinger Terril Ruthven Ayrshire Community School next week, told the New York Times that he registered Nuts as a candidate “to clear the way for a future third-party movement.”
At first, the boy’s father didn’t think much of the stunt.
“A 15-year-old tells you that, what are you supposed to think?” the senior Olson told the Times. But then the national media began flooding his inbox. “I’m like, ‘Brady, what’s going on here?”’
Public Policy Polling director Tom Jensen told the Times that he added Deez Nuts to statewide surveys three weeks ago because “the name makes people laugh, and it’s a long presidential election.”
But Jensen said there was a serious side to the joke candidate’s success.
“I would say Mr. Nuts is the most ludicrous and unqualified third-party candidate you could have, but he’s still polling at 7, 8, 9 percent,” Mr. Jensen said. “Right now the voters don’t like either of the people leading in the two main parties, and that creates an appetite for a third-party candidate.”
You’d think that this is where it all ends for Deez Nuts. Think again. Jensen has plans to go ‘balls to the wall,’ so to speak, and include the gag candidate in New Hampshire and then national surveys.
“The next step is to get some party nominations, like the Minnesota Independence Party or the Modern Whig Party,” Olson told the Daily Beast. “It would also be great to find a VP, preferably McCubbins because the Nuts/McCubbins ticket sounds amazing,” he added, referring to another fictitious candidate, a Kentucky cat named Limberbutt McCubbins whose unofficial slogan is “the time is meow.”
As for endorsements, Deez Nuts is being backed by none other than Warren G, West Coast rapper and Dr. Dre collaborator who performed the original “Deez Nuts” skit on The Chronic.
“I was in bed, and the guy on the news says, ‘Donald Trump. Hillary Clinton,” G told the Daily Beast. “Then, ‘Deez Nuts.’ I said, ‘Wow. You’ve gotta be kidding me.’”
“I was blown away to see something I did as a skit on there. It tripped me out. It really, really, really was a trip,” G added. “And to know that it came from a 15-year-old kid who’s a fan…”
