Richard Grayson

Richard Grayson (born June 4, 1951, in Brooklyn, New York) is an American writer, political activist, performance artist, and perennial candidate most noted for his books of short stories and his satiric runs for public office.

Grayson's fiction is largely autobiographical, or pseudo-autobiographical.

Grayson was born in 1951 and attended New York public schools, graduating from Midwood High School in 1968.

Other platform planks in the Grayson campaign included making El Salvador the 51st state and moving the U.S. capital to Davenport, Iowa.

His stories began appearing in literary magazines in the mid-1970s, and in 1979, his first book-length collection of short stories, With Hitler in New York, was published.

In the same year Grayson registered with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) as a candidate for Vice President of the United States, receiving coverage for his humorous "campaign".

He attended Brooklyn College and received a B.A. in political science in 1973 and an M.F.A. in creative writing in 1976; Grayson also received an M.A. in English from Richmond College (now The College of Staten Island) in 1975.

By 1979, Grayson had over 125 stories published in magazines and anthologies.

He remained a prolific writer in the early 1980s, when several short story collections came out in quick succession: Lincoln's Doctor's Dog (1982), Eating at Arby's (1982), and I Brake for Delmore Schwartz (1983).

Most of these stories originally appeared in journals such as Transatlantic Review, Texas Quarterly, California Quarterly, and Epoch.

After winning the endorsement of John B. Anderson, an independent candidate for president in 1980, Grayson told Broward Palm Beach New Times, "What I'm doing now is not quite a joke...I'm trying to make a point. In Florida, we have a system where, if one candidate files for an office and no other candidate files, then there's no election."

In 1981, Grayson received a $3,000 grant from the Florida Fine Arts Council for his fiction.

Also in 1981, Grayson began a series of what he termed "publicity art," getting media attention for creating a fan club and fan magazine for his grandmother and starting a campaign to draft Burt Reynolds as a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Florida.

Grayson also filed a political action committee to draft Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran to run for the U.S. House of Representatives from Brooklyn in order to "neutralize" the Ayatollah during the Iran hostage crisis, saying that if elected, "Khomeini would be as ineffective as any other congressman."

In 1982, Grayson ran for a seat on the Davie, Florida, town council on a platform advocating that the town's numerous horses be given the right to vote.

He also suggested that Davie could gain more aid from the federal government by seceding from the U.S. and becoming a foreign country, "especially if we threaten to turn Communist."

A Miami Herald editorial endorsed his opponent, calling Grayson's candidacy "some kind of wry joke."

Upon learning that he had received only 25% of the vote, Grayson announced that he was moving to the neighboring city of Sunrise, saying Davie residents "won't have Dick Grayson to kick around anymore."

In 1983, Grayson filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to run for President of the United States in 1984 as a Democrat.

Over the next year, the exploits in his humorous campaign to replace President Ronald Reagan were widely covered in the media.

Perhaps his best-known remark, quoted in Time, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal, was his explanation of why he asked the actress Jane Wyman, star of the then-current nighttime soap opera Falcon Crest and the former wife of the incumbent president, to be his vice presidential running mate: "She already has experience in dumping Ronald Reagan."

As an alternative vice presidential candidate, Grayson favored Meryl Streep because he liked the sound of "Streep for Veep."

Grayson said he would appoint Donna Summer as Secretary of Labor because "she works hard for the money."

In November 1983, Grayson took part in a series of debates with other minor presidential candidates at shopping malls in Florida.

A few months later, in January 1984, while an instructor of English at Broward Community College, Grayson sent a questionnaire to Florida state senators for a survey he was conducting called "Legislators in Love," implying that state funds were used in his academic research.

In 1986, Grayson, then 34, filed an age discrimination complaint with the Broward County Human Relations Division after he was denied a senior citizen account featuring free checking at AmeriFirst Federal Savings and Loan Association.

The division dismissed the case after Grayson refused a settlement that would be kept secret, but Grayson claimed he had proved his point that discounts should be based on need, not age.

Also in 1986, after Grayson filed a political action committee to draft Claus von Bülow to run in that year's U.S. Senate election in New York, von Bülow said he had no intention to run for any political office and was "not an American subject."

In 1988, Grayson received a writer-in-residence award for from the New York State Council on the Arts to be the writer-in-residence at the Rockland Arts Center in West Nyack, New York.

In the 1988 presidential primary in Florida, when "Undecided" was an option on the ballot, Grayson created an organization, Florida Democrats for Undecided, to promote that option.

"Undecided" won 6.2% of the vote, finishing ahead of three of the seven presidential candidates on the ballot.

To help raise money for the financially struggling Donald Trump in 1990, Grayson, with "tongue firmly in cheek," created the Trump Rescue Fund in 1990, soliciting money for the billionaire on the streets of New York, though a Trump Tower employee shooed Grayson and his hand-lettered flyers away from the building.

Later in 1990, as the economy faltered, Grayson appeared on CNN touting Pauper, a magazine featuring "articles about poor celebrities, bankrupt businesses, failed financial institutions, [and] tips on frugal living."

A "Pauper 400" list would "answer the lists of the super-rich in 'wealth-oriented magazines.'"

In September 1991, Grayson spoke at a public hearing of the Florida Redistricting Commission, showing his drawings of legislative districts configured like a palm tree, the Space Shuttle, the sun, a boat and an alligator, saying that districts in recognizable shapes would get more voters interested in state government.

During the 1994 elections, upset at how many Republican U.S. House members of Florida were unopposed by Democrats, Grayson filed with the Division of Elections as a write-in candidate to run against Representative Michael Bilirakis in Florida's 9th congressional district in the Tampa Bay area although Grayson lived outside the district, in Gainesville.

Despite naming his political campaign committee "God Hates Republicans," Grayson received only 157 write-in votes.

In the 1996 election, Grayson filed as a write-in candidate against Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican who was otherwise unopposed in the Miami-based 18th congressional district.

Grayson also won a $5,000 fellowship in literature/fiction from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs in 1998.

For the 2004 elections, Grayson again filed to run as a write-in candidate in the election against an otherwise unopposed Florida Republican U.S. House member, Ander Crenshaw.