Deez Nuts, Sydneys Voluptuous Buttocks of Buffalo and Other Presidential Could-be's

U.S. 2016 Presidential Campaign

Before you go ahead and pull the lever for Deez Nuts in the 2016 general election, you may want to familiarize yourself with a few of the other 585 (and counting) presidential hopefuls who have registered themselves with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

Have you considered Sydneys Voluptuous Buttocks of Buffalo, New York? Or Crawfish B. Crawfish of New Orleans, whose campaign slogan is "Red. Boiled. Ready?" Crawfish registered as a candidate on July 2, one day after a better-known alliterative seeker of the presidency, Chris Christie, did.

If you yearn for the Reagan era, when a movie star lived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, you may want to vote for Capt. Jack Sparrow, whose statement of candidacy provides only an email address, or Buddy the Elf, who lists his address as the North Pole. If you are partial to a Harry S. Truman type, a man of the people, you may want to bypass candidates whose very names suggest that they are already intoxicated by power, hopefuls such as President Emperor Caesar or HRM Caesar St. Augustine de Buonoparte.

Would a pet make an effective POTUS? Bailey D. Dog, Buddy the Cat and Lumberbutt McCubbins (a feline) have all thrown their collars into the ring. Or, if you'd like to vote for a surname that already has a White House legacy (as voters did in 2000 and may well do again next year), there is a Johnny Goddamn Roosevelt of Chicago.

All of the above names are actual candidates who appear on the same 2016 Presidential Form 2 Filers list as Jeb Bush, Donald Trump, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, among others. While their candidacies may be jokes, their legitimacy, at least at this stage of the race, is not.

Deez Nuts, who filed on July 26, lists his (or her) address as 2248 450th Avenue, Wallingford, Iowa, a town that as of the 2010 census had 197 citizens (curiously enough, in 1920 Wallingford also had a population of 197). The Daily Beast broke the news early on Wednesday evening that Deez Nuts is actually Brady Olson, a 15-year-old who lives at 2250 450th Avenue in Wallingford. "When I heard about the Lumberbutt McCubbins story," Olson told the website, "I realized that I could [file for candidacy]."

Deez Nuts is currently polling at 9 percent in North Carolina. His popularity may seem as inexplicable as that of the Internet meme that inspired Olson to use that name; or else it may be a function of voters' fatigue with the electoral process…with only 14.5 months remaining until the general election. Still, if that YouTube video could draw more than 17 million views, is it really far-fetched to imagine Olson generating $5,000 in campaign contributions, say on KickStarter, which would elevate him to the next stage of candidacy?

With a minimum $5,000 in campaign contributions, Deez Nuts would then be required to file a Form 1, which requires a legal name, phone number and address that the FEC would actually vet. At that point, Deez Nuts/Brady Olson would run into the very real barrier that is Article 2, Section 1, of the United States Constitution, which states in part that "neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years."

On the other hand, if the current Republican front-runner can advocate for the repeal of the 14th Amendment, why can't Deez Nuts, who is running as an independent, lobby for a little constitutional overhaul of his own?

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