Maverick from Another Planet

Gabriel Green ran as a write-in candidate for president in 1960 and 1972. Although he was a third-party candidate and could not afford the advertising materials that his political rivals employed, Green had an ace up his sleeve and had secured the endorsement and aid of a difficult-to-reach demographic.

You see, Green had assistance from beings from another planet.

Green was a native of Whittier, California (the same area that launched Richard Nixon to superstardom). A graduate of the Woodbury Business School of Los Angeles, Green worked as a photographer under the employ of the Los Angeles school system, taking pictures of children and faculty for yearbooks. In 1957, Green founded the "Amalgamated Flying Saucer Club of America, Inc." and announced to the world his fantastic encounter with humanoid aliens. Three years later he launched his first bid to become the president of the United States, representing the Universal Flying Saucer Party.

Green claimed that the aliens had taken him for a long space voyage in their flying saucer, and showed him their home planet of "Korender," orbiting around the star Alpha Centauri. They were wise and benevolent humanoids, and created a permanent telepathic connection for Green to communicate with them across the vastness of space. They also, according to Green, helped him gather votes when he was campaigning.

Green ran on a platform of reform, peace, expanded social services, and low-taxes. He explained that the inhabitants of planet Korender had helped him devise a new political philosophy of United World Universal Economics. While campaigning, Green also claimed that he had graduated from UC Berkeley in 1953 with a PhD in physics, and had contributed to the development of the Standard Model of particle physics. Presumably, he hoped that pretending to be a scientist would give a much needed boost to his comparatively lackluster credentials.

It was a tight race, but Green failed to win the 1960 election, eventually dropping out and endorsing Kennedy. Two years later he ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate in California. Green took a brief sabbatical from the world of politics to write Let's Face Facts About Flying Saucers, an account of his meeting with extraterrestrials as well as reports on other flying saucer sightings. Five years later he began his second presidential campaign, this time from Iowa. Again, he met with defeat. Green retired to California, where he occasionally spoke at UFO conventions and New Age gatherings. He died in Yucca Valley, California, on September 8th, 2001.

Green was just one of many people who claimed to have been contacted by aliens during the fifties, but he remains one of the most obscure possibly due to the political incompetence of his alien allies. Whether or not the inhabitants of Korender have selected a new candidate to fight for the principles of United World Universal Economics has not been disclosed.





Further Reading:
Let's Face Facts About Flying Saucers by Gabriel Green
UFOs and Popular Culture by James R. Lewis