Meet Trump’s used car salesman primary challenger

His title is Rocky!

Picture: Brian Killian/WireImage/Getty Photographs

Wiki WormholeWe discover a few of Wikipedia’s oddities in our 5,664,405-week collection, Wiki Wormhole.

This week’s entry: Rocky De La Fuente

What it’s about: It’s nonetheless early within the presidential election season, however many candidates have fallen by the wayside, lots of them giving fairly stable causes to not vote for them. Andrew Yang has no expertise. Michael Bloomberg can’t resolve if he’s a Democrat or a Republican. Invoice Weld is attempting to unseat a sitting president. Marianne Williamson is a laughably unqualified grifter who has no enterprise operating. However there’s one candidate who’s in it to the tip, regardless of combining each one in every of these faults like a fringe candidate Voltron: used automobile dealer-turned-serial-candidate Rocky De La Fuente, who’s operating to unseat Trump for the Republican nomination, 4 years after operating within the Democratic main, and simply two years after operating for the U.S. Senate. In 9 totally different states.

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Greatest controversy: De La Fuente is a greater businessman than Trump, if not a extra trustworthy one. His father, Roque Antonio De La Fuente Alexander, owned a number of automobile dealerships and enterprise parks, and Rocky (from “Roque”) adopted in his footsteps, opening 28 automobile dealerships of his personal and three banks, earlier than taking up his father’s companies upon his dying. He additionally acquired a settlement for $38.7 million from San Diego County for land the county acquired to construct a jail.

In 2004, the FDIC barred Rocky “from collaborating in any FDIC-insured establishment,” which covers nearly any authentic financial institution. The ninth Circuit Court docket of Appeals reversed half the order (Wikipedia isn’t clear on which half), however even in ruling in De La Fuente’s favor, the courtroom mentioned, “De La Fuente’s use of [First International Bank] as his private piggy financial institution was in surprising disregard of sound banking practices and the legislation.” And but even after that assertion, the courtroom really helpful the FDIC take away sanctions, as we’re not within the behavior of punishing wealthy folks on this nation, regardless of how corrupt.

Strangest reality: In 2016, De La Fuente ran beneath three totally different events’ banners. He ran within the Democratic main, largely as a result of it had a smaller discipline of candidates—there have been 17 Republicans operating, whereas the Democratic discipline was basically simply Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, which means De La Fuente got here in third in a number of states, albeit a really distant third. His most important marketing campaign challenge was a powerful opposition to Donald Trump’s immigration insurance policies. (De La Fuente is Mexican American and spent his childhood on each side of the border, as his father owned companies in each international locations.) The small discipline meant that De La Fuente’s 0.22% of the first vote put him in a stable fourth, behind Clinton, Sanders, and former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, who received lower than twice the votes De La Fuente did, regardless of being remotely certified. (though in equity, O’Malley dropped out after Iowa, whereas so far as we will inform, Rocky stayed in it to the bitter finish).

Undaunted by his loss to Clinton, De La Fuente based his personal celebration, the American Delta Occasion, which, regardless of sounding like a frat celebration film from the ’80s, stood for “social progressivism,” “fiscal duty,” and “electoral reform,” however was actually about getting De La Fuente on the poll in as many states as attainable (which turned out to be 20). He was additionally the nominee of the Reform Party, based by Ross Perot for his important impartial and third-party runs in 1992 and 1996. To the shock of most People, the Reform Occasion continues to exist, with a downward slide into irrelevance that noticed it run Pat Buchanan (who solely secured the nomination after Donald Trump turned it down), Ralph Nader (who solely appeared on the poll on seven states), Mississippi celebration chairman Ted Weill (who solely appeared on the poll in his house state), Andre Barnett (finest recognized for founding a know-how agency referred to as WiseDome; he acquired fewer than 1,000 votes nationwide), and at last De La Fuente, whose 33,136 votes represented an enormous turnaround within the Reform Occasion’s fortunes, as his 0.02% of the vote was Reform’s largest share since Nader received a commanding 0.4% again in 2004.

Factor we have been happiest to be taught: Rocky is establishing a dynasty of failed self-importance candidates. His son Roque De La Fuente III ran in a number of of this Tremendous Tuesday’s primaries as a Democrat, at the same time as his father was operating in most of the identical states as a Republican. (Each father and son have struggled for poll entry, and California, Idaho, Texas, and Vermont are the one states the place each De La Fuentes have been capable of run.)

Factor we have been unhappiest to be taught: In 2017, De La Fuente sought to unseat Democrat Invoice de Blasio as mayor of New York by operating for the Republican nomination. Metropolis legislation requires candidates be residents of the town earlier than they will run. De La Fuente wasn’t however claimed he tried to purchase an residence however was turned down as a result of he’s Hispanic. Then, after the second- and third-place candidates dropped out, leaving Rocky and state assemblywoman (and eventual nominee) Nicole Malliotakis, the board of elections discovered De La Fuente hadn’t collected sufficient signatures to qualify for the poll, so he was compelled to drop out as effectively.

Greatest hyperlink to elsewhere on Wikipedia: If De La Fuente is just too mainstream a candidate in your tastes, there’s all the time Vermin Supreme. The performance-artist-turned-attention-seeker has run for president in each election since 2004, and completed 17th in the identical 2016 main the place De La Fuente completed fourth, garnering 268 votes nationwide. Supreme’s two most important political positions are that 1) abolishing the federal government and “letting shit fall the place it might,” as libertarians advocate, can be a mistake, and a couple of) we should always abolish the federal government. Supreme campaigns whereas sporting a big boot on his head and carrying an outsized toothbrush, promising that as president, he would require all People to brush their enamel. Different planks in his political platform embrace “zombie apocalypse consciousness and time journey analysis.” He’s additionally promised each American a free pony, however in contrast to Elizabeth Warren, isn’t dogged with questions on how he’s going to pay for them.

Additional down the Wormhole: Whereas following in his father’s footsteps in enterprise was in all probability the plain path for De La Fuente, he earned his school diploma in math and physics, so maybe he would have eschewed politics for science in one other life. Physics, in fact, is the examine of matter, movement, power, and pressure, the underlying mechanics of the universe. Nuclear physics, particularly, is the examine of how atoms’ nuclei act and work together. The apparent purposes are nuclear energy and atomic weapons, however there’s additionally a discipline of nuclear medicine, which typically includes injecting a affected person with a radioactive isotope so as to produce a picture of what’s occurring inside their physique so as to diagnose a medical challenge. The isotope in query is often molybdenum-99, a byproduct of nuclear fission. Most of North America’s provide got here from one supply, the Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario, till the reactor was shut down in 2018. The reactor ran for 74 years regardless of being the location of two separate disasters within the 1950s, one in every of which was foiled with the assistance of one other budding scientist-turned-politician, Jimmy Carter. We’ll don our radiation fits and revisit Chalk River subsequent week.