Joshuah Bearman

The Believer Stalks the 2004 Democratic Candidates: Dispatches from a Few Cold Places

Introduction and Contents

Dispatch One - Sunday, January 18

Dispatch Two - Thursday, January 22

Dispatch Three - Friday, January 23

DISPATCH FOUR—"Omar Suarez"
File Date: Tuesday, January 27

Breakfast at the EconoLodge, an amenity included in the ninety-six-dollar nightly rate, consists of a patch of pasty little muffins sweating inside their cellophane wrappings, served on a water-stained cardboard tray. Back in the room, I noticed that New Hampshire must be rubbing off on me a little. A mysterious bruise and cut had appeared on my forehead, as though everyone in this state, even visitors, must display an obvious ailment to the world.

Shortly thereafter, I made a second discovery across the hall: room 213 of the EconoLodge doubles as the dwelling and campaign headquarters of John Buchanan, a marginal candidate running in the Republican Primary, which is also on Tuesday, but gets little attention because there are no real challengers to Bush.

Except, Buchanan, would say, for him. Buchanan’s self-described claim to fame is a series of articles he wrote—sourced, he says, by documents from the National Archives and the Library of Congress—that prove the “long-rumored” collaborative relationship of the Bush family with the “Nazi war machine.” That work, published in the New Hampshire Gazette (the only paper that would take it), is the push that sent Buchanan’s little craft into the running stream of the state’s 2004 political season.

Passing 213 on my way back from the laundry room, I heard a deep voice agitating on the phone with somebody about “a fucking constitutional crisis that we’re gonna get the House Judiciary Committee to look into.” I poked my head in and this is what I saw: John Buchanan, shirtless in a chair surrounded by notes and newspapers and clothes on the floor, motel phone to his ear. A large bulk of a man sat against the window in a half-darkness punctuated only by the ember end of his cigarette. A cheap plaque on the door said THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING. The smoker was Richard P. (“Dick”) Bosa, a former mayor of Berlin, New Hampshire, who seems to be both running for the same quixotic GOP nomination Buchanan is after, and also acting as Buchanan’s chief political advisor.

I ran back to get Steve, and we returned to room 213. We listened in as they discussed Buchanan’s campaign finances. Bosa had given Buchanan $2,000 of his own money. “And you know what he used it for?” Bosa said. “A limousine and a driver.”

“No, that’s not true,” Buchanan protested with a smile.

“I’m not giving him another fucking dime.”

Steve was confused: “So, you gave him $2,000 to run against yourself?” Bosa didn’t hear the question, and instead turned to me to ask if I had any soda. I went into the hall and bought a can of Pepsi at the vending machine. A dollar well spent. Bosa said thanks, and then offered the first sip to a third person in the room I hadn’t noticed before, a young guy lying on Buchanan’s bed. He was a reporter from a small weekly in upstate New York and had clearly spent too much time with these people. “Here,” Bosa said handing the kid the Pepsi. “You go first.”

At this point Steve and I are communicating to each other telepathically: Holy Christ is this weird. Should we get out of here? No, let’s stay and check it out. It could get weirder. Buchanan explained that his campaign has had a rocky time financially since he came to New Hampshire on Sunday, January 4, and checked into the EconoLodge. “The $2,000 was just a loan to keep my campaign going,” Buchanan said. “Then, I was down to seventy fucking cents. But that was a while ago. Now, I’m alright, because I’ve raised $10,000 in the past three days.”

Much of what Buchanan said was hard to follow because it came fast and scattershot. Buchanan likes to pursue tangents, a tendency worsened by the constant back and forth with Bosa, who was just plain cryptic half the time. Later research was required to fill in many blanks, but the basic story on Buchanan is this: he’s one of those fringe toilers with a journalism background who is very far afield but likable enough that you can’t quite tell if he’s just entirely loopy or just might really hold the key to some dark secret. He was big at first on some kind of September 11/Bush conspiracy theory, but that, he says, was only because his “former campaign manager,” a certified conspiratorial nut named Dave Kubiak, made Buchanan push his theory in exchange for his endorsement and support. (“I needed Kubiak’s organization,” explained Buchanan.) The attention Buchanan received from his New Hampshire Gazette series got a little press on the internet, and he decided to show up at the College Convention, a gathering of the East Coast’s College Democrats and Republicans held in Manchester in early January, to appear as an alternative Republican candidate. Among that group, of which there are about a dozen, Buchanan seems to be the front-runner.

“It’s been absolutely incredible,” Buchanan said breathlessly. “Not all the checks are in, but it’s $10,000. Well, really it’s $9,000 and change. Except the website skimmed off $3,000 of it, so it’s really $6,000.”

Shit, that’s more that we got, I said to Steve in my mind. Yeah, maybe I should run and you can be my campaign manager, and we’ll raise six grand too, he responded in kind.

“Listen, Dick,” Buchanan was saying, “Hey, listen Dick. Dick, I’m calling—I got an interview now with Agence France Presse—“

“OK, but listen—“

“No, no, it’s OK. I’m gonna target Bill O’Reilly. I’m gonna say that O’Reilly is a traitor…”

Press is real important for guys like Buchanan. Their success is measured in terms of how many journalists they’ve talked to. The more official-sounding the media organization, the better. (On his website, Buchanan’s bibliography notes that the New Hampshire Gazette is the oldest newspaper in the country, as if that distinction lends the paper authority.) While we were with him, Buchanan said at least ten times that he’s done forty interviews, all across the country, from San Francisco to Los Angeles, including the Washington Post, the Chicago Sun-Times, et cetera. He kept referring to a radio show he was going to do the next morning in “Vancouver, Canada, which will be broadcast all across the U.S. and overseas.” Buchanan often says that he already won the Republican Primary, by which he means that he’s transmitted his Message as far and wide as he can with a room at the EconoLodge and as little as seventy cents to his name.

Which is, in at least one basic sense, not so different from the six mainstream campaigns mobilizing people and money to get their Messages out all over town. It’s this incredible faith in the Message that keeps campaign staffers and volunteers working with no sleep; that keeps them, in the case of, say, Kucinich (or even Gephardt), pressing forward against unlikely odds. Or that keeps Buchanan running around Manchester doing interviews with television crews from Catalonia. Because what’s weird is how much the fringe tries to simulate the Real Deal operationally, with fund-raising and factions, press releases and interviews, shifting support and a frenetic pace. It’s silly, of course, that Buchanan and Bosa are holed up this dump strategizing about cable access and this Dave Kubiak guy as if they’re about to make a move on Ed Gillespie and drop a bomb on Tom Brokaw, but they sure are working hard. And there’s something to be said for that, right?

“What time would you like to do it? How about tomorrow afternoon? Five my time and two your time? And I’ll have more stuff for you then. Frankly, with what’s at stake, I think you are the most important news agency to deal with this. Alright, great. Bye.” Buchanan is rescheduling with Agence France Presse. “They’ve got something breaking in Los Angeles, and so we have to do it tomorrow.”

“Alright,” Dick says, “and what about Dan Pierce?”

“Oh yeah, Dan Pierce. I called him twice and he didn’t call me back. Prick.”

“Don’t say I told you to call when you talk to him,” Dick injects, “Because I—”

“I thought you asked me to call him,” Buchanan fires back, “I mean I used my own name, I didn’t say I was Omar Suarez.”

“Who’s Dan Pierce?” I ask.

“He’s the News Director for a morning show,” Bosa says.

“And who’s Omar Suarez?” I ask.

“Oh—” Buchanan laughs, “that’s my alter ego. He was the bad guy they lynched from the helicopter in Scarface, which is my favorite movie.”

Turns out that Buchanan has been posting indie media articles about himself under the name Omar Suarez, the guy they lynched from the helicopter in Scarface. And he’s been calling radio programs under the name Omar Suarez, the guy they lynched from the helicopter in Scarface. And he called the Republican National Committee, under the name Omar Suarez, the guy they lynched from the helicopter in Scarface, at which time he asked for a comment from the Bush/Cheney 2004 Press Office on a fictional anti-Bush riot-turned-National-Guard-bloodbath in Manchester.

“Dude, I think we need to go put our stuff in the dryer.” Steve is anxious to get out of there. Especially when Bosa starts talking about pedophilia. We leave. “The vibe was getting out of control in there,” Steve said once at a safe distance.

Very true. Yet, I’ll admit I had a soft spot for Buchanan, and not only because he said we could stay with him if we couldn’t find a room after our reservation ran out. The first story Buchanan told us was about how, when he had only $125 a few weeks before, he gave $100 of it to a guy with a family who was living at the EconoLodge and couldn’t pay their bill. He also raised a couple hundred bucks from other people to pay for the family’s room a few more days. And then Buchanan got the driver of his van involved, and he put six days down on his credit card. “And then the guy skipped town on us! It’s funny right?” Buchanan shouted at the end, with a laugh like it was a punch line. “But it’s his fucking karma, not mine.” Bosa had predicted that the guy would disappear, but Buchanan didn’t care: “This guy had me on the verge of fucking tears. I’m a softie. Still idealistic at fifty-three fucking years old. I did what was right.” Not a bad way to be for a Presidential candidate. If only all the mainstream Republicans had such hearts of gold.

Dispatch Five - Thursday, January 29