1991: the year Frank Zappa considered running for president
Despite the comedic angle of much of his best-loved work, Frank Zappa always had a political edge. He provided a host of memorable, if not surreal, social commentaries in his time and earned many followers because of it. Towards the end of his life, he also considered running for president, a point that left much food for thought.
Interestingly, Zappa’s discussion about his potential run for president came in 1991, only five years after the notorious 1986 debate wherein he’d openly described himself as “conservative”. According to the Mothers of Invention leader, his tentative exploration of a run to The White House started in 1990 when he watched a C-Span TV symposium. Moderated by Leslie Stahl, it featured a string of prominent political strategists from both the Democrats and Republicans, who discussed how the 1992 presidential campaign might play out.
Per Zappa, when speaking to the San Diego Union-Tribune in 1991, his interest was piqued when the veteran Democrat consultant Raymond Strother asserted that nothing would change in the country’s politics until an outsider entered the race. Unfortunately for the legendary musician, Strother’s comments didn’t turn out to be an announcement of the coming of Frank Zappa, the US President.
Zappa would even reveal that he contacted Strother to discuss the viability of his possible campaign and claimed that the veteran appeared interested until he instead started working as a publicist for Tennessee’s Albert Gore. He maintained that he had not contacted them but outlined that he would have liked famed Texas industrialist H. Ross Perot as his Vice President running mate. The music icon also said that if elected, he would want the controversial defender of the stars and Harvard professor, Alan Dershowitz, as his Attorney General.
“My main qualifications,” Zappa said of his appeal at the time, “are that I don’t play golf, I don’t take vacations, and I do think the US Constitution is one hell of a document and that this country would work better if people adhered to it more closely.”
It seems that people would have voted for Zappa, too. Disney’s KCAL Channel 9 prematurely identified him as a candidate in the race. After airing an interview with him, the channel followed it up with a survey asking the audience if they would vote for the musician. After roughly 1,800 responded, a spokeswoman for the station revealed that 86% said they would vote for him if he made an official bid.
So what were Zappa’s aims if he was to run for president? He said he’d focus on eliminating federal income taxes, raising most state taxes except for those on staple food items, and generally, “getting the government out of people’s faces”. He also had the US military in his sights, explaining: “The only thing the military should be used for is protecting the country, not bad foreign policy.”
Zappa even claimed that he had lots of calls from people in support, as well as a CV from a policy writer for the Republicans, who sought a paid position on his potential staff. However, he conceded: “But it doesn’t matter because that’s not enough to convince me to go through the BS of a campaign.”
Tragically, after being diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1990, Zappa passed away in 1993 at the age of 52, meaning his talk of running for president remained only that. Despite this, his political life remains a crucial aspect of his story.
