Among Americans frustrated with the status quo, campaign stickers and T-shirts advocate for another viable presidential candidate who isn’t President Joe Biden, the Democrat, or former president Donald Trump, the Republican.
Polls have shown the sentiment has some support in the electorate, and independent presidential candidates, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West, have generated some interest.
But one upstart candidate took the political frustration to an extreme.
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Dustin Ebey, 35, a seventh-grade math teacher from suburban Fort Worth, Texas, legally changed his name to “Literally Anybody Else.”
The webpage for Literally Anybody Else states that “America should not be stuck choosing between the ‘King of Debt’ (his self-declaration) and an 81-year old.”
In an interview this week with Raw Story, Else said that during the 2020 Biden-Trump presidential election, he thought, “It would be so nice if we had a ‘neither’ option. What if you could put it on there as an alias, a way to just kind of catch that sentiment, to come together under the idea, ‘We want something better.’”
When he filed with the Federal Election Commission to register the Committee to Elect Literally Anybody Else, the regulators, understandably, took it as a joke. The regulators sent a strongly worded letter last week to the Committee to Elect Literally Anybody Else, warning that federal law prohibits “knowingly and willfully making any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation to a federal government agency, including the Federal Election Commission.”
Initially unable to reach Else for comment, Raw Story reported on what it, too, believed to be a fake FEC filing. But two days later, Dallas television station WFAA, after stumbling upon Else promoting his cause outside the city's hockey arena, aired a story about his presidential campaign. WFAA also confirmed that a Texas judge in Tarrant County approved Else's name change.
Else's FEC filing didn't include an explanation of the unusual situation, and the regulator wasn’t laughing at what it thought was yet another bogus campaign committee and candidate filing — the agency receives hundreds every year.
Else’s deadline for a response to the FEC is April 23. Else told Raw Story he has reached out to the FEC by phone and is not concerned about proving that his name is Literally Anybody Else.
“It’s on my ID,” Else said. “It’s on my driver’s license.”
He knows getting on a ballot is unrealistic, say nothing of besting Biden or Trump.
“The main goal is to encourage discourse, to provoke thought, to challenge the status quo,” he told Raw Story. “I feel like having that without trying to get the name on the ballot would just be empty.”
And, he said, trying to attract attention without a name change would have been hopeless.
Else’s seventh graders still refer to him as Mr. Ebey.
“Or, ‘bruh’,” he joked.
Else said he discussed the name change with school administrators in advance, agreeing to keep his personal politics out of the middle school classroom. He said his parents are proud that he’s taking action instead of just complaining. He said his wife had some concerns about any potential long-term impact of the name change.
But he has a plan for after November.
“Win or lose,” Else said, “I’ll change my name back to Dustin Ebey.”
