If the first three months of 2016 have proven anything, it’s that our political climate has degenerated into a race to the bottom. In this new reality, U.S. Senate candidate Mike Beitiks is aiming to be the first to our lowest point – in order to ensure a scientifically sound foundation is laid before it’s too late. And so, Beitiks is reluctantly offering to personally fistfight David and Charles Koch – the 75- and 80-year-old oil magnate brothers who have widely funded efforts to undermine climate change legislation in America.
“But only if they agree,” Beitiks clarifies. “This is strictly a gentleman’s challenge. A possible solution for this little ‘federal-legislators-are-
Nothing more, nothing less.”
Beitiks launched his independent candidacy last year on a single-plank platform: To “monomaniacally create and support legislation that combats climate change.”
“The notion of out-and-out violence entering our political discourse is truly sickening,” Beitiks says. “But, in these times, one must apparently go on the record saying he is willing to engage in consensual mutual combat with an obscenely wealthy octogenarian and his vulgarly rich brother to help preserve a healthy planet. It is what it is. Climate science will not be out-idioted while I’m a candidate.”
Beitiks worries that even in the face of this gentleman’s challenge, the Kochs will take the fight “off the streets.”
“In our current campaign finance climate might makes right, and these men could end my candidacy for less money than they probably spent on ice for their parties last year.”
March 4th, 2016
Beitiks Campaign Releases “Praise Ads” Against Opponents in Race to Replace Barbara Boxer
Barely a week after Kamala Harris overwhelmingly won the California Democratic party endorsement in the race to replace Senator Barbara Boxer, independent candidate Mike Beitiks’ guerrilla campaign has gone on the offensive, releasing a trilogy of online campaign ads targeting Harris and the race’s other leading candidates.
However, the ads are not “hit ads.” In what may be a political first, The Beitiks campaign has released an ad praising frontrunner Harris, as well as ads praising Democrat Loretta Sanchez, and Republican Duf Sundheim.
In these “praise ads,” Beitiks, who is running on a single-issue climate change platform, gazes at crudely-drawn portraits of the other candidates while a narrator extols their qualifications and virtues. The ads then end with a plea that Californians vote for Beitiks and his aggressive climate platform. Why? Because, argues Beitiks, the only way to save upstanding human beings like Harris, Sanchez and Sundheim from a death sentence brought on by Congressional inaction in the face of a warming globe is to elect candidates aggressive on climate action.
Despite his poor (read: non-existent) showing in current field polls, Beitiks’ unconventional single-issue candidacy has garnered press from MSNBC, The LA Times, Inside Bay Area, Vice, Grist, GOOD, The Awl, In These Times, High Country News, and others.
These “praise ads” are not Beitiks’s first knuckleball attempt at reaching California voters. After launching his campaign on Earth Day last year, he staged an “ill-advised and ill-fated” thirst strike outside the San Francisco Federal Building, demanding Federal climate legislation in July. In October, he published an open letter to Senator Barbara Boxer in which he advised her to go out with a bang and help the species not go out with a whimper. In December, he released 21 campaign ads over the course of the COP21 Climate Conference in Paris.
While his campaign is, in his own words, “heavy on dark humor and light on chances of winning,” you will see his name on the June 7th open primary ballot.
Beitiks’ campaign committee, appropriately named “Beitiks’ Money That Could Have Gone to Carbon Reduction,” raised the funds for the primary filing fee by selling campaign shirts re-purposed from Goodwill purchases, “drought indulgences” in which the candidate vowed to not shower for the sake of his donors, and private mac-and-cheese dinners with Beitiks and his three-year-old son.
Beitiks, a stay-at-home dad who has never held an elected (or unelected) office, says “I have two children for whom I would do anything, and who will inherit the world I leave to them. I’m obligated to do what I can do to make sure that the worldwide die-off we’ve been saddled with is given adequate attention in an otherwise preordained Senate race.”