The Slatest

A Love Supreme

Seth Stevenson

CLEVELAND—I first ran into Mr. Vermin Supreme—a perennial presidential candidate, absurdist performance artist, and wearer of a rubber boot on his head—back in May, in Orlando, when he took the Libertarian Party’s convention by storm. Supreme was particularly chuffed when I saw him, as he’d managed to win an actual delegate in the first round of the libertarians’ nomination voting. (Given that eventual nominee Gary Johnson had fallen five delegates short of closing the deal in that round, one could argue that Supreme changed, in his own vanishingly small way, the course of the 2016 election cycle.)

Not long after this triumph, Supreme encountered my Slate colleague Jeremy Stahl at a Bernie Sanders rally in California. Supreme told Stahl he had a bone to pick with Slate: We’d used a photo I’d snapped of him to “take potshots” at the libertarians, in what he felt to be an unsporting manner. (The photo featured Supreme holding a piece of toast that bore his own image, seared into the bread.)

Well, fret not, fans of both Supreme and Slate, for this rift has now been healed. I bumped into Supreme here in Cleveland on Tuesday, on the city’s Public Square. He’d come here in a quest to win a GOP delegate. He told me he thought he might get one if things went to a third ballot, which, sadly, they didn’t. I cleared the air regarding our misunderstanding, and he assured me that no ill will remains. All Supreme cares about now is continuing to promote, far and wide, his platform: “The pony-based economy, mandatory toothbrushing laws, zombie apocalypse awareness, harnessing the awesome power of zombies for energy sources, and, uh, the other one.”

Read more Slate coverage of the 2016 campaign.