Ed O’Donnell, a fixture around town and at meetings, got 493 votes over seven N.H. primaries
OCEAN CITY — Edward T. O’Donnell Jr. knows he is never going to be president, but that didn’t stop him from running in the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primaries seven times.
Between 1984 and 2016, the man who has lived in hotels the past 20 years, shuttling among Philadelphia, King of Prussia, Pa., and Ocean City, N.J., amassed a grand total of 493 votes combined, running on a platform of complete pacifism (no guns, no militaries) and guaranteed housing and jobs for all.
O’Donnell is a familiar fixture around town in his thrift-store clothing and from speaking up in regular appearances during public comment at Ocean City Council meetings on topics such as the virtue of clean living and the health benefits of a dip in the ocean. He is known for chatting with people on the boardwalk, handing out fliers for businesses and through his letters to the editor about being kind to one another.
The reason the 75-year-old ran again and again in the presidential primaries is twofold — to spread his political message and to get the “high” of what he considers the hard-to-match thrill of running.
That is even though he believes the only way he’ll get to be president is by divine intervention.
Ed O’Donnell, as he prefers to be known, was born in 1948 and raised in the wealthy Alapocas neighborhood of Wilmington, Del., where his father was a family physician and school physician at the Wilmington Friends School that O’Donnell and his brother attended. His mother was a nurse and real estate agent who did extensive charitable work.
He considers his upbringing, living across from the school, “almost a totally charmed life” with his “great” parents. He went on to attend Colgate University, which he called “a very loving, positive place spiritually.” He wrote a column for the college newspaper and said he won a Rockefeller Scholarship that allowed him to spend a year at Harvard Divinity School.
O’Donnell started his own charity, the Winthrop Foundation, that’s now 49 years old, along with serving on various other charitable boards. He claims he put $1.7 million into the Winthrop Foundation (and doesn’t take a salary). The foundation, he said, has given out more than 100,000 Bibles and 22,000 rosaries over the years, provided jobs for about a thousand people and used proceeds to help the homeless and take children to cultural and sporting events such as museums and Philadelphia Phillies baseball games. (Information on the foundation could not be independently verified.)
He believes in supporting the homeless, veterans, those struggling with addiction and mental health issues. One way he does that is handing out free fitness club passes, seeing physical health as an important aspect.
O’Donnell said he was motivated to run for office in Delaware in 1982, but was discouraged because politics was so negative with so many insincere people.
“Then I thought there was one way to help people — run in the New Hampshire primary for president,” he said, realizing he only needed to pay $1,000 to get on the Democratic ballot.
He did that in 1984, got on the ballot and earned 74 votes, according to nh.electionstats.com.
“It was a thrilling experience,” he said.
O’Donnell was hooked.
He went back six more times, earning a low of 24 votes in 1992 to a high of 222 votes in 2012. The statistics site showed him on the ballot a total of seven times over the course of 32 years and a total of 493 votes combined. The last time he went was 2016, when he received 26 votes. He often polled much higher than other lesser-known candidates. (See related story.)
O’Donnell also got hooked on media interviews, being featured over the years in newspapers and on TV for being among the quirky candidates who earned a relative handful of votes while the winners got tens of thousands.
“It’s hard for lesser-known candidates to get votes,” he said, but he enjoyed New Hampshire because voters there showed a real interest in all of the candidates.
He is unhappy about both major political parties, but chose the Democratic primaries. O’Donnell believes two factors accounted for his poor showings in the primaries — being anti-abortion and the fact that “even if a voter likes you, they don’t want to waste a vote in the main race.”
He noted that depending on how a “lesser-known candidate” is defined, he has gotten more votes than any other candidate like him. He noted that if Vermin Love Supreme, a performance artist who has run in various races wearing a boot on his head as a hat and carrying a large toothbrush, is considered lesser-known, he couldn’t make the claim about the most votes. He called Vermin Supreme “a good friend of mine, a character.”
O’Donnell claims he put “about $1.8 million into running for president,” another aspect that could not be independently verified. He said he spent the money mostly on “hotels and logistics,” not advertising.
He said he makes money by selling books door to door and marketing for small businesses, predominantly through handing out business cards and literature.
Asked if that was enough to fund the campaigns, he said he also gets Social Security “and a good inheritance.”
O’Donnell has been basically on “almost a poverty homeless level for about 20 years, since my mother died,” but he lives simply in hotels and gets free food at restaurants. He noted that hotel life is frugal because he can make free long-distance calls (often to call-in TV and radio shows), have free breakfasts and take extra food for his lunch and dinner, and get free toothpaste and razors.
“I’m not in great shape financially, but I’m in better shape than I’ve been in for 20 years,” he said. “I spent most of my money on my charity and running for president.”
The philosophy and
his remote chances
“I do this to help people,” O’Donnell said about running for president.
“The only way I could become president is if there is a Christian supernatural miracle by which God forces Biden and Harris to resign and appoints me. That’s the only way. It will never happen through the system. And you would have to believe in Biblical Christianity,” he said, which he does.
Will it ever happen? “I hope it will. Let’s put it that way. But in the meantime, I love helping people.”
His platform is straightforward: no guns, including no hunting, and no military.
O’Donnell said he is an absolute pacifist. When challenged that if there were no militaries, a dictator could run roughshod over people, he said that couldn’t happen if everyone were a pacifist.
“War is never the answer. It kills, injures and creates more collateral damage than that over which we say we’re fighting the war would have done,” he said. “Military mathematics does not add up. If everyone refused to fight, there would be no wars.”
“This is a pipe dream, but I still hold onto it.”
He also believes there should be guaranteed housing and guaranteed jobs.
Part of the problem with helping the homeless, he notes, is that “none of the people running the homeless institutions are asking and demanding the clients change their behavior.”
He believes in a compassionate but forceful approach: telling the homeless no smoking, no drinking, no drugs, and no sexual sins or crimes.
“And a lot of the homeless, let’s be honest, are very rude people. That’s hurting them. While we want this program for the homeless, they have to change their behavior,” he said.
For guaranteed jobs, he said there are trillions of dollars in unspent corporate cash in the bank and unspent charitable funds, along with churches and wealthy individuals who could fund that.
It would be through having people work however much time they can, be it eight hours a day or 40 minutes, picking up trash, physically cleaning places of dust, dirt, grease, grime and mold and other public service jobs.
It’s the thrill
In addition to helping people, O’Donnell said he absolutely enjoyed being in New Hampshire for those primaries.
“Running in the New Hampshire primary is the most fun, thrilling experience in the world. There’s just something about it,” he said.
He liked that the state attorney general would have public group forums for the lesser-known candidates and that he loved meeting people on street corners and talking to them.
“You get the thrill — and I don’t mean this in an egocentric sense — but you get enough publicity. That’s thrilling. You don’t want to be megalomaniacal and a publicity addict focusing on yourself, but it’s fun.
“And then standing on the street corners shaking hands … there’s something magical about it.”
People will see O’Donnell around Ocean City, where he will tell everyone he meets that he is a third-party candidate for president (unofficially) and that people should Google him.
Being able to speak up a City Council meetings, to meet people on the boardwalk and have his letters to the editor published have given him enough that he didn’t feel the need to run in the New Hampshire presidential primary in 2020 or 2024, even though when he did it is “was like a high.”
He will still share his message with the people he meets that “you could solve a lot of problems in the world if people treated everybody with old-fashioned friendliness, kindness, love, mercy, tolerance and manners.”
– STORY and PHOTOS by DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff