It’s been three years since Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, the Ohio man dubbed “Joe the Plumber”, hurtled into the public eye after berating then-presidential candidate Barack Obama on tax policy. Now, the man who was referred to more than two dozen times during 2008’s presidential debates had announced that he is running for Congress.
After his five-minutes of fame, Wurzelbacher became something of an icon for anti-establishment Republicans, touring the country to speak at Tea Party events. He was seen as everyman, the representative of hardworking America (although it later emerged that he was not a licensed plumber). Not one to miss a trick, he’s also secured a book deal and recorded a country music record. He announced yesterday that he will run as Republican candidate for the House of Representatives in Ohio’s 9th Congressional District, which includes the city of Toledo.
In his announcement, he said:
If I’m coming off as angry, it’s because I am. I just can’t stand it when people do bad work. And we’ve been voting, the last 40 or 50 years, (for) bad people to do bad things to us. Why have we been doing it? Because we don’t take our civic responsibility seriously enough.
His new campaign website, Joeforcongress2012.com, promises that he will be “a fierce advocate for working class, conservative values” in Washington. Wurzelbacher has previously been dismissive of politics as a whole, and said that he’d decided to enter as a Republican because he didn’t think he could win as an independent. “Is it the lesser of two evils?” he said. “I don’t know.”
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