Hunter S. Thompson and the Wildest Town Sheriff Campaign in US History
Nadja Sayej, provided by
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The Rum Diary and
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail. In fact, he once had a campaign of his own when he ran for county sheriff in the pristine, patrician ski village of Aspen, Colorado, in 1970.
That campaign including a trove of never-before-seen footage is now the subject of a new documentary called
Freak Power: The Ballot Or The Bomb. It’s a tale of classic Nixon-era angst, with Thompson pushing for change in a time when “stability” was the guiding principle in American politics. Some might even say nothing has changed, and that Thompson’s maverick libertarianism reflects a dissatisfaction with mainstream politics that still resonates with many disenfranchised Americans in 2020.