For the new (2024) Bill Hammons Candidate page, click here. Be sure to also visit the Presidential Campaign Website of Unity Party Chairman Hammons.
Bill Hammons was born in Germany in the 70’s to a career US Army officer (who just recently passed away from Agent Orange exposure). Bill graduated from Permian High School in West Texas of Friday Night Lights fame, attended NYU in New York, and made the Dean’s List several semesters in a row before going on to work as the Rights Manager at Newsweek Magazine and then starting Bill’s List, which has received as many as 17,000 visitors daily.
One day in 2003, Bill was on a training run for the NYC Marathon in the hills of Central Park, mulling over what more he could do to support the Presidential candidacy of General Wes Clark (Bill had been active in the Draft Clark grassroots movement). Then, at the top of the park, it struck Bill that he and others could run marathons to raise campaign contributions. The idea of “Runners for Clark” was born, and the organization had spread to 14 states before the General bowed out of the 2004 Primaries.
Clark might’ve been done, but Bill wasn’t, and Unity Runners was started to support Centrist candidates throughout the country (one thing Bill had become increasingly dismayed with was the inability of the established American political parties to appeal to Centrist voters). The 2004 election was done that November, but Bill still wasn’t done, and the Unity Party of America was born in November 2004.
The following Spring, Bill moved back West (to Colorado) to enjoy the stunning running trails and even more stunning views (he’s completed everything from a mile race down Fifth Avenue to a 50-mile race in the Montana wilderness) before finally returning to Texas after a 26-year journey. While in Colorado, he was the first of only two third-party Coloradans to ever successfully petition onto the General Election statewide ballot (and the only one to do so single-handedly). The Unity Party was placed on the Colorado official voter registration form as the “Unity” option as a direct result of Bill’s 2014 US Senate run, and UP achieved full recognition as a party by the State in June of 2017 (Unity Party candidates can now be placed directly onto the General Election ballot by a show of hands, no petitioning required).
Bill went on to become the first Unity Party of America member (along with his friend and running mate Eric Bodenstab) to appear on the General Election ballot as a Gubernatorial candidate, and promptly put his vote numbers into full hockey stick graph mode before heading to Texas (partly) to be in compliance with the 12th Amendment to the Constitution (while Bill misses the mountains, his Vice Presidential running mate hails from Colorado).
Bill and his running mate Eric Bodenstab are on the ballot in multiple states across the country in 2020, and Bill is even starting to make appearances in popular culture: the makers of the Red World mod of the popular video game Hearts of Iron 4 chose to basically portray him as Leader of the Free World in a what-if-the-Soviets-had-won-the-Cold-War version of The Man in the High Castle, beating out Jill Stein and Hillary Clinton to lead (what remains of) the United States against Vladimir Putin and the Red Menace. Really.
