The Palm Beach Post today (Saturday, November 5, 1983) featured an article on last night's Presidential candidates' debate at the Cross County Mall in West Palm Beach featuring Richard Grayson, Elijah the Prophet, Richard Kay and George Britt:
Four men who won’t be elected president in 1984 told tens of shoppers at the Cross County Mall in West Palm Beach last night why they should be.
“Who Else is Running for President?” said the sign in the middle of the mall, inviting shoppers to the candidates’ forum. “Who Cares?” was the clear but unspoken answer the four candidates received.
An unofficial straw poll of shoppers showed they preferred the 7:45 p.m. showing of The Dead Zone and the beckoning aroma of Mama Leone’s pizza to the ideas of George Britt, Richard Kay, Richard Grayson or Elijah the Prophet.
“Who are these guys?” was how mall publicist David Citron introduced them. Citron dreamed up the Florida Presidential Forum, which goes on the road today to Lauderdale Lakes and North Miami Beach.
“The difference between them and the Big Seven candidates,” Citron said, “is money.”
And perhaps style.
Kay, who lost the presidential election in 1980 and a North Palm Beach Village Council election earlier this year, was arrested in New Hampshire last week when he wouldn’t leave the state Democratic convention.
Britt, an unsuccessful candidate for mayor of Philadelphia, has a 15-year-old campaign manager in Texas. Britt ran his mother for president in 1980.
Elijah the Prophet, from New York City, is a self-styled visionary who has a day job with Western Electric and campaigns for world government headed by himself.
“It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when people like us have to run for president,” said Grayson, an English teacher and freelance writer from North Miami Beach. He wore running shoes, jeans and a sport jacket that was too small.
Fifteen candidates promised to be there last night. Only four showed up. A candidate from Alabama got lost in Hollywood, a couple were stranded by the bus strike, one broke his foot and the mother of another died.
While the other candidates had platforms, Grayson had a routine. "Do rich people from Palm Beach shop at this mall? They don't? Then I'll have to take this line out of my speech: If it weren't for rich people, the world would be a poorer place.
The answer to all the nation's ills, according to Grayson, is "immediate nuclear war." If he is elected, he will move the capital to Davenport, Iowa. "That solves the problem of getting the riffraff out of Washington," he said.
Grayson claimed he's asked "Falcon Crest" star and President Reagan's ex-wife, Jane Wyman, to be his vice presidential running mate: "She's already dumped Ronald Reagan once and has the experience to dump him again". . .
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