He’s a walkin’ contradiction, partly truth, partly fiction
Takin’ ev’ry wrong direction on his lonely way back home
(The Pilgrim—Kris Kristofferson)
It was the noon hour in Walk On’s on Poydras Street in New Orleans and a noisy lunch crowd was packed in as one of the flat screen televisions was demanding my attention with a re-play of the Boston Red Sox players celebrating their American League East Championship after two straight years of finishing dead last in the division.
I watched because the Red Sox have been my favorite team since Ted Williams won an American League batting championship with a .388 average in 1957 at age 38. I was 14 at the time. He retired in 1960, hitting a home run in his last at-bat. (My second favorite team is the Chicago Cubs: Dare I hope for a dream World Series between the two? Hey, it could happen.)
He walked into the Restaurant a few minutes late (after I had called to say I would be two hours late). Seeing him looking around for someone he’d never met, I signaled to him to let him know I was his lunch appointment. “Sorry I’m late. I made some money today,” he said as he slid into the booth.
Danil Ezekiel Faust is a candidate for Congress from Louisiana’s 1st Congressional District and he doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell because he has no money and he’s running against an incumbent (Steve Scalise) who has millions.
And that is precisely why he’s running.
The money he made was as an online trader
A Puerto Rican Irish Jew, Faust, a Democrat, is what Kris Kristofferson calls a walking contradiction: He is a former manager of an Arizona hedge fund who continues to play the market but who at the same time despises Wall Street and everything it stands for.
His hero also happens to be is favorite American President: Andrew Jackson. “They can take down those statues of Confederate soldiers, but not Andrew Jackson. The man took a bullet in the chest defending his wife’s honor. He was opposed to a National Bank…and he was right. He is a real American hero,” overlooking the fact that Jackson also signed into law the Indian Removal Act that stained America’s history with the Trail of Tears.
And like so many others, he insists there is entirely too much money in politics.
He also is a strong proponent of wind energy, a sure way to gin up substantial opposition (read: campaign contributions for his opponent) from the fossil fuel industry. He is pro-choice and an unabashed supporter of gay rights and equal pay for women.
And he keeps right on a-changin’ for the better or the worse
Searchin’ for a shrine he’s never found
Never knowin’ if believin’ is a blessin’ or a curse
Or if the goin’ up was worth the comin’ down
“If I had the money to play on a level playing field, there’s no doubt I could win,” he said between bites of his heart-attack inducing bacon cheeseburger.
But he has no official organization. His campaign headquarters are in his former residence upstairs over the Three-Legged Dog at 400 Burgundy in the French Quarter. His business cards are from a computer program.
Most of all, though, he has no financial backing. Scalise, on the other hand, earlier tied by blogger Lamar White to a Ku Klux Klan event at which David Duke was the main speaker, has the Koch brothers and their Americans for Prosperity (AFP) pouring money into his re-election campaign through various Super PACs which, unfortunately drowns out the message of any underfunded opponent.
“AFP, I believe, held a big social event on the same night at Acme Oyster House right next door to Scalise’s headquarters,” he said.
No one can be heard over the roar of cash being poured into the campaign of an entrenched—and bought—incumbent. And there is no greater concentration of bought politicians than in the U.S. Congress.
Never mind that Scalise voted against federal funding to assist Super Storm Sandy victims in New Jersey but now is demanding federal funds for Louisiana’s flood victims. http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-louisiana-floods-20160822-snap-story.html
Faust, a native of Puerto Rico (take note, birthers: he can never be President), stopped temporarily in New Orleans en route to his intended destination—New York, where he planned to take a job with another hedge fund. But while in New Orleans, he fell in love. With New Orleans and its diverse culture “and its laid-back way of life.”
He took a job as a doorman at a French Quarter strip club. It was while working at that job that he began watching and listening. He learned some unforgettable lessons about the realities of life and the local power structure. In short, he knows where a lot of political skeletons are buried. “It was nothing for politicians and powerful businessmen to come into the club and drop $10,000,” he said.
He said the much-ballyhooed Operation Trick or Treat conducted a year ago by the Louisiana State Police (LSP) and the Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control (ATC) was a sham. The clubs that played ball and made the right political contributions were never investigated, he said.
He also said the LSP and ATC sweep in Operation Trick or Treat and a campaign to limit the number of strip clubs in the French Quarter was the idea of established strip clubs friendly with ATC’s then-director Troy Hebert “to keep down competition.”
So what made Danil Faust run?
“I kept hearing that David Duke was going to run,” he said. “But in the end, he got in the U.S. Senate race instead. I even heard Troy Hebert was running.”
Hebert, who also opted to join the crowded (24 candidates) Senate race, does not reside in the First Congressional District but in Louisiana, residency is not a requirement. (The First Congressional District, by the way, was used by Bobby Jindal as a springboard to the governor’s office.)
“Other than Scalise, no one is running for the office,” he said. Actually, there are seven candidates on the ballot, but like Faust, none of the other five challengers is given a chance in this election.
But that’s what happens when big money like the Kochs, George Soros, Donald Sussman, Michael Bloomberg, Warren Stephens, Hank Greenburg, and the Devos family, to name but a few, overpowers and corrupts the electoral process. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/superpac-donors-2016/
And no matter if his passion is Andrew Jackson, or if he works as a hedge fund manager, an advocate of wind power, a strip club doorman or a political candidate, Danil Ezekiel Faust remains his own man.
But if this world keeps right on turnin’ for the better or the worse
And all he ever gets is older and around
From the rockin’ of the cradle to the rollin’ of the hearse
The goin’ up was worth the comin’ down
Louisiana Voice 
Interesting. I would vote for him.
Thanks!
Reblogged this on Danil Faust.
Good news. Competition for Scalise is most welcome. Faust should start his campaign fight by hilighting the fact that Scalise has received six-figures of donations from the pro-opioid lobby as a congressman. He is reportedly in 2nd place behind Charles Boustany in that regard. Those who accept money from this powerful lobby invariably vote against every proposed limitation of the over-prescription policies that were ushered in by generous lobbyists back in the 90s, and that are now fueling the opioid addiction epidemic. This issue should be front and center of every campaign. We are losing a generation.
I’ve lost 3 friends to Heroin Overdoses this year alone and know quite a few people who have fallen into the clutches of that deadly drug. Almost all started out on proscription painkillers.
You lost me at Andrew Jackson, Father of the Democratic Party. No one abused power more or left misery in his wake. If that’s his hero, then he is either telling you his political philosophy or needs to read a book. Either way, no thanks.
I’m reading through the official biography by James Parton published in 1870 and was entered into the Library of Congress in 1859, with interviews from people who lived in his Father’s town of Garrickfergus, from his time as a kid before his 3 brothers and Mother died in the Revolutionary War. Basically he was the first president to ever be raised by a single mother. He’s also the first president who was an orphan. He’s also the only President who saw his brother die in front of him as a child. No, I’m pretty well read on him.
I don’t like his idea of Patronage however.
[…] Faust, who previously garnered 12,708 votes (4 percent) in an unsuccessful challenge to U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise in 2016, also filed to run for clerk of court in 2017 but was disqualified over a technicality regarding a party change from Democrat to Green. He tends bar at the Three Legged Dog in the French Quarter, but was previously a hedge fund manager in Arizona, according to a 2016 profile. […]
[…] s it now? That’s kind of what it was in the beginning, a joke candidacy to get an inside look into Louisiana politics and how that affects economic growth, yet less than 6 months later, I was faced with a generation waking up and realizing their country had changed overnight. Your first probable question, do I know what I’m doing? “Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I’m a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it! You know, I just… *do* things.” ― The Joker When it comes to numbers, I’m at home. I was a back office asset manager managing $30 million in fixed income assets for private accounts at a small financial firm in Phoenix, Arizona. Before that I worked as an actuarial analyst helping to manage a $500 million portfolio for a mid-sized Insurance firm, Oxford Life. My degree was in pure mathematics, focusing on probability and complex topology. I balanced books and provided financial forecasting, I only ended up in Louisiana on my way to work at a hedge fund in New York City. I came for Mardi Gras, but the first night I was on Bourbon Street was the night the Saints won the Superbowl. I fell in love and I was home. There’s a lot that followed in the next 6 years before I returned to pursue my Ph.D. in Financial Economics, but I just had this harebrained scheme of trying to understand campaign finance from the inside. The universe is fully known because it is ignored. Enlightenment comes when you don’t care. — Jack Kerouac, The Scripture of the Golden Eternity The fact was I had messed up with my classes, I had devoted too much time learning about renewable energy and transmission methods and basically bombed my probability class at UNO. I had met some of the most powerful people in Louisiana and received respect from too many who played the game but kept hoping for new blood. I had helped form the local Our Revolution chapter and got a grasp on campaign finance. So the plan was apply for real jobs, but Trump WON and then the next night the call was put out and we marched. I was there for every night of the Trump protestsI’ll go over a lot of the details of what went down, the broken glass at a bank, the vandalism, not everything people were reading in the news was entirely accurate. It was surreal how much different stories were to those events. I kept at it though, I was working with an activist group of purely African Americans most of whom are legends, like Miss Eloise and Andy Washington. I also helped form two activist groups of primarily white millenials, the MobilizeNOLA group and Our Revolution NOLA. All of this requires a lot of discussing, but the votes I got and the difference I was making was visible to me and that’s what mattered. z Also, nobody really wanted to hire me F*** damnation, man! F*** redemption! We are God’s unwanted children? So be it! – Tyler Durden I could see it, nobody really wanted to hire me except for the adult entertainment clubs I worked at before I quit to go to school, but I just couldn’t go back. That life wasn’t for me, I pretty much gave up my partying days, speaking in front of the council, working with the activist groups, I managed to get hired at a daiquiri shop right where the shooting occurred in 2015 on Bourbon. Shortly after I started working at the bar where I live and have stayed since. The surface of my story and what I have to tell you has barely been scratchedNo, my candidacy isn’t a joke. I have the education, granted not from international schools, but my life is far from ordinary. In the ensuing posts you will learn much more about the current state of affairs of New Orleans. Even if you don’t like me as a person, you will appreciate the candor and depth of my work. Thank you for reading. If you would like a media perspective on my background, here’s my first interview, from the amazing Tom Aswell of the Louisiana Voice.https://louisianavoice.com/2016/09/29/native-of-puerto-rico-resident-of-new-orleans-former-hedge-fun… […]