That's the ticket
rogerWILLIAMS rwilliams@florida-weekly.com

Three new candidates announced this week that they will seek the White House, only 15 weeks before Florida's controversial January 29th presidential primary.

All three are Lee County residents, and each has been given a better than 50-percent chance of beating the current frontrunners, according to a poll conducted by That's-the-Ticket Thinking, Inc. (TTT). In a TTT survey of three voters, respondents appeared to strongly favor the new candidates over Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Fred Thompson, Barack Obama, John Edwards and Mitt Romney.

Below are brief biographies of the candidates, more or less true (mostly less), and their initial statements, thoughtfully written for them by Florida Weekly.

WAYNE DALTRY, 60, county sage.

Born in Kentucky in 1947, Daltry graduated from The Citadel and went to Vietnam shortly after John McCain donated his A-4 Skyhawk to a rice paddy there.

Too smart to become a prisoner of war like McCain, or a prisoner of any other misguided and testosteronal social adventure, Daltry once laid out an entire plan that might have led American leaders to a Southeast Asian victory within 12 months. But a visiting general, inebriated by Daltry's dazzling use of both Latin and Greek combined with examples from English history, American history, European history, Russian history, and Chinese history, along with Jack Daniels, collapsed onto the planning table and destroyed the plan, which could not be recreated.

Likened by those who know him to George C. Marshall, Hannibal, Bobby Fischer, Robert E. Lee, William J. Donovan and Shelby Foote, Daltry helped save Lee County from becoming a Fort Lauderdale parking lot.

STATEMENT: The war is clearly our

front-burner issue with social, economic,

political, geo-historical and enviro-biological

consequences, but it's also an

extension of Homer's Troy or the tactical

problem the Union Army faced at

Fredericksburg on Dec. 13, 1862, when

Burnside foolishly tried to cross the Rappahannock

River and lost 13,000 men

and that was the American experience

not the Greek experience only in the

particulars since there is little dichotomy

between Yankees and Greeks. Both were

outside the walls, and we are inside

Baghdad where the walls are metaphors

but just as real, so like Ulysses but we

have to use a Trojan horse and drop a

million cases of Trojan condoms in the

sand then withdraw 160,000 American

troops between Monday and Friday and

hide'em 15 minutes away in Kuwait so

when Muslim extremists rush out to

destroy the offending Trojans we jump

back in and, well, as Ceaser said, Veni,

Vidi, Vici.

WILEY PARKER, 70, architect.

 Born in a foreign country defined by federal mandate as a part of the United States - the Deep South, circa 1937- Parker came of age in the Carolinas, before becoming an architect and moving to Florida about 45 years ago.

Often compared in appearance to Mark Twain, he thinks just as clearly as Twain, say his friends, but also carries the qualities of St. Francis of Assisi, Christopher Wren, Frank Gehry, Frank Lloyd Wright, Nathan Bedford Forrest, the entire original Lynyrd Skynyrd band and Plato, along with Jesus, Al Gore and John Muir.

In September, he won the W.R. Frizzell Medal of Honor from the American Institute of Architects, Southwest Florida, for decades spent creating beautiful and useful buildings here, and the soulful consciences that spring up in humans who get to use such spaces.

STATEMENT: Everyone in this country

will learn to build his or her own

home, because we will teach them, thoroughly.

Everyone will treat each other

with respect, because we will make them,

respectfully. Everyone will learn to sail,

because we will show them how, patiently.

Well, actually, my brilliant colleagues

will execute most of this domestic plan,

because they have most of the talent.

But we will insist that every American

be treated equally under the law, and be

given the chance to get the best medical

care and educations and homes and sailboats,

and have open public access to the

riverfront along its entire 60 mile stretch

from Lake Okeechobee to the Gulf -

especially in downtown Fort Myers. And

that principle will apply to every other

waterway and waterfront in the United

States, too. And then we'll have a couple

of beers and watch the sunset.

CYNTHIA BENNETT, 66, business owner.

Born in Chicago in 1939, Bennett was an only child whose family relative, Jake D'Andrea, was the chief bookkeeper for Al Capone and the Chicago mob. (D'Andrea was gunned down in Chicago on May 11, 1921.) Friends say Bennett is incapable of promoting herself, and call her a focused version of Audie Murphy, Elizabeth 1st, Mother Teresa, Fiorello LaGuardia, Bob Seger, Rocky Marciano and Maureen Dowd, along with Antonio Vivaldi and Michelangelo.

STATEMENT: If I am elected, every

man and woman will be paid the same salary

for the same work. Every child will be

given a life-changing opportunity in school,

which means that every public school will

have a student-teacher ratio of 7 to 1. This

will be easily funded by the money we

won't be spending in Iraq, and in one generation

this will solve most problems facing

American adults, from obesity and addiction,

to emotional trauma to financial insecurity

and ignorance. It will also end race,

sex and class discrimination, but it won't

help us find Osama bin Laudanum, which

should have been done on 9/12. As president,

I'll send out my cousin Jake, A.K.A.

Jake the Stone, Two-fisted Jake, or Jakey

One-Shot and we'll hit that fascist wacko

on the third day of my presidency. Then

after I have the entire Bush administration

stuffed and mounted in the new National

Pest wing of the Smithsonian, I'll resign the

office. I want to spend more time with my

beautiful grandchildren, and my boyfriend,

Johnny C. He's a bow-legged former bullriding

liberal turned screenwriter of the

Hunter Thompson variety, but not behaviorally

speaking. Capisce?

(NOTE: Bennett is the columnist's mother in-law.)