Government

Greg Fischer: The man who won’t stop running for office

Greg Fischer (left) once worked on a campaign with Rent is Too Damn High party candidate Jimmy McMillon. The two, seen here in an undated photo, now share the same party line as Mr. Fischer runs for state comptroller. (Courtesy photo)
Greg Fischer (left) once worked on a campaign with Rent is Too Damn High party candidate Jimmy McMillon. The two, seen here in an undated photo, now share the same party line as Mr. Fischer runs for state comptroller. (Courtesy photo)

It’s September and Calverton resident Greg Fischer is breaking out the campaign signs again.

He used some of them during his unsuccessful run for Riverhead Town supervisor in 2012. A small section of the signs showing the office he ran for then have been cut away.

They’re the same signs he used in campaigns for town tax assessor in 2013 and the Riverhead school board this year. And they’re the same ones he’ll now use to run for New York State comptroller on the Rent is 2 Damn High party line.

Mr. Fischer’s running mate is two-time gubernatorial candidate Jimmy McMillan, the YouTube sensation from New York City who wears black gloves and famously debated Andrew Cuomo in 2010 by answering questions with the response, “The rent is too damn high.”

It’s a race Mr. Fischer fully admits he is destined to lose.

“If you don’t have a major party endorsement, you’re not getting elected,” he told the Riverhead News-Review. “It’s mathematically impossible … I cannot possibly win.”

That won’t stop him. In fact, Mr. Fischer says he’ll never stop running for office. “I’m going to run at least once a year forever,” he vowed.

The goal, he says, is to eventually prove that someone who “refuses to play the game” with political parties can win the public’s vote.

“I’m playing by the real rules,” he said. “[The parties] are not playing by the real rules. They’re playing by some corrupt, under-enforced, secret government game.”

Mr. Fischer is actually surprised he’s made it this far into his most recent campaign. Some of his previous electoral runs were derailed by allegations of improper petition signatures and court decisions against him.

Mr. McMillan, his running mate, said Mr. Fischer was a “breath of fresh air,” though he took issue with Mr. Fischer’s assertion that he could not win.

Mr. Fischer, he said, “needs to understand my issues are not games or jokes.”

According to a biography on his campaign website, Mr. Fischer founded Micro Perfect, a strategy and software consulting firm that has “thousands of clients worldwide,” though he said the company’s website is now defunct and that he operates his company through “word of mouth.”

“I’ve got a backlog that could last me years and years,” he said.

He also ran The Political Patriot, a free newspaper that printed briefly in 2009, though he said he intends to restart the venture soon.

“Most of my days are filled with politics and being a single dad,” Mr. Fischer said.