Benjamin Asher

Hailing from the state of Nevada, Benjamin Asher is the current Senator of District 1, a founding member of the former MEC Board of Directors, former US Attorney General, and veteran of MEC. He was the first independent to hold elected office since former President Gabe Fly, the first independent ever to be elected to a congressional seat, the first elected official to ever hold/be elected to the same office non-consecutively, the fourth longest serving Senator, the eight longest serving congressperson, and holds many other firsts.

## **Early MEC to The ACOA**

Benjamin Asher was a member of the original MEC, along with MEC+. Going under the name "Atton Pearson", Asher kept a low profile, though some have speculated that he may have been Second President of MEC Gabe Fly, though there's been no confirmation of the theory from any remaining members of the original MEC.

Benjamin Asher came into the public spotlight in October of 2017 with his founding of the “Anti-Corruption Organization of America” (ACOA), a private agency/Political Action Committee that dealt with scandal. Asher’s chairmanship of the organization oversaw its inconclusive investigation into the Bullard-Kelly Phone Scandal; that’s more or less it. Asher stepped down as chairman of the Organization to run for District 1 Senate, the identity of the chairman from that point until the Organization’s dissolution is undisclosed.

## **October 2017 Senate Elections**

After October’s Senate Primaries ended, Asher announced that he would be running for the Senate seat of District 1, one of the most competitive races in the nation at the time. He managed to squeeze himself in between the Democrat Secretary of State Braden Hart, and the Republican Chief Justice Fernando Diaz Asher’s Poll numbers were almost non-existent on the first day of the campaign, but things started changing radically after that. The second day, Fernando Diaz dropped out of the race; Asher’s numbers rose to 40%. The day after that? Hart dropped out. Asher was on a wave of good luck with all his competition gone, that was, until, he realized why Hart dropped out in the first place.

**This dude**, the incumbent senator who has gone inactive in the beginning of his term, had returned to run for re-election. Throughout the rest of the race, polls between the two were close, with the only exceptions giving Asher a slight lead over Asher.

When the day of the election came, the majority of early votes had gone to Asher, but as the night went on, the gap between the two candidates narrowed and narrowed, until the two came to a standstill of 49% to 49%. Due to it being the closest race in MEC history (rivaling it to that of Joe Portillo and Caleb Andrew’s House Race), Ethan Kelly called for a run-off.

Two days after the initial election, **This dude** conceded the race, leaving Asher the apparent winner. When run-off day occurred, Asher gained a historic 91% of the vote, taking the largest vote percentage in MEC history.

## **November 2017 Senate Elections**

In November, Asher’s seat was challenged by former Democratic Representative Joel Lopez and newcomer Rouge Thing. In the first round of voting, Asher won receiving 42% of the vote, compared to his opponent’s 37%, because no one hit over 50%, a run-off was called. In the run-off, Asher edged out his opponent by 52%.

## **Run for Season 11 Democratic Vice-Presidential Nomination**

In the beginning of season 11, **This dude** announced that he would be running against Incumbent President Fitzgerald with Asher as his running mate. The two ran a very attack-centric campaign, focusing on painting Fitzgerald as a do-nothing President. Pundits believe this to be a key factor in why President Fitzgerald lost Re-Election. And though the campaign made an impact on the general election, it did quite the opposite in the Primaries, Democrats felt alienated by Asher and ended up not voting for him in the end. Despite that, the primary delegate map was extremely close due to Asher’s campaign strategy. The Asher campaign ended up taking states like NY, NJ, PA, MI, OH, GA, TX, and even the President’s home state of CA. As Former Vice President Joshua Huntington said, “It was truly a testament to the Fitzgerald administration, telling them that the people were tired of his antics, and that they wanted change!”

## **Season 11 General Election**

After his loss in the Democratic Primary, Asher joined his close friend Jon S. Überfeld’s Presidential campaign. Asher was an essential part of the campaign’s electoral victories in states Fitzgerald was leading in. Even though Asher was only in the campaign for less than a week, he made the most speeches out of everyone involved (according to Ethan Kelly), only rivaling with opposing President Fitzgerald. Asher has been credited for turning the states of Ohio and Pennsylvania from blue to red, even going as far as to make 11 speeches in PA in one day.

## **Attorney General**

Benjamin Asher was nominated by President Jon S. Überfeld to be the Attorney General of MEC. After 4 preliminary hearings and 1 confirmation hearing Asher was nominated with a unanimous vote. Asher worked to reform the Justice Department and the Judicial branch by setting up a court system which eventually fell apart due to a lack of interest by the community.

Though Asher did strengthen the Judicial Branch by appointing various Intelligence Agency heads, building and maintaining an intelligence community, establishing a Supreme Court with President Überfeld, and prosecuting many community cases; his impact hasn't seemed to last long, as the Justice Department is still extremely underpowered and all the systems and procedures he set up during his tenure as Justice Department Head see, to have diminished.

## **Return To The Senate (March 2018 Elections)**

After leaving the Attorney General's office upon the end of the Überfeld Administration, Asher ran for his old Senate seat, which was being held by former President Ethan Fitzgerald at the time. The race was filled with mudslinging, lawsuits, and fraud votes. So many fraud votes, in fact, that the election had to be recalled and rescheduled, only to have Fitzgerald drop out soon after due to Asher threatening to bring forward suits of Defamation and Slander towards him. Messy indeed.

## **Season 13 Election**

Asher announced his bid for the Democratic Nomination for the Presidency in March of 2018, with his running mate being Adam Daniel. Asher and his opponent, fellow Senator David Delaney, ran against one another in what turned out to be a very tight race. Asher won endorsements from many high-profile officials on both sides, painting himself as the progressive choice. In the end, Asher ended up losing by a single vote at the Democratic National Convention: 19-20.

Asher and his running mate, Adam Daniel, were outraged by the results of the election and cried foul. They believed that Democratic National Committee Chairman Sam Martinez was to blame because he and then-nominee Delaney were both considered to be members of the "Democratic Establishment". Asher, Daniel, and a group of other progressive Democrats contested the results of the election and claimed it was rigged against Asher. This eventually sprouted Asher's Independent bid.

A few days after the Democratic National Convention, Asher and Daniel announced that they'd be running an Independent campaign for the White House, claiming that there were no true progressives in the race. Asher ended the campaign by endorsing Republican nominee Adam Evans, but asked for his name to be kept on the ballot. Though polling suggested they'd do a lot better, Asher only ended up winning only 3.57% of the vote

## **Season 14 Election**

Season 14 started off with Asher announcing his candidacy with his running mate being his close friend (and fellow "Dank Memer") Oran Mulcahy. Yet again presenting themselves as the "True Progressives". Asher and Mulcahy were performing extremely well in polls, most having them up by 60% or more against challengers. General Election polls were tighter, but most had Asher winning. Everything was going splendidly... Until Asher suddenly went inactive.

## **Inactivity and Disappearance**

In the middle of his 4th term in the Senate and his extremely successful Presidential campaign, Asher went inactive.

It occurred almost immediately after Asher was re-elected to the Senate by a large margin mid-April. He wasn't posting on Google+, nor was he responding to anyone on Hangouts. On April 24th, 2018 Oran Mulcahy, Asher's Running Mate, announced his dropping from the ticket due to Asher's inactivity. Mulcahy also announced his retirement in the same speech. This meant the end to the Asher/Mulcahy ticket, as at that point, Mulcahy was the only one campaigning.

After 3 weeks of debating and multiple attempts at contacting him, Congress voted unanimously to remove Asher from the Senate for his inactivity and hold a special election for his seat. The person Asher unseated and ran with for President the first time around, **This dude**, won and served the remainder of his term.

For six months, nobody heard a word from Asher. Inquiries were made to Ethan Kelly; the owner of MEC and a close friend of his, but Kelly wouldn't answer.

Around August of 2018, people noticed that a large number of posts on Asher's profile had been deleted, recent posts up until January 9th had been deleted, some speculated that it was his doing, other suggested it may have been a Google+ glitch.

Asher stated his abrupt, mysterious 6-month departure was because of "Personal Issues" but he has yet to elaborate on what exactly that means. Some suspect it was because of mental illness, something Asher has expressed he suffers from; others say he had to work on political campaigns in the real word, referring to Asher's work as a real-life political activist; some believe it also had something to do with his real-life work in the theatre, as the dates his show opened corresponded to the dates when he first became inactive.

## **Return To MEC**

On October 21st, 2018, a year after Asher initially joined MEC, he made a post. The post was a poll with the photograph of IRL President Barack Obama addressing a crowd in the rain as the background. The two opinions on the poll were "La vie est mauvaise" and "La vie est prie", which are French for "Life is bad" and "Life is worse" (Asher was known for speaking French, and was the first President of Mock Election France.) Asher then made a post where he quoted Kanye West in French and linked to an instrumental he created. He finally then made a poll where he asked whether or not he should return to the community and whether or not he should run for office. Both polls voted "Yes" overwhelmingly.

Asher's first conversation with an individual in MEC was on October 22nd, 2018 with Adam Evans, a close colleague and longtime friend whom he worked with in Congress and endorsed for President in Seasons 9 and 13. From there, Asher rejoined the community,

## **Season 18 Election**

Immediately upon his return to MEC, Asher joined the Adam Evans campaign. Asher was made the Nationwide Campaign Chair of the Evans campaign. From there, Asher took a grassroots approach, flipping voters one by one, a stark contrast to his campaign strategy during the Season 11 Election.

Evans ended up winning in a landslide victory against Sam Martinez, the same person Asher accused of rigging the Season 13 Democratic Primary to give Delaney the nomination over himself.

## **October 2018 Elections**

While working as Adam Evans' campaign manager, Asher ran to regain his old Senate seat in District One. Asher dropped into the race **5 DAYS** before the election occurred. He ran against former political rival and President Tom Kirkman, former District One Representative Brett Patrick, and Perrenial Candidate Kobe Hunter.

Asher spent the majority of his campaign reaching out to old colleagues and making connections with new members. The speeches and advertisements he released were almost all attacks on Patrick and Hunter. Many were surprised at how Asher hadn't yet attacked Kirkman, the person some considered Asher's arch-nemesis. Two days before the election, Tom Kirkman announced he would be dropping out of the race to become a Moderator for MEC and gave Asher a strong endorsement, leaving some confused and leaving the race mostly between Asher and Patrick.

Asher began putting out attack ads that criticized Patrick's lack of experience, right-leaning ideology, and former registration to the Republican Party. While digging up dirt on his opponent, Asher came across evidence that Patrick had voted in an election using alternate accounts to get ahead in a race. Asher quickly turned over the evidence to the justice department, and upon the eve of the election, Patrick was Indicted by the justice department for "Alt-Voting". which breaks one of the major universal rules of MEC.

Asher ended up winning the election with 48.75% of the vote and was inaugarated on October 31st, 2018.