On November 20, 1974, the city of Vancouver held its civic election, which included the heart-palpitating race for alderman as well as positions on the parks board and the school board. The mayoral election was part of the slate that year, and that race included an unusual candidate who never uttered a single word, preferring the universal medium of tap dance for communication.
That candidate was Mr. Peanut, and wherever he went a group of young women called the “Peanettes” would sing “Peanuts from Heaven,” based on “Pennies from Heaven,” the Depression-era song by Arthur Johnston and Johnny Burke. The “Peanettes” would hold up letters like spectators at a sporting event spelling out P-E-A-N-U-T, which apparently was a mnemonic device for the following: “P for performance, E for elegance, A for art, N for nonsense, U for uniqueness, and T for talent.”
Mr. Peanut’s platform included a couple of sensible proposals, including putting a hiring freeze on government employees until the city’s population became larger, and a couple that were a bit less serious, like a system similar to a lending library for galoshes and umbrellas, which are only needed when it rains. He had a cumbersome slogan reminiscent of some 19th-century art movement, which ran “Life was politics in the last decade; life will be art in the next decade.”
Mr. Peanut was actually a Berlin-based performance artist named Vincent Trasov, who had adopted the corporate mascot as his persona a few years earlier. He had a spokesman named John Mitchell accompany him to all public events during the campaign to do his talking for him. The author of Naked Lunch, William S. Burroughs, happened to visit Vancouver while the campaign was happening, so he gave Mr. Peanut his endorsement:
I would like to take this opportunity to endorse the candidacy of Mr. Peanut for mayor of Vancouver. Mr. Peanut is running on the art platform, and art is the creation of illusion. Since the inexorable logic of reality has created nothing but insolvable problems, it is now time for illusion to take over. And there can only be one illogical candidate—Mr. Peanut.
Joining Burroughs in endorsing Mr. Peanut was the mayor of Kansas City, a Democrat named Charles B. Wheeler Jr., who sent him a letter of support. Voters wishing to express their preference Mr. Peanut were obliged to select the candidate’s actual name from a list. “Vincent Trasov” received 2,685 votes out of 78,925 votes cast, netting him a 3.4% share of the vote, higher than Ralph Nader’s percentage in the 2000 election for president in the United States. Trasov/Peanut finished fourth, but it’s easy to imagine that if the words “Mr. Peanut” had been permitted to appear on the ballot, he might have garnered a few more points.
In 2012 Trasov commented about his decision to become Mr. Peanut:
I was doing animation drawings of Mr. Peanut tap dancing for a film at Intermedia in 1970. The process was far too tedious. I decided if I made a costume out of papier-maché I could get into the costume and tap dance. Once in the costume people started calling me Mr. Peanut. The name stuck. I assumed the identity of Mr. Peanut in exploring anthropomorphism, identity and contemporary mythology. Now the peanut costume is in the collection of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery. I continue doing ink and wash drawings of Mr. Peanut as a monument, totem pole, in adventures in daily life, in romance, raising a family, etc.
Here’s a video compilation documenting the Vancouver mayoral race of 1974—it’s pretty interesting to watch, I wish stuff this comprehensive existed for other subjects. Sadly, there’s no footage of Burroughs, however.
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Starring William S. Burroughs as Dr. Benway
‘Time of the Assassins’: William S. Burroughs’ cut-up version of Time Magazine, 1965