Jimmy McMillan

James McMillan III (born December 1, 1946) is an American political activist and Vietnam War veteran. He was a perennial candidate in New York City.

McMillan is best known as the founder of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party, a New York–based political party. McMillan ran for office at least six times since 1993, most notably in the 2010 New York gubernatorial election. He declared in December 2010 that he would run in the 2012 U.S. presidential election as a Republican. He did not appear on the ballot in any state and suspended his campaign to return to the Rent Is Too Damn High Party and run for Mayor of New York City in the 2013 election. He attempted to run for governor again in the 2014 election but did not make the ballot.

McMillan announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for President of the United States in the 2016 election, but withdrew from the campaign on December 9, 2015. He subsequently announced that he was retiring from politics before endorsing Republican candidate Donald Trump. The Rent Is Too Damn High Party website announced that McMillan would come out of retirement to make a fourth run for governor. His petitions were challenged and ruled invalid in September 2018.

Originally from New Smyrna Beach, Florida, McMillan served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War after which he briefly spent time in the 1970s as an R&B recording artist, known as Jimmy Mack, and had several Northern soul singles, including "A Woman is So Hard to Understand". He graduated from Barkley Private Security Investigations Academy^[where?] prior to 1993.

McMillan's first run for political office came in 1993, when he ran for Mayor of New York on the Rent Is Too Damn High ticket. In the course of that campaign, McMillan was at one point tied to a tree and doused with gasoline; he later climbed the Brooklyn Bridge and refused to come down from it unless television stations broadcast his message. He was disqualified from the ballot for coming 300 petition signatures short of the 7,500 needed to qualify for the general election ballot.

McMillan next ran for Governor of New York in 1994 by traveling from his home in Brooklyn through upstate New York to Buffalo on foot, staying in homeless shelters along the way; he had planned to walk back to Brooklyn, but an injury in Rochester led to him taking a bus home. When he arrived in Buffalo, the site of the state Democratic convention, McMillan disrupted a speech by incumbent Governor Mario Cuomo at the convention and was thrown out because of it. After failing to collect enough signatures to get onto the ballot, he continued in a write-in campaign.

McMillan ran for the United States Senate in the 2000 election in New York but was removed from the ballot.

McMillan qualified for the November general election ballot for Mayor of New York City in 2005 and 2009. In 2005, he received over 4,111 votes (0.32%) and in 2009, he received 2,332 votes (0.2%).