#1911: Harry Lyon

A.k.a. “Low Carb” Lyon

Harry Lyon is a perennial candidate for various political positions in Alabama, representing various parties. He is perhaps most famous for being the Democratic candidate for the Alabama Supreme Court in 2012 (running a hopeless campaign against Roy Moore) on a platform of random drug testing of school children and executing illegal Mexican immigrants on Alabama soil: “It would only take five or 10 getting killed and broadcast on CNN for it to send a clear message not to fool, or not to step foot rather, in Alabama,” said Lyon.

Lyon is a lawyer whose credentials include having served in the marines and being shot twice, neither time while in the military: One in what Lyon describes as an intentional hunting “accident”, the second by one Robert Black after Lyon poured Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup on Black’s car; Black was charged with attempted murder but acquitted after the defense subpoenaed Lyon’s neighbors to testify about his character. Lyon claims that Black was framing him by pouring chocolate over his own car. In 2001 Lyon was convicted of menacing after pulling a gun on a neighbor and holding police at bay for two hours. When running for the Supreme Court, though, Lyon claimed that “[o]ther than a traffic ticket, I have never broken a law,” since the gun one doesn’t count in his book. He has also “never been disbarred,” which should be encouraging but probably tells you more about the Alabama bar association’s, uh, bar for disbarment. He also swore that he is not crazy.

At one point he planned to run for mayor of Pelham as “Low Carb” Lyons, with a platform of driving the fat folks out: “Let’s face it. The fact is that fat people are ugly and disgusting to look at as much as is traffic congestion and wasteful spending by our city government,” said Lyon. He is also on the record calling “faggotry” an abomination and saying that “only sick and perverted persons believe in homosexuality or lesbianism, though there are a lot of them.” He is also apparently opposed to the separation of church and state. In short, he’s not really all that different from Roy Moore.

Apparently his statements are not supposed to be taken seriously, however; Lyon ran on a platform of my-statements-should-not-be-taken-seriously before it got popular.

Diagnosis: Since he has not a snowball’s chance in hell of being elected to anything, we should probably count him as colorful and (generally) harmless. Though Lyon is no more crazy than the people the good folks of Alabama tend to actually elect to political office.

Hat-tip: John Archibald (http://blog.al.com/archiblog/2012/03/then_democrats_last_hope_in_al.html)