Written by Greg Murphy, in 2012 the paper provides insights into the famous 1970 Hunter S. Thompson campaign for Pitkin County Sheriff.

Introduction:

Late in the day, on November 3, 1970, Hunter S. Thompson approached the lights to make his final statement as a political candidate. He wore an American flag around his neck and a matted gray wig askew on his newly shaven head. The crowd inside Aspen’s Hotel Jerome was overflowing; friends, supporters, and journalists packed into the room
to witness the final chapter of one of the most bizarre elections in American history. Hunter S. Thompson, the outlaw writer and the mastermind behind Aspen’s Freak Power uprising, had gathered 38 percent of the vote in a three-way race for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado. An eccentric candidate who talked openly about his drug use, Thompson led the vote most of the day, winning in the city of Aspen. However, he lost the down-valley vote. The dismal results that arrived in the evening from the rural communities outside of Aspen sealed his fate. In the three-way contest, his opponents coalesced around the incumbent sheriff Carrol Whitmire, abandoning the Republican candidate and denying the Thompson supporters their victory. As Thompson faced the cameras, he gazed at the floor and muttered in his low staccato voice. “I think I unfortunately proved what I set out to prove,” he began. “That the American Dream really is fucked. I didn’t believe it until now.”