Yes that’s right, sadly it appears that the most fabulous Libertarian of all has been on the business end of the omnipotent state.
From the Bay Area Reporter:
Starchild, a candidate in the District 8 supervisor race, is fighting prostitution charges after he was arrested in a police sting operation last winter in a Fremont hotel. Already struggling to be taken seriously as a political contender, the perennial candidate could face jail time if a jury convicts him.
Despite his arrest, Starchild said he saw no reason why he should not enter the supervisor race. He first ran for the District 8 seat in 2002 and made his first foray in politics when he ran for state Assembly in 2000. Two years ago he tried to win election to the city’s school board.
On the one hand, this is probably not the best thing to be doing if you’re going to be running for public office, even if you lived in an area where prostitution is perfectly legal. On the other hand, I do admire his stand for civil rights, and given that he’s in the San Francisco area, his hardline stance on sex worker’s rights might actually resonate well with voters. I guess we’ll just have to see how well this works out for his campaign, as far as this issue goes.
At any rate, I think we can all agree that how he was arrested is pretty much horrible, political candidate or no:
His legal troubles began on the morning of December 6 last year when a woman responded to his escort advertisement on Craigslist.com. According to various accounts of his arrest he posted online and provided via a friend to the Bay Area Reporter, Starchild received a call from the woman, who identified herself as Sara, asking him to meet her and her friend, Tiffany, at the Best Western Garden Court Inn on Mowry Avenue in Fremont.
After taking BART from San Francisco to the inn, Starchild said he arrived at the hotel and met the woman he had spoken to on the phone, who gave her name this time as Heather. He said he questioned her about the name change ““ she said she did not want to use her real name on the phone ““ but was not overly alarmed by the discrepancy.
Once inside the room, he noticed cash on a bedside table but declined at first to take it from the women. He began to undress, lit several candles and opened a bottle of wine he had brought, while the women peppered him with questions about what kinds of activities they would engage in.
According to the accounts, at this point Starchild heard a voice shout “Fremont police” from outside the door and six officers barged into the room with a canine officer followed by a television cameraman who identified himself as a KRON 4 employee. The police placed him in handcuffs and charged him with soliciting prostitution.
It was a setup, which is all too common in that industry. He hadn’t even done anything illegal yet before the police charged in and slapped cuffs on him. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? And on the nightly news? Whoever the hell “KRON 4″ is, they as an organization can eat a bowl of dicks and die, if they get their kicks out of seeing human rights violations.
Nonetheless, I still think the timing of this was pretty bad, so let this be a lesson for all future Libertarian candidates: Take a temporary break from your sex worker job while you’re running for office. You can preach just as well about the evils of sex worker rights violations from outside of the clink. Thank you.
sucker, ʟʟᴄ