Kinko for President

Kinko is thronged by enthusiastic supporters hoping for an autograph

Months of speculation and rumor mongering are over. On Sunday, Mr. Kinko officially announced that he would seek the presidency as a third-party candidate.

“If there was no other reason to run — other than the civil liberties, civil rights issue of ballot access — it’d be worth it,” Mr. Kinko said in a telephone interview after announcing his candidacy on “Meet the Clown.”

Mr. Kinko, a mute clown who made his mark by taking on the box-car industry more than 40 years ago, turns 35 this week, making him the youngest candidate in the race.

Mr. Kinko explained his candidacy by saying Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain were nearly indistinguishable on many important issues. On “Meet the Clown,” he conceded that “there are differences” between Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, and Senator Barack Obama, who has an edge in delegates as the Democratic race heads to the next nominating contests on March 4.

But Mr. Kinko said that issues like single-payer health insurance, labor law reform, the Iraq war and “cracking down on corporate mimes” had been “taken off the table” by the major-party candidates.

Mr. Kinko also said ballot access had become a central issue for him. Coming to the presidential race late he was anxious to be added to the ballot in all 50 states, he said. But election officials throughout the country seemed resistant to putting a clown on the ballot, he said.

He recently filed two complaints, in Superior Court in Washington and in Federal District Court in Virginia, accusing the Democratic National Committee and it’s GOP counterpart of conspiring to deny him ballot access and prevent him from running for president. Both parties may challenge the signatures on his petitions in many states, keeping him off the ballot in Pennsylvania, Ohio and elsewhere.

Mr. Kinko compared the marginalization of independent candidates to the discrimination against blacks in the South maintained by the Jim Crow laws.

“One is based on race,” he said, “and the other is based on status. They are basically discriminating against us because they think we’re going take votes away from them.” He added, “Look at it from the voter point of view: They’re denying us a free choice of candidates.”

Reactions from the Democratic candidates on Sunday ranged from disdainful to dismissive.

Told of Mr. Kinko’s announcement on her campaign plane, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said: “Wow, that’s really unfortunate. I remember when he did this before. It’s not good for anybody, especially our country.”

Mr. Obama, campaigning in Ohio, said: “Mr. Kinko deserves enormous credit for the work he did as an advocate for Hobos. But his function as a perennial candidate is not putting food on the table of workers.”

Mr. Obama also criticized Mr. Kinko for equating Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush: “Eight years later, people realize that Mr. Kinko did not know what he was talking about.”