It was 1973 and the City of New York was in great turmoil. Mayor John Lindsay was unpopular and unlikely to be re-elected and a couple of Mafia guys were trying to take over. Abe Beame was the leading candidate but seemed to be incompetent.
At the same time, I was a big time operator. I had my own stock brokerage firm, a registered broker dealer, Samuel H. Sloan & Co. I was trading over 500 stocks at the same time and making big money. My funds were virtually unlimited. This was before the SEC moved in and closed me down.
So, I decided to run for Mayor of New York City, figuring that I could win the election. I had enough money to run an effective campaign and Lindsay and his opponents were weak.
To do this I needed a political party. So, I named it "The Evergreen Party".
Every chess player in the world knows what the Evergreen Partie is, but if anybody out there reading this does not play chess, I will let you in on it. The Evergreen Partie is the name of a famous chess game, perhaps the most famous game of chess ever played. It was played in 1852. Every grandmaster in history has studied and played over this game. World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov recently published new analysis of it. It is called "Evergreen" because the game is so complex and beautiful, that every time somebody analyzes it they find something new.
Here is the game:
[Event "Evergreen Partie"] [Site "Berlin"] [Date "1852.??.??"] [White "Anderssen, Adolph "] [Black "Dufresne, Jean"] [Result "1-0"] [ECO "C52"] [Round "?"]http://www.angelfire.com/games3/AJs01Downloads/html_stuff/anddufrpg0.html1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bc4 Bc5 4. b4 Bxb4 5. c3 Ba5 6. d4 exd4 7. O-O d3 8. Qb3 Qf6 9. e5 Qg6 10. Re1 Nge7 11. Ba3 b5 12. Qxb5 Rb8 13. Qa4 Bb6 14. Nbd2 Bb7 15. Ne4 Qf5 16. Bxd3 Qh5 17. Nf6+ gxf6 18. exf6 Rg8 19. Rad1 Qxf3 20. Rxe7+ Nxe7 21. Qxd7+ Kxd7 22. Bf5+ Ke8 23. Bd7+ Kf8 24. Bxe7+ 1-0
I realized of course that nobody who was not a chess player would know that the Evergreen Party was the name of a chess game. It is rare for a chess game to have a name. The only other examples are "The Immortal Game" and "The Game of the Century". The name, "The Evergreen Party", had a nice and attractive ring to it, so I decided to give that name to my political party.
Since then, the Greens Party, which did not exist in 1973, has effectively co-opted that name.
In order to get on the ballot in New York City, one must circulate petitions to get the required number of names. At that time, in 1973, I had a bevy of beautiful Icelandic Girls working for me. I had collected them from the Fischer-Spassky World Chess Championship match the previous year in Reykjavik, Iceland. My Icelandic Girls were my entire staff. They were my runners, who delivered stock certificates to the other brokers, by book keepers, my P & S Clerks and in short they did everything for me. I have a website about them entitled "My Wild Icelandic Girls". http://www.samsloan.com/wild-ice.htm
However, I could not have my beautiful Icelandic girls trudging up and down the streets of New York City collecting signatures for me to run for election, and besides they were not citizens and could not speak English well.
While I was in hot pursuit of my Icelandic Girls, I met a bunch of guys from the Dominican Republic who were chasing the same girls. We used to meet at the Executive Lounge which was across the street from what was then called the McAlpin Hotel. All the Icelandic Girls used to go these and so these Dominicans went there too. However, they all claimed to be from Puerto Rico and to be citizens, so they could legally circulate petitions. It was not until the following year that I found out that they were really from the Dominican Republic.
One of the Dominican boys was named Felix. He had a reputation for being slow and stupid. The leader of their group, whose name was Joey, once told me, "Felix moves at three speeds: Slow, very slow, and not moving at all."
However, amazingly, Felix had landed the nicest, the friendliest, perhaps the smartest and one of the most beautiful Icelandic girls in that group, and he had first landed her in my apartment on 66th Street and Amsterdam Avenue when I had a party there. Her nickname was Beggo, but her real name was Bergliot Palmedottir. I kept wondering how such a slow and stupid guy as Felix could get such a nice, wonderful and beautiful girlfriend as Beggo. I even asked Beggo about this. "But, he's so cute", Beggo had said. I have a picture of Beggo with Felix on my website too.
So, I asked Felix for help in collecting signatures to get on the ballot. I asked him to bring some friends and I promised to pay them all. So he brought a whole bunch, perhaps a dozen of his Dominican friends, down to my office at 11 Broadway.
I had already had the petitions printed. We worked late in the night getting them ready to be taken out to the streets to collect signatures.
Suddenly, however, Felix keeled over and fell on the floor. Some foamy stuff started to come out of his mouth and he started to gurgle. His entire body began to shake.
I immediately called 911 Emergency. A Rescue Squad came to my office. They put Felix onto a stretcher and took him off to Beekman Downtown Hospital. I was of course upset. I told all the workers Felix had assembled there to go home. I paid them all the money I had promised to pay them and gave one of them some money to give to Felix when he saw him. I told them I would call them when I was ready to start my petition drive again.
I never saw Felix again. I later realized that he had suffered an epileptic seizure. I had heard of this but had never seen one before. Since then, of course, I have seen it many times. I know that Felix survived because I met Joey on a bus a year later and he told me that Felix was okay.
I lost heart. I completely forgot about the idea of running for mayor, deciding that it had been a bad idea. Abe Beame was elected and promptly plunged the city into a period of poverty and pestilence from which it has never fully recovered. Beame eventually was charged by the SEC with Securities Fraud. (I took the side of Beame on that one, as I felt that he was wrongly accused.) The only remembrance I have of this is I still have a few of the Evergreen Party signature petitions I had had printed and prepared.
Perhaps now you will understand why I have never told this story before.
Yet, for years later and in fact once only a few years ago, somebody remembers my Evergreen Party and asks me what ever happened to it.
And every now and then, when the moon is full, that old urge comes back to me, the urge to revive my Evergreen Party and run for office again.
The name does have a nice ring to it. I still kind of like the name. Do you think I should do it?
Sam Sloan
Here are links: