LAKE ELSINORE: Presidential candidate in fight vs. evil

Lake Elsinore resident Craig Tax Freeze Freis is on the same Democratic presidential primary ballot in New Hampshire as Barack Obama.
Freis is also on today’s ballot with somebody named Vermin Supreme.
Freis, 67, legally changed his middle name from Raymond to Tax Freeze in 1994. He is not fazed by the possibility of finishing much closer in the vote total to Supreme, a Massachusetts resident whose platform includes mandatory tooth-brushing and a pony for everyone, than the president of the United States.
“I want to take as many votes away from Barack Obama as I can,” Freis said by phone from New Hampshire on the eve of the primary. “I want him to understand he can’t run a free ticket without answering to the people.”
Freis, a real estate and oil investor, is a relative unknown in local Democratic Party circles. Some party officers have heard his name but few could say whether he was active in southwest Riverside County politics.
“No kidding? Really?” said Chuck Ruetter, president of the Menifee/Perris Valley Democratic Club, after being told of Freis’ candidacy. “I am flabbergasted. I don’t know anything about his guy, and I have been involved with Democrats quite a few years.”
Freis has unsuccessfully run for Congress, state Assembly, the state Board of Equalization and Los Angeles County assessor, he said. Now he is taking on Obama, whose administration he calls a “disaster.”
Getting on the New Hampshire ballot did not require a lot of work. He simply had to file a declaration of his candidacy and pay $1,000, Freis said. There are 13 others in the Democratic primary and 24 on the Republican ballot. He hopes to get on other states’ ballots, as well.
Freis has spent little on his campaign. He paid $150 for an airline ticket, $50 for a hotel room and rented a car. Freis had difficulty producing a head-and-shoulders photo for a newspaper story.
He has been in New Hampshire since Friday, making the rounds of the TV cameras and reporter notebooks.
“There is a lot of media here, and I want to get my message across that the nation is in danger,” Freis said.
Those dangers, he said, include a world monetary crash, attacks from Russia, pharmaceutical companies he calls “drug pushers,” children being kidnapped by molesters and a homosexual agenda that he said schools are forcing on children.
“I’m not a liberal Democrat. I am pro-life, pro-family. Everything (John F.) Kennedy stood, for I stand for,” Freis said. “My mother’s ideal was to save the world. I have to carry on her good deeds.”
He said his wife does not approve of his campaign.
Not surprisingly, Freis’ platform includes strong views on taxes. He said he has battled the IRS over his assertion that paying personal income tax is voluntary.
Freis has a lot more on his mind. He recently filed a 20-page appeal to a traffic ticket he received in Corona, said he has frequently sued political opponents and said Lake Elsinore does not have the authority to tax property that is part of a Spanish land grant under the Treaty of Guadalupe.
“I like using my brain and keeping the politicians honest,” said Freis, who tends to ramble on about his fight against evil.
But that’s his agenda, and Freis said he worries that voters will lump his candidacy in with those of the Vermin Supremes of the world.
“Who put these people out there?” Freis said. “It makes everyone who is not an insider with a billion dollars like Obama look like a nut.”
Follow Brian Rokos on Twitter: @Brian_Rokos