Doug Jenkins with a copy of The Dodgeville Chronicle, which covered his bid for president.
Six years ago while traveling in Arizona, Doug Jenkins befriended a homeless man who, like himself, was a Vietnam veteran.
It hadn’t occurred to him before, but Jenkins decided to Google the number of homeless veterans in the U.S. The number — about 40,000 — astonished him.
“I screamed I was so mad,” Jenkins recalls. Then he discovered that about half of those homeless veterans served in Vietnam. “And I screamed again, ‘What the fuck?’”
Jenkins returned to Madison and immersed himself in local homelessness issues. He housed a man in his own home for 15 months and has since been housing others for weeks at a time. And this Christmas, he’s trying to raise enough money to put up every homeless person in Madison in a hotel from Dec. 24 to 26.
Now he’s also turning his outrage into an improbable run for president of the United States. His platform focuses on ending veteran homelessness and suicide, and ceasing U.S. involvement in foreign conflicts.
“I’m fucking angry. In America? Homeless veterans? Some countries don’t allow that bullshit,” he says. “It is a disgrace. Shame on the government. Shame on all of them from about 1960 on.”
Jenkins goal of being president may seem fanciful. His Federal Elections Commission report lists contributions of just under $500 and his media coverage, so far, has included just a couple of articles in the McFarland Thistle and The Dodgeville Chronicle. But Jenkins is taking the quest seriously.
The Madison man has been traveling the United States with his teardrop trailer, which has “Stop the needless & senseless deaths” and “Stop world children starvation” stenciled on it. As of December, he’d traveled to 38 states and driven through more than half of the country’s more than 3,000 counties.
Born in Highland, Wisconsin, Jenkins enlisted in the Army shortly after graduating from high school. After the war, he returned to Wisconsin and started a painting business.
During the recession that hit in the late 2000s, he began to pay more attention to economic disparities in the Madison area. He volunteered with a church, working to address homeless issues, and in 2018, he founded First American Rescue Division, a nonprofit aimed at eliminating homelessness, with an emphasis on veterans.
That mission led him to run for president, and he insists housing the roughly 500,000 homeless people in the United States would be a cinch. “If I become president I would have them all off the street in 90 days and it won’t cost any money.”
To do so, he would browbeat billionaires into providing money to pay for “warmth and shelter.” He’d also assign each homeless person with a life coach to work with them every day for 90 days. And he would assign the National Guard to take in people to house them and put them to work.
While he’s particularly concerned about the plight of veterans, he would work to make sure that none see combat, by withdrawing all troops stationed abroad. “Second thing I would do is create a 16th department in the executive branch called the Department of Peace,” Jenkins says. “All they do is focus on peace not war.”
In the last election, Jenkins voted for Trump, hoping that he would drain the swamp. He’s no longer a fan. But his campaign echoes Trump’s style: Jenkins idea for improving bipartisanship is to threaten Congress members who don’t behave with an IRS audit.
Despite the odds, Jenkins believes his campaign can make a difference by drawing attention to his ideas.
“As an independent write-in I go right to the end,” Jenkins says. “If somebody comes up and got the same ideas that I got that we can improve I’ll get out of the way and go home, but until then I’m gonna stay. All I have to do is keep gas in my truck and keep on the highway.”
