Evan McMullin, a CIA veteran and the chief Republican policy director for the US House of Representatives, is running for president as independent, and as an alternative to Donald Trump, Buzzfeed and MNBC’s Joe Scarborough report.
His slogan? “It’s never too late to do the right thing.”
One big problem though: McMullin missed the deadline to get on the general election ballot in 26 states, and in some others, like California, he will have to collect tens of thousands of signatures in the next several days.
McMullin is so little-known that until this morning, one of the first things that showed up when you searched for him online was his LinkedIn profile. His Wikipedia page was only created early today.
According to Buzzfeed’s sources, McMullin should have some support from Republican donors. They also underscored his connection to Utah, where he attended Brigham Young University, and where Trump has little support. In order to be a viable presidential candidate, McMullin will also have to raise a lot of money in very little time.
McMullin’s LinkedIn page shows that McMullin served as a CIA agent for 11 years, starting in 1999. He had a stint as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, a volunteer with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and once served as a deckhand on a fishing vessel: “I mostly just did my best not to fall in as we sailed the Alaskan seas.” According to Buzzfeed, he is unmarried.
Even though he had just 135 followers this morning on Twitter, he’s been a vocal anti-Trump critic on the platform.