Win? No way! Former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson efforts getting party on ballots

As for Rocky, "It's devastating financially," he shrugs, estimating he'll eat through $35,000 of his savings this year. It helps that he still drives his 1999 Honda that runs on clean natural gas, his mortgage is paid off, and these days he wears iron-free shirts.

"I always took my shirts to the dry cleaner," he says of those halcyon days when he ran things from a much bigger office in City Hall. "Now I've learned how to launder them myself."

But there is no whine in Rocky's voice. His disdain is reserved for America's "march toward totalitarianism."

"There are so many people in this country who feel completely disenfranchised," he says. "People who feel they were duped by all the hope and change promised four years ago. I represent the issues that are important to people more than Obama or Romney. I really am mainstream."

The fact that he's saying all this in an office that would give GPS a run for its money is as lost on him as it is beside the point.

For Rocky, now as always, it's the message, not where it's coming from.

Email: benson@desnews.com