Facts about Alan Keyes
Alan Keyes Biography
Alan Keyes is a political media host who ran unsuccessful campaigns for the United States presidency in 1996, 2000 and 2008. Keyes got his big start in American politics as one of the U.S. representatives to the United Nations during the Ronald Reagan administration. Keyes became one of the more well-known conservative African Americans in the 1990s, thanks to his radio talk program, The Alan Keyes Show. His career as a political pundit on the TV and lecture circuit included a 2002 program on MSNBC, Alan Keyes Making Sense, but has been periodically interrupted by campaigns for elected positions. A Republican, Keyes ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in Maryland in 1988 and 1992, for the Senate in Illinois in 2004 (against Barack Obama), and for U.S. president in 1996 and 2000. Keyes then left the Republican party, and in 2008 tried and failed to get the nomination for the presidency from the Constitution Party to run against Barack Obama, a Democrat, and John McCain, a Republican. Keyes continues to be active politically, serving on various advisory boards and opining in print and electronic media.
Extra credit
Though Keyes is sometimes called “Ambassador Keyes,” the title can be a bit misleading: he served as the American ambassador to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, not as ambassador to the U.N. as a whole or to any individual nation… Opposed to a homosexual lifestyle, Keyes made headlines in 2004 when he publicly chastised Vice President Dick Cheney‘s gay daughter for “selfish hedonism.” By the end of 2004 it became public knowledge that Keyes’s own daughter, Maya, is gay.