In October 2008, Wurzelbacher, who joined Senator John McCain on a campaign rally in October 2008, was transformed into a populist hero by Republicans. Cindy McCain, the daughter of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, and her husband, Donald Trump, appeared at the event.
In 2008, Republicans became a symbol of Middle America when he questioned Barack Obama in a televised encounter.
Three days later, Obama's Republican rival, Senator John McCain, was invoked some two dozen times during the final debate of the presidential campaign.
But by Election Day, his image as a dismal, bald, iron-jawed plumber eroded as the public discovered that he was not a licensed plumber and owed $1,200 in back taxes. He flirted with supporting Mr. McCain but later referred to him as 'the lesser of two evils' on the ballot and never revealed whom he voted for that November. He continued, 'S still keep that private,' he said by phone on Monday. In 2012, Wurzelbacher won the Republican nomination to challenge Representative Marcy Kaptur, the Democratic nominee in the 9th Congressional District of Ohio, but was crushed in the general election, winning only 23 percent of the vote to her 73 percent.
He released a video describing the Second Amendment and calling gun control as having helped enable the Ottoman Empire to commit genocide towards Armenians in the early 20th century and Nazi Germany to carry out the Holocaust, saying gun laws had stripped the victims in both cases of the ability to defend themselves. again defending my constitutional rights, he wrote to parents of victims of a mass shooting in 2014 in Isla Vista, California, near the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara, saying, 'T trump my Constitutional rights. Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, born Dec. 3, 1973, was the daughter of Frank and Kay Wurzelbacher. His mother was a waitress, his father was a disabled war vet. After high school, he enlisted in the air force, where he was trained in plumbing. He was disbarred in 1996, and worked as a plumber's assistant and for a telecommunications company. In addition to his celebrity, he appeared in TV commercials promoting digital television, published a book, and covered the Israeli ground invasion of Gaza in 2009 for PJ Media, a conservative website. He went to work at a Jeep plant in 2014, where he worked.
He is also survived by his wife, Katie Schanen, who had been married to Katie Schanen, and a son, Samuel Jr., from his first marriage, which ended in divorce, and three children from his second marriage, Samantha Jo, Henry and Sarah Jo. Although Wurzelbacher ended his encounter with President Obama by shaking hands with him, he didn't seem satisfied by the candidate's response to how his tax proposal would affect a small plumbing business. Re a small business - which you would qualify first of all - you would get a 50 percent tax credit, so you'd get a cut in taxes for your health care costs, Mr. Obama said. If his company had revenue below $250,000, its taxes would not go up, he said. It's not that I want to punish your success; I just want to make sure that everyone who is behind you, too, has got a chance at success, too, he said. It's good for people from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everyone. And when you get a Plumbing business, you're gonna be better off, he said. ve got a whole bunch of customers who could afford to hire you - and right now everybody's so pinched that business is bad for everybody - and I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everyone.