Just when you thought politics couldn’t get any weirder, Jack Kevorkian is running for Congress.  That’s right.  The man jailed for 8 years for assisting the suicides of over 100 individuals is running for a seat in Michigan’s 9th district.

In the 1990s Kevorkian became one of the most prominent and polarizing figures in the debate over euthanasia by assisting in some 130 suicides and for his outspoken advocacy of the “right to die.”

Kevorkian, who was paroled in 2007, said he will run as an independent for a congressional seat representing the Detroit suburbs, near the area where he presided at dozens of suicides in cheap hotel rooms and the back of his rusty van.

He was convicted after a CBS news program aired a video showing Kevorkian administering lethal drugs to a 52-year-old man suffering from debilitating amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease.

His candidacy will pit Kevorkian against Republican incumbent Joe Knollenberg and Democrat Gary Peters in Michigan’s 9th District, which includes the upscale suburbs of Bloomfield Hills and Birmingham. Political analysts rate the race between the two main candidates could be close.

Kevorkian had been required to gather 3,000 voter signatures on a petition in order to qualify for the ballot.

As a condition of his parole, Kevorkian vowed not to assist with any suicides although he said he would continue to lobby for the legalization of assisted suicide in the United States.

His run is a long shot to say the least… but who knows?  Stranger things have happened.

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