Extremely close readers may remember the name Donald Schubert: The 64-year-old psychologist from Southern California was the very last of 1,000 jubilant Bernie Sanders supporters to file out of Sanders’ New Hampshire primary victory party.
Schubert, a volunteer who had traveled to Iowa and New Hampshire, said he had not been this excited about a candidate since he worked for George McGovern in 1972. Alas, he seems to have gotten wildly carried away in his enthusiasm for Sanders.
On Feb. 19 — a week after his fleeting appearance in the Globe, and the day before the Nevada caucuses — the very same Don Schubert donned a Sanders sticker on his shirt and drove his Sanders-sticker-covered Toyota Prius to the office of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, where he tried to place an obituary notice. The deceased? Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Newspaper security immediately reported Schubert to the Secret Service. When a Review-Journal reporter tracked Schubert down, he said he intended the obit only as “political humor” — hoping to see the demise of the Clinton campaign, not the demise of Clinton herself.
The Secret Service apparently told Schubert they could arrest him for the stunt but were letting him off with a warning, according to a report in the Review-Journal.
Even amid a first-in-the-nation-primary landscape of colorful interviewees, Schubert stood out as an exuberant quote. He said he had predicted the precise 22-point margin of Sanders’ Granite State win over Clinton, and that he had previously bucked the experts to predict Denver’s upset victory over Carolina in the recent Super Bowl as well as the young Cassius Clay’s stunning defeat of heavily favored Sonny Liston in 1964.
“A Bernie Sanders administration will help to create peace in the world. ... I mean, are you kidding, a Jewish Socialist leader, leading the whole world? People will think that maybe he’s the messiah the Jewish people have been waiting for,” Schubert said.
Eric Moskowitz can be reached at eric.moskowitz@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeMoskowitz.