‘Real Indian’ and ‘Email Inventor’ Shiva Ayyadurai Announces Bid for Massachusetts Governor
- The entrepreneur, who has been spreading several conspiracy theories and misinformation about the pandemic, has had two previous failed attempts to the U.S. Senate.
After two failed attempts to the U.S. Senate, Shiva Ayyadurai has announced his bid for Massachusetts governor. He made the announcement in a Facebook Live session on Dec. 2, coinciding with his birthday. “Without working people breaking from the left, right, Democrat, Republican thought process, we’re never going to solve anything,” he said.
He said he wants more people to run for offices under his campaign slogan ‘truth, freedom and health,’ and use it as a platform for elections. His Dec. 2 announcement came after Gov. Charlie Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn decided not to seek re-election in 2022.
On his website, Ayyadurai, a Republican, describes himself as an entrepreneur who has four degrees from MIT and claims to have invented email. For the past year and a half, Ayyadurai has used social media to spread various conspiracy theories and misinformation about the pandemic. He has even called for firing Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and his supporters have lobbied for Fauci to be replaced by Ayyadurai.
In 2018, he ran for the U.S. Senate against Sen. Elizabeth Warren. He ran as an independent and placed third with 3.4 percent of the votes. During the campaign, Ayyadurai displayed a sign on a campaign bus reading: “Only a REAL INDIAN Can Defeat the Fake Indian,” The Salem News reported at the time.
In July 2018, Ayyadurai was attacked by a man during a town hall meeting in Great Barrington. Police were quoted in news reports as saying that he was assaulted by Paul Solovay, 74, a Warren supporter outside the town hall on July 22. Police said Solovay approached Ayyadurai with an umbrella while he spoke to a group of Warren supporters outside through a bullhorn. Reports quoted police as saying that Solovay allegedly engaged in a verbal confrontation with Ayyadurai that became physical when he pushed the bullhorn toward the speaker, striking Ayyadurai’s mouth. Police said they acted quickly to subdue Solovay and place him into custody. “I was just punched in face by a racist @SenWarren supporter,” Ayyadurai, tweeted after the incident.
“This is how these white privileged white supremacists react. What you just witnessed is how you white supremacists react when you don’t want to hear the truth from a dark-skinned Indian guy. The same guy you claim you want to help. You guys are racists,” Boston.com and other media outlets quoted Ayyadurai as saying through the megaphone. The incident was captured in a video and posted on YouTube. Solovay was later sentenced to 60 days probation and issued a $150 fine, The Berkshire Eagle reported.
Two years later, in 2020, Ayyadurai ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination in the 2020 U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts. After losing the Republican primary to Kevin J. O’Conner, who won 58,590 votes to his 104,782, he alleged that over one million ballots had been destroyed and that the state had committed election fraud, a charge denied to The Salem News by Debra O’Malley, a spokesperson for Galvin.
However, after noted political science professors disputed Ayyadura’s theory, he was eventually suspended from Twitter. On Feb, 3, he filed a lawsuit against Massachusetts State Rep. William Galvin and other Massachusetts election officials, alleging that they were responsible for Twitter’s suspending him. But, on Aug. 10, he dropped the lawsuit, along with an October 2020 suit against Galvin.
In 2014, Ayyadurai married “The Nanny” fame Fran Drescher at their beachfront home in Malibu, California. They married in front of an “intimate group of family and friends, her assistant told The New York Times at the time.
“ I married my warrior princess @frandrescher who my mom in God’s great Heaven sent,” Ayyadurai tweeted. ” Be The Light – Know the Truth – Find Your Way.”
“Surprise!!!!! We got married!” Drescher tweeted on Sept. 7, 2014, sharing a photos of herself with her new husband.
The coulee separated in 2016.