Sam Sloan

Sloan was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1944 to attorney Leroy Bayfield Sloan, who was a Special agent in the Audit Division of the Internal Revenue Service and to child psychiatrist Dr. Marjorie Jacobson Sloan.[1][2] His family later moved to Lynchburg, where he graduated from E.C. Glass High School. Sloan studied chess from an early age.[3]

Sloan left Lynchburg in 1962 to study at University of California, Berkeley; he majored in mathematics and later switched to criminology, but he left Berkeley in 1967 and did not graduate. At Berkeley he became one of the leaders of the Anti-War movement and promoted a branch of the Sexual Freedom League. He held more than forty sexually liberal parties in Berkeley.[4][5][6]

After leaving Berkeley, Sloan worked two years for the Wall Street investment banking firm of Hayden, Stone & Co. in the over-the-counter trading department. In 1970, he established Samuel H. Sloan & Company, a registered broker-dealer primarily trading over-the-counter stocks and bonds. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) brought civil actions against Sloan & Co. during 1971–5 alleging he had failed to maintain adequate books and records. In 1975, the SEC revoked Sloan's broker-dealer registration. After years of litigation, Sloan prevailed in 1978 at the U.S. Supreme Court. Sloan argued the case SEC v. Samuel H. Sloan 436 U.S. 103 (1978) pro se. The opposing attorney was Harvey Pitt, who was later Chairman of the SEC from 2001 to 2003. Sloan won before the U.S. Supreme Court 9–0, concerning his claim that the "tacking" of 10-day summary suspension orders for an indefinite period was an abuse of the agency's authority and a deprivation of due process. Sloan is the last non-lawyer to argue before the court, which prohibited that practice in 2013.[7][8][9][10]

In 1981, Sloan wrote a lexicon of Khowar, a language spoken in Chitral, Pakistan.[11] Sloan had a minor role in a 1984 commercially produced film, Mahjong hōrōki, that later became a video game, Mahjong Hōrōki Classic.[12] Since 1994, Sloan has operated Ishi Press.

Sloan is a chess journalist and author. He claims to have traveled to 78 countries, primarily attending chess tournaments. During a speech on April 29, 2006 at a Libertarian Party of New York's convention Sam Sloan has claimed to have "won the World Championship of Chinese Chess in Beijing, China, in 1988". He is rated an FM (Federation Master) by the World Xiangqi Association.[13] Sloan has competed in tournaments in Makrook and shogi chess.

In an April 30, 2006, email to Michael Badnarik's 2004 presidential campaign mailing list, an individual claiming to be Sloan announced his intention to seek the Libertarian Party nomination for Governor of New York State. From 2002 to 2006, Sloan had been active in the Libertarian Party of New York attempting to influence its policy agenda and candidate nominations.

Later in 2006, Sloan was elected as an officer to the Manhattan Libertarian Party County Committee as Director of Media Relations. He was not re-elected to that position in 2007. He was a delegate to the 2008 Libertarian National Convention and the 2010 Libertarian National Convention. On May 25, 2008 in Denver, Colorado, Sloan was nominated to the National Committee of the Libertarian Party and made a speech addressing the Libertarian National Convention.[21]

Sloan made a bid for governor in the New York gubernatorial election, 2010, facing off against attorney Warren Redlich and former madam Kristin M. Davis. Sloan, by his own admission, was not popular within the Libertarian Party of New York and did not expect to win the nomination.[22] He testified that a faction in the party who opposed Redlich's nomination needed another candidate. Sloan eventually lost the nomination to Redlich in a two-way battle, by a vote of 27 for Redlich and 17 for Sloan, after Davis refused to show up at the convention. Despite his failure to secure the nomination, Sloan was the first to submit petitions to the board of elections with the Libertarian Party line, which effectively gives him the nomination; the down-ballot selections on Sloan's petitions are identical to those confirmed by the party committee. However, because his petitions failed to contain the requisite 15,000 signatures, the nomination went to Redlich; it has been speculated that Sloan used the ploy to file a lawsuit against Redlich in his long-running dispute with the state Libertarian Party.[23] Prior to the November elections, Roger Stone Davis's campaign manager, claims that Sloan fed him information that Stone passed on to a group entitled "People for a Safer New York", who created a flyer labeling Redlich a "sexual predator".[24]

In January 2012, Sloan announced his candidacy for the Libertarian Party's 2012 presidential nomination.[25][26] He lost the nomination to Gary Johnson.

In November 2013, Sloan was on the ballot for the New York City mayoral election, 2013, as an independent under the War Veterans line; he received 166 votes (0.02%, or 1/5,000 of the total vote).[27][28]

In June 2014, Sloan ran for the Democratic nomination for New York's 15th congressional district, against incumbent José E. Serrano. He lost the primary election by 91% to 9%. Later that summer, Sloan attempted to submit petitions for the 2014 gubernatorial election, one for the Democratic primary (with Nenad Bach as the running mate) and another an "ambush" of the Libertarian Party line similar to the one he attempted in 2010 (with Tom Stevens as the running mate). Both petitions were ruled invalid.[29]

On September 29, 2015, Sloan filed with the FEC to run for the Democratic Party presidential candidates, 2016.[30][31] As a candidate for US President, Sloan attempted to run paid television ads on KCCI, the major TV station in Des Moines Iowa, and WMUR TV, the major TV station in Manchester, New Hampshire. Both of these TV stations are owned by Hearst Television. Sloan ran as an anti-war candidate opposing the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Both TV stations refused to run the Sloan paid TV ads on the ground that Sloan had failed to meet his burden to substantiate bona fide candidacy for the Office of the President of the United States under the threshold established by the Communications Act of 1934 and regulations of the Federal Communications Commission. Sloan then sued in the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire, in Concord, New Hampshire. Sloan also named as a defendant Debbie Wasserman Schultz for allowing only two Democratic Party (United States) Candidates, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders into the Democratic Party TV Debates thus making it virtually impossible for any other Democratic Party candidate to run. Sloan alleged that Communications Act of 1934 and Title 47 of the Code of Federal Regulations 47 USC 315 requires federally licensed broadcasters to provide all candidates running for public office equal opportunity to utilize the broadcast station. Judge Paul J. Barbadoro, U.S. District Judge disagreed and found and the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed that there is no private right of action under this statute and therefore Sloan's case was dismissed.[32] He was only on the New Hampshire ballot and received 15 votes. He lost to Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016.

In 2016, Sloan ran in the Democratic primary for US Congress in the New York's 13th congressional district (upper Manhattan/lower Bronx area).[33][34] The primary was held June 28, 2016 and he received 197 votes (0.46%), placing 8th in a field of 9 candidates and losing to Adriano Espaillat.[35] Despite opening a campaign account for another run for governor in 2018 (which received no donations), Sloan did not submit any petitions for the 2018 gubernatorial election on any party line.

Sloan Ran in the Democratic primary for the New York's 14th US congressional district, one of several challengers to incumbent first-term congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.[36] But Lost with only 2.9% of the Vote

In the episode of Jeopardy that aired on March 12, 2020, under the category "defending themselves", the clue was "The last non-lawyer to argue pro se at the Supreme Court was Samuel Sloan in 1978 "Shame it's no longer allowed - Sam won by this count". None of the contestants had the proper response, which was 9 to 0.

Sloan has been married three times and has nine children. Sloan's second wife, Honzagool, was a native of Chitral (Pakistan) and they had a daughter named Shamema. Sloan and Honzagool soon separated and Sloan left New York for Virginia with Shamema, leaving Shamema in the care of a Virginia couple, while Honzagool returned to Chitral. Sloan was subsequently locked into a child custody struggle, which lasted several years, with that Virginia couple over that same daughter. On September 5, 1991, during an attempt to regain custody of his daughter Shamema, Sloan was arrested. Sloan was convicted of attempted abduction of Shamema and spent 18 months in state prison.[37][38][39][40]

As of February, 2020, Sloan's FIDE chess rankings were 1772 and 1880 for blitz.[41]

• Khowar English Dictionary (as Mohammad Ismail Sloan, 1981) (originally published in Pakistan) (reprint in 2006 by Ishi Press) ISBN 0-923891-15-3
• Chinese Chess for Beginners (1989) ISBN 0-923891-11-0
• The Slave Children of Thomas Jefferson (originally published in 1992, reprinted in 2007) ISBN 1-881373-02-9
• How to Take over an American Public Company (1992) ISBN 1-881373-01-0
• The Farm Book by Thomas Jefferson with light notes and annotations by Sam Sloan ISBN 0-923891-80-3
• Sam Sloan Teaches A+ 50 Helpful Questions ISBN 0-923891-06-4
• Phiona's Greatest Games of Chess ISBN 4-87187-727-2
• History of the Campus Sexual Rights Forum at the University of California at Berkeley 1966-1967 ISBN 4-87187-397-8

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sam Sloan.

• Sam Sloan player profile and games at Chessgames.com
• Sam Sloan rating card at FIDE
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• http://samsloan.com/
• Sam Sloan on IMDb
• Sam Sloan at Ballotpedia