He was an independent candidate for President of the United States in the 1996 presidential election and sought unsuccessfully to run again in 2000.
At a school board meeting Collins submitted what he claimed was about 9,000 signatures petitioning the use of the book, though a television reporter later found the number to be 3,549.
Commenting on the attacks, Collins dismissed the dummy bomb as a "joke" and the fire as "a good way to get your apartment painted by the landlord.
"[2] Mother Jones magazine called Collins the "consummate internet candidate," and opined that he appealed to an online population of "isolationists, alarmists, and conspiracy theorists.
"[3] His campaign advocated abolishing the Federal Reserve and the Internal Revenue Service and other pledges noted to be similar to that of the U.S. Taxpayers Party ticket of Howard Phillips and Herbert Titus.
He fell far behind the frontrunner Pat Buchanan in the party's important Missouri primary with 295 votes versus 2,214, though he beat John Hagelin.