Democratic Party 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang has confirmed his interest in further investigation of the UFO (unidentified flying object) phenomena, which has reentered the mainstream discourse in recent years thanks to ongoing disclosures from Pentagon funded investigations of mysterious aerial phenomena.
For years, New Hampshire newspaper The Conway Daily Sun has pressed potential presidential candidates barnstorming the early primary state about their stance on UFO disclosure. Yang's Q&A with the newspaper's editorial staff and Conway locals primarily focused on Yang's proposed "Freedom Dividend"—a $1,000 monthly sum paid to American adults, meant to redistribute massive corporate gains and ameliorate the effects of automation on the American workforce—but The Sun ended with two longstanding presidential primary traditions at the paper: autographing their office refrigerator and asking about UFOs.
"I'm very curious about UFOs," Yang said. "I have a feeling they probably do exist."
Most other candidates in the 2020 Democratic field haven't yet made their positions on UFO disclosure public. Democratic frontrunner Bernie Sanders (Joe Biden, the only candidate to repeatedly poll ahead of Sanders, has yet to officially enter the race) answered more flippantly when The Sun asked him about UFOs during the 2016 presidential primaries.
"Bernie had no interest in the UFO question," Sun reporter Daymond Steer told Beyond Presidential UFOs, a site tracking politicians' positions on UFO research. Commensurate with his tight focus on income inequality, Medicare for All and his College for All plan, Sanders has often dismissed weighing in on more esoteric topics.
While Yang's feeling that there's substance to the UFO question places him closer to a pro-disclosure position than any other Democratic candidate—aligning him with UFOlogists, hobby skywatchers and opponents of widespread Pentagon overclassification—Yang's expressed interest doesn't yet reach the position held by the strongest UFO disclosure advocate in recent Democratic presidential contests: Hillary Clinton.
In 2008, Clinton told The Sun, "Yes, I'm going to get to the bottom of it."
Leading up to the 2016 presidential primaries, Clinton further pledged to look into Area 51—a highly classified military base in Nevada associated with experimental aircraft tests and UFO folklore—and was even open to the possibility that aliens have already visited Earth. "I think we may have been [visited already]. We don't know for sure," Clinton said.
The UFO issue has come a long way since Dennis Kucinich's 2008 presidential run was torpedoed, in part by leveraging his UFO sighting story to dismiss the former congressman as a fringe candidate, with mainstream politicians like former Senate majority leader Harry Reid voicing defenses of UFO research.
"I'll bet you anything that China is spending some money checking this out. I'll bet you anything KGB Putin is spending some money checking this out," Reid told George Knapp of Las Vegas Now's I-Team in March.
UFOs have yet to become a live issue in the Democratic presidential primaries, but with the New Hampshire primary currently scheduled for February 11, 2020, there are still many months for The Conway Daily Sun to pose similar questions to the rest of the Democratic field.
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