Bill Hammons

Bill Hammons is the current chairman of the Unity Party of America.

He was born in Germany during the early 1970s to a career army officer during his father's tour of duty there. He was raised in Odessa, Texas from the age of five, and graduated from Permian High School of Friday Night Lights fame in 1993. He then moved to Manhattan to attend college, and graduated from NYU in 1997 with a degree in English and American Literature.

After a career in publishing that included seven years at Newsweek Magazine as the magazine's Rights Manager, Hammons moved to Boulder in 2005, and subsequently turned his personal website into a commercial venture with Bill's List of Literary Agents and Their Authors' Books, Bill's Guide to Boulder, Colorado and Beyond, Bill's Boston Marathon Qualifiers Guide, and Bill Hammons' American Politics Guide. On October 26, 2006, ten days after John Mark Karr appeared on CNN's Larry King Live, Karr sent an email to Hammons from a "phoenix rising" email address, asking for a suggestion for a literary agent. Hammons took three years to reply, and asked Karr in an open response to "Please get some professional help." Hammons apparently started Bill's List to promote his self-published novel Alternity, which is based on the premise question "What if someone went back in time to murder Adolf Hitler?"

As of November 2010, wrhammons.com was receiving as many as 12,000 visitors a day.

Shortly before his move, Hammons and others formed the Unity Party of America out of an organization called Unity Runners, which in turn had been formed out of Runners for Clark, a grassroots group founded in September 2003 and dedicated to supporting the defunct Presidential candidacy of General Wesley Clark. In November 2007, Hammons declared for Colorado's 2nd Congressional District (centered on Boulder), as the first Unity Party of America Congressional candidate. Hammons only received 0.6% of the vote, but as a direct result of his successful petition onto the 2008 General Election ballot with over 1,200 signatures, the Unity Party is now a Qualified Political Organization officially recognized by the State of Colorado and on the state's official voter registration form. Hammons re-declared for the Second District on June 22, 2009 to run against Freshman Congressman and former opponent Jared Polis, citing a need for the Unity Party to field a 2010 candidate to remain on the state's voter registration form. On July 15, 2010, Hammons announced his withdrawal from the 2nd CD race, citing challenges in obtaining the required number of petition signatures to appear on the ballot a second time.

In January 2010, Hammons appeared on Denver 9 News' Your Show to make the case for changing Colorado election law and allowing the Unity Party's more recently affiliated candidates to petition onto the General Election ballot as Unity Party candidates, along with himself. On May 27, 2010, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter signed House Bill 10-1271, which will allow Colorado's unaffiliated candidates for public office (including, technically, Unity Party candidates) to run for office if their voter registration has not changed during the year of the election in question, beginning in 2012.

On April 17, 2010, Hammons was elected to the newly-formed United National Committee, the first governing body of the Unity Party of America, as the party's Chairman.

In a June 27, 2010 Denver Post article, Hammons was cited as a "Unity Party candidate for Colorado's 2nd Congressional District who supports federal funding for a feasibility study of a Western Slope [Colorado] spaceport." That same month, Hammons helped start the Unity Party of Utah, which plans to petition onto the Utah ballot as a party in 2012.

Hammons is an avid long-distance runner who ran the prestigious Boston Marathon and a 50-mile ultramarathon in Montana both in the same year of 2006.