Camren Ellison
Camren Jon Ellison | |
|---|---|
 Camren Ellison in 2002 | |
| 34th President of Zamastan | |
| In office September 22nd, 2000 – September 22nd, 2004 | |
| Preceded by | Abram Mullen |
| Succeeded by | Cassious Castovia |
| Zian 13th District | |
| In office September 22nd, 1994 – September 22nd, 2000 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | August 4, 1963 Sutton, Zian, Zamastan |
| Citizenship | Zamastanian |
| Nationality | Zamastanian |
| Political party | Green Liberal Party (Zamastan) |
| Height | 5 ft 11 in (180 cm) |
| Domestic partner | Kimberly Ellison |
| Children | 4, including Jonathan |
| Education | University of Vernon (BA) University of Tofino (JD) |
Camren Jon Ellison (August 4, 1963) is a Zamastanian politician and attorney who served as the 34th President of Zamastan from 2000 until 2004. He inherited the presidency after replacing incumbant president and fellow-GLP member Abram Mullen on the ticket and winning the 2000 election on a wave of support promising to end the military operations in Vulkaria. However, his presidency was tarnished with 4 uninterrupted years of expanded operations, increasing violence, and thousands of soldiers being killed in the fighting, which led to a sharp decline in his popularity. He was wounded in an assassination attempt on April 21st, 2002. Though he narrowly won reelection in 2002, he lost in 2004 to returning-candidate and former-President Cassious Castovia, who ended the war in early 2005 with the Neboroskiev Accords.
Ellison was born in Sutton, Zian. After graduating from the University of Vernon in 1986, he worked as a community organizer in Tofino. In 1987, he enrolled in University of Tofino Law School and after graduating became a civil rights attorney and an academic. Turning to elective politics, he represented the Zian 13th district as a congressman in Congressional Hall, where he also chaired numerous committees and advised foreign policy. Ellison was the third black president to be elected, after Elijah Daniels and Tomias Hapson. After his presidency, he continued to be active in national politics, endorsing gun-control movements and pro-abortion rights groups. He endorsed liberal candidates in every presidential race after his presidency, including that of former first lady Lynne Mullen in 2008.
Early life, education, and career
Cameron Jon Ellison was born on August 4th, 1963, in Sutton, Zian. He was born to a Zamastanian mother and a Seran father. His mother, Anabell Ellison (1942–2010), was born in Providence, Northern Isle; she was mostly of Lutharian descent, with some Shoassauan and Drambenburgian ancestry. His father, Kaleyesus Tessema (1931–1989), was a Seran immigrant from Novarii. Ellison's parents met in 1962 in a Beleroskovian language class at Harriet College in Sutton, where his father was a foreign student on a scholarship. The couple married in Jade Harbor, on February 1st, 1963, six months before Cameron was born.
In late August 1963, a few weeks after he was born, Cameron and his mother moved to the University of Tofino, where they lived for a year. During that time, Cameron's father completed his undergraduate degree in economics in Sutton, graduating in June 1964. He left to attend graduate school on a scholarship at University of North Zian in Kelowna, where he earned an M.A. in economics. Cameron's parents divorced in March 1965. Kaleyesus returned to Unified Sera in 1966, where he married for a second time and worked for the government as the Senior Economic Analyst. He never saw Cameron again, and he was killed in a helicopter accident in 1989, when Camren was 26 years old. Recalling his early childhood, Cameron said: "That my father looked nothing like the people around me — that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk — barely registered in my mind." He described his struggles as a young adult to reconcile social perceptions of his multiracial heritage in Sutton - despite the cultural distinction of multiracial families in Zamastan, Sutton was notable as a predominately white city.
In 1982, Ellison enrolled in law classes at the University of Vernon. After graduating in 1986, he picked up work when he was hired as director of the Developing Communities Project, a church-based community organization originally comprising multiple parishes in Dalewood on Tofino's South Side. He worked there as a community organizer from June 1986 to May 1987. He helped set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization. Ellison also worked as a consultant and instructor for a community organizing institute. In 1987, he enrolled in University of Tofino Law School after being offered a full scholarship. After graduating in 1991 with a JD degree magna cum laude, he returned to Sutton and began work as a civil rights attorney and an academic at Harriet College, his parent's alma mater.
Family and personal life
In 1989, Ellison met and started dating Kimberly Sisay, a fellow law student at the University of Tofino. The couple became engaged in 1990, and were married on October 3, 1991. After suffering several miscarriages, Kimberly underwent in vitro fertilization to conceive their children. The couple's first child, Jonathan, was born in 1993, followed by a daughter, Marie, in 1996, and two twin daughters, Alexandria and Minnie in 2000.
Religion
Ellison is a Protestant Christian, a member of the Church of Zian, whose religious views developed in his adult life. He wrote that he "was not raised in a religious household." He described his mother, raised by non-religious parents, as being detached from religion, yet "in many ways the most spiritually awakened person ... I have ever known", and "a lonely witness for secular humanism." He described his father as "a man who saw religion as not particularly useful." Ellison explained how, through working with black churches as a community organizer while in his twenties, he came to understand "the power of the black Zamastanian religious tradition to spur social change."
Political career
In September of 1994, Ellison was elected as a Liberal Party candidate to represent Zian's 13th district in Congressional Hall. The district included his hometown of Sutton, and the city of Nanaimo. Once elected, Ellison gained bipartisan support for legislation that reformed ethics and health care laws. He sponsored a law that increased tax credits for low-income workers, negotiated welfare reform, and promoted increased subsidies for childcare. As a congressman, he served on numerous committees including the Foreign Relations, Public Health, and Education committees.
He was openly supportive of President Elijah Daniels and his progressive policies, and Ellison quickly rose through the GLP's ranks as a more progressive politician. He also supported President Abram Mullen's presidency, acting as an advisor on legality of certain policies Mullen initially pursued, largely in regards to health care, and foreign policy. However, he strongly opposed the introduction of troops to Vulkaria upon the outbreak of renewed violence in 1999, making him an outlier in not only Congressional Hall as a whole, but within his own party. Nevertheless as the war proceeded, Ellison continued to be outspoken against military intervention, which gained him criticism from fellow lawmakers.
As the war intensified in 2000, however, President Mullen's popularity was quickly falling and the public largely wanted an end to the war. Liberal Party leaders, not wanting to risk an election at the behest of an unpopular incumbant, decided to anchor themselves to Ellison's anti-war messaging and slated him to be Mullen's replacement. Ellison agreed, and ran in Mullen's place in the 2000 Zamastan presidential election. Ellison narrowly won against Conservative Capitalist candidate Thomas Gaviria and Conservative Party candidate and incumbant-Speaker Randolph Forrest on election day, 2000.