Rocky De La Fuente

In 2020, he is running for the Republican nomination in the presidential election. He simultaneously ran for the U.S. House of Representatives seat for California's 21st congressional district, but lost in the March 2020 primary. He has also accepted the presidential nomination of a new party, the Alliance Party.

However, De La Fuente is running as a Republican instead. As of January 30, 2020, he had raised $17,253 from outside sources and had loaned his own campaign $15.13 million, of which the campaign had returned $8.2 million. For the Republican primaries, has qualified as a candidate in California (where he has also qualified for the ballot for the American Independent Party), Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Illinois (where he is on the ballot but does not have delegate candidates to support him), Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Vermont, and filed in New York, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, and West Virginia. He filed in Tennessee but did not end up on the ballot.

His failure to make the initial candidate list in Michigan led both to his stating an intention to get on the ballot through submission of petitions and to his campaign manager filing a suit on behalf of a Michigan voter seeking to have De La Fuente on the ballot. He did not end up on the ballot. The Minnesota Supreme Court rejected a similar petition on January 9; in that state, the Republican party dictated the candidate list. Some states are foregoing Republican primaries for the 2020 cycle, with the Republican leadership in those states having selected incumbent president Donald Trump as their nominee. De La Fuente has named Trump, the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and various state Republican parties in a suit claiming that there was inappropriate coordination in an attempt to prevent competing candidates for the nomination.

In 2019 De La Fuente filed one of five lawsuits that arose against a California law requiring candidates to release their tax returns in order to appear on the state's primary ballots. That law, which was seen as targeted against the incumbent Donald Trump, was blocked by a federal judge. De La Fuente also requested a U.S. Supreme Court review of a Ninth Circuit court decision which approved California's requirements for ballot access by independent candidates, and mounted a federal challenge to Georgia's granting political parties ultimate control over who appears on their ballots; parties in Florida and Minnesota have similar control. After the lawsuit was filed, Georgia's Republican party submitted a ballot listing only incumbent Donald Trump as a candidate, choosing not to list De La Fuente and three other candidates who had been under consideration.

During the 2018 elections, De La Fuente was on the ballot in nine states' primaries for United States Senate, all of which he lost. He campaigned as a critic of President Donald Trump's immigration policies.

De La Fuente ran for US Senate in nine states in 2018, seeking to show problems with the current election process, which he called "Loony Toons!" On February 26, 2018, he filed to run for the 2018 Senate election in California under the Republican Party to unseat incumbent Dianne Feinstein, but failed in the June 5 primary. He came ninth place out of a field of 35, garnering 135,109 votes for 2% of the total. In a primary system where only the top two make it to the final ballot, this ended his candidacy. On August 8, his candidacy for Senate in Washington state came to an end in the open primary where he was one of the 32 candidates. In Florida, De La Fuente lost the Republican primary to his only challenger, Governor Rick Scott. He also lost primaries in Wyoming, Hawaii, Minnesota, Vermont, Delaware, and Rhode Island.

De La Fuente ran as a Republican in the campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives seat for California's 21st district. (Unlike most other states, California has no law prohibiting simultaneously running for the presidency and for Congress.) His son Ricardo ran for the same seat as a Democrat. Neither De La Fuente lives in the district. Rocky felt that his candidacy would help his son's chances of getting the seat, which was the outcome he desired. Neither De La Fuente succeeded, coming in third (Ricardo) and fourth (Rocky) in a four-candidate jungle primary in which the top two vote getters compete in the general election. On the same day, Ricardo, who had previously run for the House from California's 34th and Florida's 23rd districts, won the Democratic primary for U.S. representative for Texas's 27th district, where he hopes to become a resident. (Ricardo is also running for the nomination in Florida's 24th district, repeating a run he made in 2018 against incumbent Frederica Wilson.)

De La Fuente sought the Republican nomination for Mayor of New York City in the 2017 election. He joined the race claiming that private polling data showed him defeating the two Republican candidates who were then entered, Paul Massey and Michel Faulkner.

In January 2017, De La Fuente stated in a court filing that he intended to again seek the Democratic Party nomination in the 2020 presidential election. He again asserted plans to seek the presidency in the wake of his 2018 election failures.

A perennial candidate, De La Fuente was the presidential nominee of both the Reform Party and his self-created American Delta Party in the 2016 election. That year he was also an unsuccessful candidate in the Democratic primary for United States senator from Florida and for the Democratic presidential nomination.

De La Fuente campaigned for president in the 2016. He sought the Democratic Party's nomination during their presidential primaries. His campaign did not win a single primary or a single delegate to the 2016 Democratic National Convention.

In 2016, De La Fuente and Stein sued the state of Oklahoma over the state's high requirement for petitions. They dismissed the suit in 2017 after Oklahoma eased their requirements. In February 2018, De La Fuente won two court cases slightly easing ballot access requirements in Virginia and Washington. De La Fuente's history of ballot access suits and his victories received a write-up from the Federal Judicial Center.

On June 20, 2016, De La Fuente paid the $10,440 qualifying fee to run for the Democratic nomination in the 2016 election for US senator from Florida, over a seat then occupied by Republican Marco Rubio. He competed with Patrick Murphy, Alan Grayson, Pam Keith, and Reginald Luster for the nomination. Murphy won the nomination; De La Fuente came in fourth-place out of five candidates, receiving 60,606 votes (5.38% of the overall vote).

In November 2015, De La Fuente and the city of San Diego settled a decades-long legal dispute over land-use issues regarding a 312-acre area that De La Fuente is developing in Otay Mesa.

As of 2015, De La Fuente owned businesses and properties in Mexico, the United States, and Uruguay.

In 2004, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation issued an order barring De La Fuente from participating in any FDIC-insured institution. De La Fuente appealed and the 9th Circuit reversed half the order and advised the FDIC to reconsider its sentence, stating that "De La Fuente's use of [First International Bank] as his personal piggy bank was in shocking disregard of sound banking practices and the law to the detriment of depositors, shareholders, and the public. Nevertheless, we remand this matter to the Board for it to consider, in light of this disposition, whether this extraordinary sanction remains deserved."

In 1997, De La Fuente received a settlement of $38.7 million from San Diego County for 524 acres of land belonging to him and his father that the county had taken to build a new county jail.

Between 1976 and 1990 (when he took over his father's automobile dealerships after his father had had a stroke), De La Fuente acquired 28 automobile franchises for Alfa Romeo, American Motors Corporation, Audi, Cadillac, Chrysler, Daihatsu, Dodge, GMC, Honda, and other brands. He also opened three banks (one national bank approved by the OCC and two state charter banks approved by the California Banking Commission and the FDIC), assisted living facilities in Los Angeles and Lemon Grove, California, and eleven currency exchange locations in the United States and Mexico.

Roque "Rocky" De La Fuente Guerra (born October 10, 1954) is an American businessman and politician.

De La Fuente was born on October 10, 1954, at Mercy Hospital in San Diego, California, the son of automobile dealer and business park developer Roque Antonio De La Fuente Alexander (circa 1923 – 2002) and Bertha Guerra Yzaguirre. His parents raised him in Mexico (Mexico City, Tijuana, Baja California), and in the United States (San Diego and Anaheim). He was educated by his parents and the Legionaries of Christ, the Marist Brothers, the Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart, Daughters of the Holy Spirit and the Jesuits. De La Fuente earned a B.S. in physics and mathematics from the Instituto Patria National Autonomous University of Mexico, and studied accounting and business administration at Anahuac University near Mexico City.