Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher passed away on Sunday, his wife told NBC News. His query to Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign thrust him into the public eye. He was 49 and had pancreatic cancer.
After asking then-candidate Obama a question about his tax plans and their potential detrimental effects on small companies, Wurzelbacher became widely known as “Joe the Plumber.” He immediately came to be associated with the ideal “everyman,” which the Republican Party at the time seized onto in their presidential campaign.
An online fundraising effort claims that Wurzelbacher received a Stage 3 pancreatic cancer diagnosis last year after experiencing gastrointestinal problems for a few months. In a statement released on Monday, his wife Katie wrote that he had “fought for a long time, but is now without pain.”
When I first met Joe, he was already known to everyone else as “Joe the Plumber,” but in a letter to me, he used the words “just Joe,” which stuck out and revealed to me who he really was. He was a typical, respectable man trying to make a difference for the nation he loved so much after becoming well-known by simply asking a question.
According to the fundraising drive, Wurzelbacher also had a son who is now an adult from a prior marriage in addition to the three children the couple has together since their 2011 wedding. Wurzelbacher was in too much discomfort to get out of bed in the days before he passed away.
His wife expressed her sympathy to everyone whose lives have been affected by cancer. There were a lot of ups and downs, but we made an effort to enjoy each day.
In the years after becoming a famous internet celebrity, Wurzelbacher made a number of remarks indicating he didn’t like the attention that followed his 2008 campaign question to Obama.
Wurzelbacher questioned whether Obama’s plan would make him pay more in taxes after he bought a company that made between $250,000 and $280,000 per year while Obama was speaking with folks during a campaign stop in Ohio.
Obama retorted that Wurzelbacher would actually receive a tax credit for healthcare expenses under his proposal and mentioned that 95% of small firms earn less than that.
In a discussion between Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the Republican candidate, and Sen. Barack Obama, Wurzelbacher’s name was later mentioned 25 times, according to a 2008 Guardian report. According to NBC News, McCain even claimed that “Joe the Plumber” had won the debate.
Following online criticism of him in October of that same year, Wurzelbacher said to Fox News that he “felt small.”
Additionally, Wurzelbacher claimed that McCain’s inclusion in the presidential race “screwed up” his life in a 2010 interview with a Pennsylvania public radio station.
“McCain was attempting to use me,” he declared. “I was the face of middle-class Americans. It was a trick.
However, Wurzelbacher gained attention in 2012 when he challenged Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur in Ohio’s 9th U.S. House seat. Wurzelbacher made an attempt to connect the Holocaust with gun control in one of his campaign commercials. He said that “gun control” instituted by Germany in 1939 rendered the millions of Jews who perished defenseless.
In reaction to criticism of the advertisement, Wurzelbacher told Politico that anyone seeking to be upset by it is probably doing so for political reasons. “Unfortunately, there are plenty of whiners out there.”
After entering politics, Wurzelbacher lost to Kaptur in the main election and, according to the fundraising effort, went back to being a plumber.