Sandra Day O'Sunbeam

Sandra Day O'Sunbeam is the founder and current presidential candidate of the Sunbeam Squad.

Childhood
Sandra Day O'Sunbeam was born on April 3495, the only child of Phoebus O'Sunbeam, a classicist, and Daisy Day, a controversial evolutionary biologist. She spent her childhood in the upperclass suburb of Rupertbrooke, near Newtonia. Everyone agreed she was a precocious child, and she began school at the age of three, gaining admissions to Rupertbrooke School, the local private school. At the age of six, her parents had her transferred to the St. Olga School, the prestigious girls boarding school in Vanderburg. Five years later she was expelled for "unruly conduct". She finished high school in the Urban Mubarak Academy, where she began a local chapter of "Rutania First" and argued for the deportation of all minorites and the total subjugation of the lower-classes. At age fourteen she was already quite the firebrand. She graduated high-school at age fifteen.

University days
To pursue her dream of creating a chemical compound that will humanely “put down” the miserable proles for their own good, she went to study biochemistry at the University of Newtonia; there she met Amelia Granger, then an aspiring physicist. Granger was to become her life-long friend. She also met Morris Ridgeway-Bates, a history undergraduate, and in her third year at university they began a passionate love affair, to her parents chagrin: Ridgeway-Bates was Yeudish.

Ridgeway-Bates, who was from a working-class background, challenged O'Sunbeam's reactionary beliefs; he took her to dates in working-class neighborhoods where to her amazement, she found that the “little people” did not walk on all fours and communicate by grunts and squeals. This discovery had a revolutionary effect on O'Sunbeam, who had up to this moment believed that the lower classes belonged to a different and vastly inferior sub-species a belief common among the reactionary upperclass society in which she was brought up. O'Sunbeam began to question everything her parents taught her including--including belief in the all-knowing free-market. Every night in her dormitory common room she would rave about politics. Originally, only Ridgeway-Bates and Granger listened to her nocturnal tirades, but her hypnotic voice and innate charisma soon drew in a increasingly large number of admirers. She regularly expressed outrage at the oppression of workers and the inequality in Rutanian society. She soon gathered a number of unwavering supporters, who listened to her all speeches, dreamy-eyed, and agreed with everything she said. Ridgeway-Bates jokingly called this clique the Sunbeam Squad. O'Sunbeam soon realized that the power she held over her admirers was, well, powerful. And she began to use it to improve working conditions and resist capitalist dogma. She graduated from the University of Newtonia in 3514, with a B.S. in Biochemistry.

The germ of political activism
After graduating, she abandoned her former ambition to invent "household nerve gas for the proletarian pest". While Granger and Ridgeway-Bates went on to pursue graduate degrees in their respective fields of study, O'Sunbeam created The Free Serf, a newspaper espousing working class and social democratic causes. No one bought copies of The Free Serf because workers were too poor to be able to afford anything beyond minimal subsistence; people thought she will have to abandon her enterprise. But they were to be proven wrong. O'Sunbeam had a trust fund, and she used it to continue educating everyone about the plight of workers. While all this was developing, her passion for Ridgeway-Bates cooled, and they began seeing other people.

Sojourn to Ikradon
O'Sunbeam traveled all over Rutania,disseminating propaganda and conspiring with workers. A friend of her then recommended that she visit Ikradon to broaden her intellectual horizon. In Ikradon, she became familiar with socialism for the first time. She also became familiar with Jack Wintour, Rutanian journalist and noted stud. Wintour accompanied her in her travels in Ikradon and introduced her to even more radical ideas like communism and free love.

O'Sunbeam participated in workers' meetings, learning more about workers' needs and discussing various means to alleviate their suffering. But on 3523, after two years in Ikradon, O'Sunbeam decided that she could not ass around any longer: the Rutanian worker needs her. She did not belong in Ikradon where everyone was socialist; she must return to her roots and there plant the seeds of socialism! She returned to Rutania. Wintour was not to join her. On the day of her departure, a group of persons in flowing white robes abducted Wintour. He was never seen again.

Return to Rutania
In Rutania, she called for a meeting of the old Sunbeam Squad. The SS received her calls for socialism in Rutania in disbelief--and shock. Morris Ridgeway-Bates was especially appalled, and persisted in telling her that socialism would not work in Rutania. Granger was of the same opinion as Ridgeway-Bates. Her two old friends were able to argue her out of radicalism, and O'Sunbeam retreated to the politics of social democracy. She rekindled the Sunbeam Squad's tradition of nocturnal gatherings. Her romantic feelings for Ridgeway-Bates was not similarly rekindled.

Sandra Day O'Sunbeam once again traveled all over Rutania and tried to improve workers conditions by disseminating propaganda, writing to politicians and occasionally handing out spare change to the proles.

The Sunbeam Squad becomes a political party
In October 3528, worker frustration bubbled over and the Sunbeam Squad became a political party, espousing a social democratic, humanistic and republican mission. Amelia Granger became the party leader and Morris Ridgeway-Bates the deputy leader. Ridgeway Bates was passed over for leadership because he was afraid of crowds and other SS members feared his neuroses might get in the way of the party's goals.

Once the SS became a political party, they quickly introduced new legislation in Parliament, legislation to enhance civil rights and working conditions. The party has caused quite a stir in Parliament, largely because of Granger's penetrating contributions to debate. Ridgeway-Bates took charge of the background operations.