Key facts
- Who: Mary Carey (Mary Ellen Cook), American former adult performer, director and radio host, born June 15, 1980, in Cleveland (Wikipedia)
- Childhood: Raised by her grandparents from three months old; Pine Crest school on a scholarship (Wikipedia; University Press, FAU)
- 2003 recall: 10th of 135 candidates for governor, 11,179 votes (Wikipedia; AVN)
- TV: VH1’s Celebrity Rehab (2008) and Sober House (2009) (AVN)
- 2006: Quit her campaign to care for her injured mother (The Sydney Morning Herald/AP)
- Honors: AVN Hall of Fame, class of 2013 (AVN)
Search “Mary Carey governor” and you get a wall of joke headlines from 2003: the porn star on the same ballot as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Gary Coleman and Larry Flynt. The jokes were the point. She knew it, the press knew it, and everybody had fun. But when you read what she actually said in those years, and what happened to her after, you find a young woman who grew up with very little, who got more attention than she’d ever dreamed of, and who kept coming back to politics long after the joke was over.
I’ve been in this industry for 14 years. I’m one of the most-searched male performers in the world, and I’ve worked with most of the top actresses of my generation. I’ve never worked with Mary Carey, so this column is about the public record, not gossip. Here’s her sourced story, and then my take.
Raised by her grandparents
Mary Ellen Cook was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on June 15, 1980. Wikipedia reports that both her parents had serious health conditions, and that she was raised by her grandparents from the age of three months, moving with them to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, at seven (Wikipedia).
She has spoken about them with real love. “My grandparents were my parents since my mom and dad are both disabled,” she told University Press, the student newspaper of Florida Atlantic University, in 2015. “[My grandparents] were amazing. They used all the money they saved to send me to Pine Crest Prep School in Fort Lauderdale. And they did everything possible to help me with my ballet dancing” (University Press). Wikipedia notes she attended Pine Crest on a scholarship (Wikipedia).
Then she lost the man who raised her. “Losing my grandfather at 16 was losing my dad,” she said (University Press).
College, a bagel shop and the first drinks
She first took classes at Florida State, but her grandmother’s health kept pulling her home. “It was hard even being in FSU, I would sometimes hear about my grandmother falling on the floor and my mom would be aware of that and she would call me,” she said (University Press). She moved to Florida Atlantic University, closer to home. Wikipedia says she enrolled there intending to get a degree in theatre and danced on the FAU dance team (Wikipedia).
College life was ordinary and not easy at the same time. “Freshman year I had a boyfriend, sophomore, I was mostly going out with my girlfriends and I worked at a bagel shop to take care of my grandma,” she said (University Press). It was also where the drinking started. “In FSU, my first class wasn’t until 12, so I would drink every night,” she said. “That’s where I started drinking” (University Press).
Asked if FAU played a role in her career, she said it was more the place than the school: “I think that it wasn’t necessarily FAU, but living in the South Florida area. There’s strip clubs all over the place. I wanted to do porn and get on camera and I got on Playboy TV show” (University Press).
Into the industry
AVN dates her adult career to 2002. In 2003 she became a contract performer for Kick Ass Pictures and starred in the Mary Carey Rules series, which she also directed. She worked for major studios including Vivid, VCA and Hustler Video (AVN). AVN put her filmography at close to 100 titles; University Press, in 2015, said more than 100 films, three of them as director (AVN; University Press).
She was very honest about why she was in it. “I’m not in the porn industry for the sex,” she told The New York Times in 2003. “I love being on camera. And running for governor, I got to be on camera with my clothes on” (The New York Times).
2003: on the ballot with 134 other people
In 2003 California voted on whether to recall Governor Gray Davis, and on who would replace him. 135 candidates made it onto the replacement ballot, Arnold Schwarzenegger among them. Mary Carey was one of them (AVN; The New York Times).
Her 11-point platform was part satire, part real. AVN summarized it as “somewhat tongue-in-cheek promises of taxing breast implants, making lap dances tax-deductible, and creating a ‘Porn for Pistols’ exchange program” (AVN). University Press added that her platform included legalizing gay marriage, which was not legal in California at the time (University Press). AVN noted that her “well-spoken persona” got her onto political talk shows, including Fox News (AVN).
Election day: “I’ve never voted before”
The New York Times followed her on election day, October 7, 2003, while a makeup artist got her ready in her North Hollywood condo. She was 23 (The New York Times).
She said exactly what you would expect a candidate to say — “I’d like to win” — and added, “Hopefully Howard Stern got me some votes.” Then the detail that I find most human in this whole story: “I’ve never voted before.” She told the Times she voted against the recall, then voted for herself as a replacement (The New York Times).
She also had one very sensible worry: “But what if I win, and I don’t find out until later?” And she was clearly amazed by the whole experience. “I can’t believe I was, like, on the ballot for a governor’s race,” she said. “I don’t think I could ever top running for governor” (The New York Times).
She didn’t win. Schwarzenegger did. But Mary Carey received 11,179 votes and finished 10th out of 135 (Wikipedia; AVN). Politico later noted that she ended up a few thousand votes behind Gary Coleman and Larry Flynt (Politico). For a first-time voter, top ten is not nothing.
The politics didn’t stop
What surprised people is that she kept going. In June 2005 she announced a run for lieutenant governor of California as an independent (Wikipedia). Around the same time she attended a Republican fundraiser that President George W. Bush attended, and the publicity around it won her AVN’s Best Overall Marketing Campaign award in 2006 (University Press). Her line to CBS News about the event, quoted by University Press: “I hope people look around the room and say, ‘Where is that porn star?’” (University Press).
There were rough moments too. In April 2005 she was arrested at a club in Lakewood, Washington, during a police sting enforcing a city strip-club ordinance; Wikipedia reports she later made a plea agreement and received a suspended sentence (USA Today/AP; Wikipedia).
2006: choosing her mother over the campaign
In 2006 she was campaigning as a write-in candidate, because she couldn’t collect enough signatures to get on the November ballot. Just a week earlier she had demanded “equal time” from Jay Leno after Schwarzenegger appeared on The Tonight Show (The Sydney Morning Herald/AP).
Then, in October 2006, she dropped out. The AP reported that her mother, who lives with schizophrenia, had been seriously injured in a fall from a building in Florida while off her medication, and was in critical condition in a Fort Lauderdale hospital (The Sydney Morning Herald/AP). “It’s remarkable she survived,” Carey said.
Her statement was simple. “As much as I want to help the state of California be a better place, I think it is more important to be with my mom and help her,” she said. “I am only 26 and have many more years to be involved in politics, but right now I must be in Florida with my mom.” She asked people “to pray for a healthy recovery” (The Sydney Morning Herald/AP).
Celebrity Rehab and the return to porn
In early 2008 she appeared on VH1’s Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, and in 2009 on its spin-off Sober House (AVN). On the show she said she would leave the adult industry, citing her mother (Wikipedia).
In May 2009, AVN reported she had returned to porn after a three-year hiatus, with a parody of the very show that had made her a reality star. Her explanation was frank: “When I did ‘Celebrity Rehab,’ I decided I was going to put a hold on my adult career. Then I did [‘Celebrity Rehab’ spin-off] ‘Sober House,’ and after that, I realized that I really missed doing movies” (AVN).
She also corrected the record on why she was in rehab. “On the show, they made it look like I was [in rehab] because of alcohol, but I was really there to quit Xanax,” she told AVN. And she drew a line: “Porn didn’t make me drink or use drugs” (AVN). Wikipedia notes that in 2011, on Celebrity Rehab Revisited, she said she had quit Xanax and binge drinking (Wikipedia). University Press described her in 2015 as a recovering alcoholic (University Press).
In 2013 she was inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame (AVN). By 2015 she told University Press, “I do not do porn, just radio shows” (University Press).
2021: “I am ready to be on top!”
Eighteen years after her first campaign, California organized another recall, this time against Gavin Newsom, and in April 2021 Mary Carey announced she would run again (Politico). Politico reported a platform of aiding the entertainment and tech industries and addressing homelessness, “with a heavy dose of puns (‘I am ready to be on top!’)” (Politico). Her slogan, according to Wikipedia, was MILF: “Moderates and Independents for Liberation and Freedom” (Wikipedia).
Politico noted that her statement also said “she feels the recall is a waste of resources considering the governor’s current term ends next year” — not your usual line from a recall candidate (Politico). In July 2021 she withdrew. She told TMZ she had only two weeks to gather her documents, including five years of tax returns, and it just wasn’t feasible (TMZ).
What every performer should learn from Mary Carey
- Attention is a tool. She turned a joke candidacy into national TV, awards and a career. Use the spotlight on purpose.
- Family comes first. In 2006 she walked away from a campaign to be with her mother.
- Be honest about addiction. She corrected her own story — Xanax, not just alcohol — and said porn didn’t cause it.
- Keep your paperwork in order. Her 2021 run ended over documents and tax returns. Boring, but real.
- Your story is bigger than your scenes. The Hall of Fame cited her political “well-spoken persona,” not only her films.
My Take (opinion — Maximo Garcia)
I’ll be honest: when I first heard the Mary Carey story years ago, I thought it was just a funny publicity stunt. Reading her own words changed my mind. A 23-year-old who had never voted, sitting in a makeup chair, worried about what happens “if I win and I don’t find out until later” — that’s not a cynical person. That’s someone who was half-joking and half-hoping, which is how a lot of us feel in this business about the big things.
What I really respect is October 2006. She had press, a campaign and a fight with Jay Leno, and she dropped all of it to sit beside her mother in a hospital. People outside our industry like to imagine performers as people with no family and no roots. Mary Carey was raised by grandparents who spent their savings on her school, and when her family needed her, she went home. That’s the part of her story the joke headlines never told.
I also think her honesty about Xanax and drinking matters. She said clearly that porn didn’t make her drink or use drugs; she started in college. I’ve seen both kinds of stories in 14 years: people who brought problems into the business and people the business broke. Mixing them up helps nobody. Getting help, on camera or off, is the right move either way. I write about the mental side of this work, and the parts nobody puts on a poster, at maximogarciaworld.com.
If you liked this one, read my column on Stormy Daniels, another performer who ended up in the middle of American politics, and on Brandi Love, who turned her name into a real business. For a reinvention that went through reality TV and radio, see Lisa Ann.
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FAQ
Did Mary Carey really run for governor of California?
Yes. She was one of 135 replacement candidates in the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election and finished 10th with 11,179 votes (Wikipedia; AVN).
What was Mary Carey’s platform?
In 2003 she ran on an 11-point platform that included tongue-in-cheek promises to tax breast implants, make lap dances tax-deductible and create a “Porn for Pistols” exchange program (AVN). University Press also reported her support for legalizing same-sex marriage (University Press).
Did Mary Carey run in the 2021 California recall?
She announced a run in April 2021 but withdrew in July 2021, saying she had only two weeks to gather the required documents, including five years of tax returns (Politico; TMZ).
What is Mary Carey’s real name?
Mary Ellen Cook. She was born on June 15, 1980, in Cleveland, Ohio (Wikipedia).
How we fact-checked this
Every fact and quote was checked against the sources below and is reproduced as published. Her mother’s 2006 injury is reported only as the Associated Press reported it at the time, without further detail. Explicit film titles and scene details were left out to keep this page SFW. Where sources differ (for example, close to 100 films per AVN versus more than 100 per University Press), we give both. Opinions are Maximo Garcia’s own and are labeled as such.
If you or someone you love is struggling with thoughts of suicide or a mental-health crisis, in the U.S. you can call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline); elsewhere, contact your local emergency number or a local crisis line.
Sources
- Wikipedia: Mary Carey (actress) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Carey_(actress)
- The New York Times: “What the Well-Undressed Woman Wears to Her Party” (Oct. 8, 2003, archived) — https://web.archive.org/web/2016/https://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/08/national/nationalspecial3/what-the-wellundressed-woman-wears-to-her.html
- AVN: “AVN Announces 2013 Hall of Fame Inductees” — https://avn.com/business/articles/video/avn-announces-2013-hall-of-fame-inductees-498347.html
- AVN: “Mary Carey Pokes Fun at VH1 in ‘Celebrity Pornhab With Dr. Screw’” (May 2009) — https://avn.com/business/articles/video/mary-carey-pokes-fun-at-vh1-in-celebrity-pornhab-with-dr-screw-337073.html
- University Press (FAU): “Pornstar and FAU alumna Mary Carey on how her humble South Florida beginning influenced her career” (Mar. 2015) — https://www.upressonline.com/2015/03/pornstar-and-fau-alumna-mary-carey-on-how-her-humble-south-florida-beginning-influenced-her-career/
- The Sydney Morning Herald / AP: “Porn star quits governor’s race” (Oct. 24, 2006, archived) — https://web.archive.org/web/2019/https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/celebrity/porn-star-quits-governors-race-20061024-gdoo37.html
- Politico: “Former porn star Mary Carey announces California recall bid — again” (Apr. 2021, archived) — https://web.archive.org/web/2021/https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2021/04/13/former-porn-star-mary-carey-announces-california-recall-bid-again-9426103
- TMZ: Mary Carey pulls out of California governor race (July 2021) — https://www.tmz.com/2021/07/10/mary-carey-pulls-out-governor-california-race-recall-election-gavin-newsom/
- USA Today / AP: “Porn star Mary Carey arrested” (Apr. 2005) — https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/people/2005-04-19-mary-carey-arrest_x.htm
