John Hagelin, a 37-year-old physics professor at Maharishi University of Management (MUM), was the NLP candidate for president of the United States in 1992. He said that he had been uninterested in politics and a Republican "by default" before the campaign. Mike Tompkins, also on the MUM staff, was his running mate. They were formally chosen at the party's 400-person convention in Washington D.C. on 5 October 1992, although they had been campaigning already. Both of them took six-month leaves of absence from the university to campaign.