FCC Chairman Julius Genachowksi has yet to announce his exit date, but the chatter is coalescing around a scenario where Former NCTA President Tom Wheeler is nominated to replace Genachowski and, since the vetting and voting for that pick will likely take a few months, Mignon Clyburn would be named interim chair.

A zombie (as in “A. Zombie”) joined the campaign trail last week as a candidate for president.

The move is an effort by AMC to put a faux political spotlight on its ongoing campaign publicizing the carriage impasse with Dish. That resulted in the programmer’s networks being dropped from the No. 2 satellite operators lineup on July 1, including AMC and The Walking Dead zombie. drama.

AMC plans to take the recently unearthed candidate on a six-city bus tour that began with stops last week in San Diego and Dallas and will include stops at both the Republican Convention (Tampa) and Democratic (Charlotte) over the next two weeks.

The candidate’s single issue is to encourage Dish subscribers to switch to another provider before the Oct. 14, 2012, debut of the show’s third season. No word on when he would give his first “stump” speech. Sorry, but blame an AMC staffer for that one.

Will the candidate pick — he will likely need a shovel, too — a zombie VP? Yes, says a spokesperson for the campaign, but “not yet.”

Dish said back in May that it was not renewing its carriage deal with AMC’s nets due to the price, first moving them to the satellite channel graveyard — AMC, for example, went from ch. 130 to ch. 9069 in June, and then dropping it at the end of last month.