On August 26, Superior Court Judge Michael Kenny ruled in favor of the Alan Keyes faction of the American Independent Party. The case is called King v Bowen, 34-2008-80000016. Judge Kenny said that the Chuck Baldwin faction of the party should have filed the lawsuit sooner. Also he said the Baldwin faction should have served Alan Keyes as an indispensible party. Therefore, the California ballot will list Alan Keyes as the presidential nominee of the American Independent Party, not Chuck Baldwin.
It is probably too late for the Chuck Baldwin faction of the party to appeal the ruling on which presidential candidate should be on the November ballot. However, the American Independent Party activists who brought the lawsuit are free to bring a new lawsuit, over who the legitimate party officers are. At the hearing, the Chuck Baldwin faction argued that its state convention on June 28 was legitimately called, and the Alan Keyes faction of the party did not seem to contest that point. The case was dismissed without prejudice, which means that the substantive issues have not yet been addressed. Here is the court website. Click on the link. Then choose the “Department” option, and enter Department 31 and the date 08/26/2008. Click “search”. There will be a court web page link to the decision near the bottom of the screen.
I can’t wait to hear Alan proclaim victory (yawn).
He can now be free to get his 0.8% of the vote in November without blaming anyone but his own self.
0.8% is really high for a person who’s likely to be on only 3-4 ballots.
good for Keyes, at least he doesn’t make bones about being THEOCRATIC like Baldwin does.
.8% would be over 800,000 votes: I can’t imagine Keyes doing that in just Colorado and California. Maybe .8% in a state, but not nationwide.
0.008% is much more likely.
Forget 800,000 votes… he’ll be lucky to get 50,000. As of today(8/26/08), he’s got ballot access in California, Colorado and Florida. While he’ll get maybe 35,000 votes in California, as he’s running on the locally known American Independent line, it’s likely that the Constitution Party will overshadow him in CO & FL, leaving him with very few votes in those states, probably under 15,000 between the 2. When the dust settles on November 5th, Keyes will have continued his flawless losing streak.
Presumably Kerwin meant 0.8% in California – but frankly I doubt he’ll get anywhere near that. Peroutka got 0.2% last time
Should’nt they decide who the official leaders of a party are before they decide in favor of one over another. Also it appears that the court and the Keyes faction did not dispute the legitimatcy of the convention called by the Baldwin faction. How can there be two legitimate conventions. At the very least CA should put both on the ballot. I know that wont happen, but it is a shame to have a party hijacked by four people.
I will vote for Keyes. Totally outdebated Obama 4 years ago. A stand up man. Either Keyes or Nader. The rest are sell outs to the masses.
Wow! This really sucks. Pretty much the end of Baldwin’s campaign.
The Florida Secretary of State’s webpage doesn’t have Keyes listed as a presidential candidate yet. It is not necessarily easy to persuade 27 Florida registered voters to change their registration to “America’s Independent Party” and agree to be candidates for presidential elector.
I’ve heard that the real AIP people are working to get Baldwin write-in access in California. If you are in California, write Baldwin in.
Alan Keyes is in bed with the Neo-cons and wants more wars. He ran before to take votes away from Pat Buchanan. He was good friends and roommates with William Crystal, who is a top neocon.
Chuck Baldwin will be a certified write in candidate in California.
Details on how to write him in as a candidate will shortly be found at the site linked above.
Alan Keyes is a neo-con piece of trash. Neo-cons have done more harm to this country than any other group in our nation’s history. It’s about time we start putting this neo-cons in jail for treason – after a fair trial of course.
That would be Kristol, not Crystal.
If Baldwin is a write-in and Keyes is on the ballot, the AIPers should work extra hard to get Baldwin more votes as a write-in than Keyes as a ballot candidate. This although it would not deter Keyes in the future it would be poetic justice.
I’m pretty sure the .8% mentioned in relation to Keyes from from a recent nationwide poll where he was listed as a choice among others.
I wonder if Keyes, as a known neocon and Old Religious Right, will pick up disaffected Republican voters?
Alan Keyes will more than outpoll Baldwin. With California and Florida, other states will follow. How many will want to stay with Baldwin? Will they join Keyes? There were states at the convention that were won by Keyes, not Baldwin. Even now the phone calls and e-mails are being made. Because of Howard Phillips and company, many people are seeing the wreckage the Constitution Party has become. A vest pocket party that Phillips only uses every four years to try to prove he is politically relevant. Let’s get those petitions signed and get Keyes on the ballot in more states for a conservative, constitutional president!!
“Other states will follow”
By Richard’s chart, there are only 10 more states that can still be petitioned for access, and unless Keyes has already started this, it’s not going to happen, and I wouldn’t bet on flipping many CP affiliates for a 3-state candidate.
Alan Keyes is a joke. He’s only running so he can pay off his past debts.
If California followed its constitution, Don Grundmann would be the AIP candidate.
Can somebody ask Keyes before I do on his weekly call in (where about 5 people are on the line) how he spent the $330,000 donated to him so far?
He’s back in the red and he is looking a bit more chubby.
This is a MAJOR blow to the CP.
Once again, all of these bitter, anti-Keyes comments appear racist to me. If that is not the case, then why are the statements not made in a civil manner?
Phil,
The comments aren’t racist. I’m a fellow Nader supporter and the farthest thing from a CP fan, but Keyes is a neocon candidate and the attacks made on him on this site reflect their opinion of his politics, not the color of his skin.
I have supported Alan Keyes many times before but as a result of his attack upon the AIP and the CP he has ” gone to the dark side;” i.e.; he, as with his California supporters, is totally corrupt. Racism has nothing to do with it.
Alan Keyes just destroyed the only legitimate pro-life candidate in the race, by underhanded tactics. I wonder how much John McCain is paying him?
California only cast 10.15% of the national presidential vote in 2004. Baldwin supporters shouldn’t be so gloomy. Nader had a fairly respectable showing in 2004 and he wasn’t on the ballot in California.
To be fair though, Richard, Nader would have done significantly better had he been on the CA ballot, as 25% of his votes typically come from CA.
He got over 20,000 votes as a write-in, it’s very likely he would have gotten at least 100,000 if he’d been on the ballot.
IMHO, it is clearly now time for the Baldwin AIP to immediately begin work on establishing the “Constitution Party of California”. Purchase the voter registration list for the AIP and mail them all the info on the “new” (name change) party, and strategy for petitioning for 2012 ballot access.
Furthermore, this should be a wake-up call to the IAP (Nevada), USTP (Michigan), Nebraska Party, and Concerned Citizens Party (CT), among others, to now follow suit and establish state Constitution Parties which pledge affiliation to the national CP in their individual bylaws.
Once again, all of these bitter, anti-Keyes comments appear racist to me. If that is not the case, then why are the statements not made in a civil manner?
He stole ballot access in the biggest state from the Constitution Party candidate. Anyone who supports the Constitution Party is obviously going to hate Keyes’ larcenous little guts regardless of his ancestry.
Jeff Becker (post #31)- I agree with you 100%! Time to either establish a truly national party or expect this sort of thing to be repeated in the future.
This has nothing to do with racism. I oppose any sore loser’s attempts to poach ballot lines from a party whose nomination he or she did not win.
The reasoning that Keyes won California and should therefore be on their ballot line does not hold water. It’s something for nothing. If state parties want the right to participate in the national nominating process, they need to take the responsibility to accept the outcome of the process. There is no purpose in having a convention if the results will be nullified by state parties who did not vote for the winner in their primaries and caucuses.
Imagine if the state Democratic and Republican parties placed the winners of their primaries and caucuses on the ballot. Obama would be on the ballot in barely enough states to have a chance at winning the Electoral College. In the very likely event that he didn’t run the table in these states, the election would be thrown into the House of Representatives. Clinton could very well end up with more Electoral Votes than Obama!
State-by-state matchups would include:
AZ, CA, FL, OH, PA, NY, TX: Clinton vs. McCain
AR, TN: Clinton vs. Huckabeee
MA, NV: Clinton vs. Romney
IL, NC, VA, WI: Obama vs. McCain
ME, MN, ND, UT: Obama vs. Romney
AL, GA, IA, LA, NE: Obama vs. Huckabee
I think that we can all see how silly this is.
Tom,
“…to poach ballot lines…” Excellent choice of words.
Add to your list WV: Clinton vs. Huckabee
RE my post #31: a wake-up call also to the Alaskan Independence Party which unfortunately has the same initials as California’s AIP.
“Tom,
“…to poach ballot lines…†Excellent choice of words.”
Thanks, Jeff. When I looked at the primary results again, I realized that Obama would NOT be enough state ballot lines to win the Electoral College! It would be McCain vs. Clinton in the debates.
Keyes is a serious windbag and terrible debater, can’t stand that douche.
NewFederalist Says:
August 26th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Wow! This really sucks. Pretty much the end of Baldwin’s campaign.
That is silly. I am a Californian and a former AIP state chairman (NONE of the former chairmen or leaders supported the hijackers by the way)and am more distressed than you can imagine especially to lose on procedural issues, but to say that is “pretty much the end of the Baldwin Campaign” is ridiculous. Did you think we were planning to spend two months campaigning in California.
Gee, I never realized that any of you ever considered my native state so important.
“WE” many, (I will repeat ‘many’) original “AIP” loyalists, throughout the state of California,as regular steadfast AIPer’s or, county central committee members, or, State Executive members and State delegates, ARE A MAJORITY , in mindset, NOT to ever support Alan Keyes or, ANY of his henchmen, ever again.
KEYES and his neo-con henchmen have ‘burned their bridges’ with the vast AIPer’s and ‘constitutionally minded’ allies and the many ‘anti-illegal immigration groups’ across California and the country ,because of this recent underhandedness.
“WE” and our allies are NOT mere ‘push-overs’.
We have ‘just begun to fight’. This unfortunate set of circumstances has awaken a ‘sleeping giant’.
All the hard work over the many years,since 1967, in founding this AIP and maintaining it, will NOT be in vain. I will repeat what Ballot Access News reporter Richard Winger said recently,
“However, the American Independent Party “activists” who brought the lawsuit are free to bring a NEW lawsuit, over WHO the legitimate party officers are”.
The ONLY TEMPORARY VICTORY the Keyes henchmen won was..that Judge Kenny said that the Chuck Baldwin faction of the AIP should have filed the lawsuit sooner and that they should of served Alan Keyes as “an indispensible party”…therefore NOW putting Keyes on the California ballot.
As for WHO the legitimate AIP state leaders are…
“it ain’t over till the fat lady sings”!I can assure you that the dust has NOT settled on this one.The price of protecting the true AIP is eternal vigilance!
-Larry Breazeale, Msgt. (ret.)
USAF, Nat. Chrm. National
Veterans Coalition…
http://www.nvets.org
Michael Peroutka (Constitution Party presidential nominee in the last election) received 18.55% of his November 2004 votes from California.
California supporters of the Constitution Party celebrate the Baldwin/Castle ticket: “Chuck Baldwin is a fantastic candidate who stands for the greatest future for our nation and the solution of our greatest problems. Chuck Baldwin will solve the problems which Obama and McCain fear to address. He gives straight talk and will bring real change and hope.”
Both Chuck Baldwin and Darrell Castle will be official write in candidates in California. This process is officially certified with the California Secretary of State, and includes a full slate of Electoral College electors. Details on how to cast your write in vote for Chuck Baldwin on your ballot, in an official fashion, will be on this webpage soon. (click on link above)
Ralph Nader actually drew 20,714 votes in California in 2004, and we plan to surpass that amount with a vigorous and active write in campaign.
I would not be surprised if Chuck Balwin receives more votes as a write in candidate than Keyes will.
Gary Odom- I believe there were a substantial number of people trying to decide between Baldwin and Barr for whom this decision will tip the scales in Barr’s favor. If the point is to try and poll the most votes for a “Ron Paul-type” candidate then not being on the ballot in the three largest states is devastating. Barr is on in CA, NY and TX and Baldwin is not. That IS a big deal. Please don’t get me wrong… I like Baldwin in many ways better than Barr but it appears he won’t even make the ballot in PA so I won’t be able to vote for him anyway. Sorry but that is the way it is.
Keyes has a problem and it is lack of support. It is plain to see that Baldwin’s thin support trumps Keyes nearly zero support.
One thing about Keyes making it on the ballot – he wont have the excuse, come November, of not being on the ballot as an excuse for his 0.8% showing he will get. Keyes being on the ballot, and Baldwin getting more votes then Keyes, will shut down Keyes’ career in politics.
Jeff Becker,
The process of changing to the Constititution Party name has all ready been started in CT. Unfortunately the only way to do that is to poll 1% for a statewide candidate and it appears that Baldwin will not be on the ballot in the only statewide race this year.
Also the AK IP is not an affiliate of the CP they just ran our candidate for president in ’04 and ’08. Bob Bird was endorsed by the CP by resolution at the convention but no other AK IP candidate is actually endorsed by the CP.
” Will Says:
August 26th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
Alan Keyes just destroyed the only legitimate pro-life candidate in the race, by underhanded tactics. I wonder how much John McCain is paying him?”
Response : Keyes has been a designated destroyer of the CP since the start. His ” resignation ” from the Republican Party was a fake. The idea was that he would destroy the CP by either A) getting the nomination or B) using his contacts from attempting A) to complete his mission. Seidenberg, one of his corrupt supporters in California, was involved in the takedown of the Reform Party which was deemed to be a future potential threat to the Reps. The CP is also considered as a possible future threat to the Reps. so Seidenberg has bided his time waiting for the moment to destroy the party. Robinson is another operative with the same purpose. Republican money is their fuel. They will put up a false front to attempt to hide their origins and backing. Keyes will be assured of adequate financial support for the completion of his mission and a proper reward when the murder is completed.
The AIP/Constitution Party has another opportunity to compare who their real memnbers are in the November election in the states of California and Nevada. I have faith that the real Calif. AIP (Baldwin loyalists) will invest what is necessary to beat the spiralling AIP (Keyes loyalists). Given that investment, the real AIP can determine who has registered AIP by accident, who is voting for Baldwin, and who is voting for Keyes. If the numbers are there, the real AIP (Constitution Party) could have all of those people move to a new CP and leave the AIP (Keyes loyalists) with ballot access but only a few thousand members. Then, in future years, the AIP would lose access since they would dwindle to a few voices. I realize ballot access is difficult in that state but if you have 30,000 members, then it would only take each member getting less than 10 signatures each for access. I think that is not asking much. Nevada will also be a true test, esp if Mitt is named the VP nominee. The AIP loyal to the CP will vote for Baldwin.
To the political correctness-befuddled Phil Sawyer:
I just heard a bleeding heart of your ilk on Public Television yesterday explaining that any white person who doesn’t vote for Obama is obviously a racist. As I assume you intend to vote for a 3rd party candidate this year, congratulations: YOU’RE A RACIST TOO!
Keyes protested before the CP convention that he was not a neocon, and was not a knee-jerk interventionist. But regarding the recent Russia/Georgia conflict is there any doubt where he came down? Fear mongering about Russia right along with his neocon buddies. Can’t say I’m shocked. He wants to add Georgia to NATO and feels we need to protect Europe from the Russian Bear, but of course he is not an interventionist. What a liar. He was, is and always will be a reckless hyper-interventionist.
Keyes is a fraud. So far, he has: Embezzled money from his campaign fund(1992), moved halfway across the country to replace a newly withdrawn GOP candidate(2004),denounced both the GOP and the CP because he lost in their primary and convention, respectively, and couldn’t claim media bias(2008) and continued as a declared candidate, despite the fact that he last campaigned in 3/08. As if that weren’t bad enough, he routinely takes a holier-than-thou approach on the campaign trail. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
“There were states at the convention that were won by Keyes, not Baldwin.”
That should be singular, as in ‘state’, and that ‘state’ was CA.
Jeff Becker Says:
August 27th, 2008 at 4:13 am IMHO, it is clearly now time for the Baldwin AIP to immediately begin work on establishing the “Constitution Party of Californiaâ€. Purchase the voter registration list for the AIP and mail them all the info on the “new†(name change) party, and strategy for petitioning for 2012 ballot access.
… [snip] …
Phil Sawyer responds:
There still would be nothing to prevent the newly minted Constitution Party of California from changing its own constitution and seceding from the national party at some time in the future.
It doesn’t matter whether it would be silly for Obama not to be the Democrat nominee in California.
The California constitution requires that Clinton be the Democrat nominee. This was approved by the voters in 2004.
Alan Keyes is a globalist stooge.
The guy is out there siphoning votes from folks like Baldwin, because you would never want someone like Baldwin to get national name recognition.
Why?
Oh I dunno, maybe because the status quo is good business and people like Keyes need to learn, not only has there time passed, but they are actually a part of the system.
We, the people who love Liberty are making a stand, the R3VOLUTION! continues.
I hope Baldwin can get on the CA ballot.
I will be casting mine in FL…
You guys have done one heck of a job of limiting the options for Constitutionally minded voters here in California, by hijacking the AIP and nominating a neo-con and theocrat (Alan Keyes) as your presidential candidate. Your new platform is no better than the one behind the current Republican administration. The adoption of an interventionist foreign policy is most disturbing; in that it upholds the supremacy of the Federal Reserve to create money. Surely you could not expect an informed American citizenry to support the absurd idea of a perpetual war on “terrorism” without implementing the insidious inflation tax, a tax without representation.
Perhaps renaming the AIP to the Christian Zionist party is more appropriate. After all, the new platform is clearly beholden to internationalist bankers and lobbyists instead of the American people. With the inception of this new party, you have effectively nullified ANY new support that you could have garnered by the Ron Paul R3volution. You and your minions have hijacked the party at a most critical time, especially with the pretense that the honorable Chuck Baldwin would be our nominee. If you thought the original AIP was going nowhere, your new party will remain in the fringes of Californian 3rd party politics indefinitely if it is not restored and re-affiliated with the Constitution Party.
I would be very worried this election year if I were an incumbent of either of the two major parties, especially in states where first-termers promised to end the war. In other words, voters will punish Democrats for their crawling cowardice before Bush. The Barrs, Pauls, Baldwins, McKinneys, Keyses and Naders will make bigger gains than ever before in American third party history. Don’t salivate, Republicans: we sickened independent, Constitutionalist, moderate, and Green-leaning aren’t going to take votes away from Democrats or from you, because you didn’t have them anyway.
The American people, despite what we’ve been brainwashed to believe about ourselves, deserve exactly what we’re getting: the dapper Barack O’Clinton and the diapered John McCalley.
Wow, it is really hard to tell the white hats from the black hats on this one!
I left the Constitution Party after the majority of national CP delegates, including founder Howard Phillips, abandoned the party’s pro-life ideals and sacrificed nearly a dozen Constitution Party state affiliates to support the Nevada IAP affiliate and its ‘abortion exceptions’ chairman Chris Hansen. At that time, Nevada was strongly supported by California AIP chair and smear-meister William Shearer. An interesting subtext in the whole controversy was the significant (disproportionate?) influence of the LDS church in the national Constitution Party hierarchy and western state leadership. Ever since, the CP has been doing damage control, trying to gain back lost ground, and fronting Baldwin and Castle (genuine patriots who nevertheless failed to get behind 2004 CP presidential candidate Michael Peroutka in his pro-life stand against the compromisers at the Tampa national convention back in 2006. (for the ‘official’ CP spin on the convention see Chairman Clymer’s article at http://www.constitutionparty.com/news.php?aid=283. The other side is presented by John Lofton at http://www.theamericanview.com/index.php?id=635)
Now it seems that the AIP takeover by the Alan Keyes faction was engineered at least in part by Ed Noonan, a long-time associate of Shearer, and yet another member of the Church of the Latter Day Saints.
But despite the LDS church position in support of limited abortion, the ‘new’ AIP declares a no-exceptions position in its party platform, and the new website (http://www.aipca.org/) is solidly conservative and theonomic, in marked contrast to Shearer’s libertarian orientation.
So what is really happening in California? Is God doing a good work there? Or are we just witnessing the destruction of another state third-party threat to the Republicrat duopoly?
“I’ve heard that the real AIP people are working to get Baldwin write-in access in California. If you are in California, write Baldwin in.”
That’s exactly what I did. I talk to people like myself who want to leave the Republican Party and join the ranks of the Constitution Party but the hijack ruined that for us. So now we stay Republicans until the CP can get on the ballot here in California and just write in Constitution Party candidates. We aren’t Mormon and want to be associated with a national CP in all 50 states growing in numbers and political power. All this splintering and bickering is self-defeating. CP all day in every state should be the goal.