Louisiana held special elections on September 30 for Insurance Commissioner and Secretary of State. This was the first time the Libertarian Party had candidates on the Louisiana ballot (for office other than president) for which the party label was printed. This is as a result of an improvement in the ballot access law for parties, passed in 2004.
In the Insurance Commissioner’s race, there were two Republicans and a Libertarian. The Libertarian polled 10.6%. One of the Republicans polled slightly more than 50% and is now elected.
In the Secretary of State’s race, with four Republicans, one Democrat, one independent, and one Libertarian in the race, the Libertarian polled 1.8%. The independent polled 3.8.%. There will be a November run-off between the top two candidates, a Republican and a Democrat.
In some ways this was an odd election to pull anything out from those results. Turnout was certainly low and I know that the Libertarian running for Secretary of State was mainly running as a paper candidate, just to make sure we had the party name on the ballot. No money was spent or raised in the campaign at all and there was a pretty big spate of candidates on the ballot, which tends to water down third party votes in particular, anyway.
S.B.A. Zaitoon, however, is also not one we can test Libertarian support from, though. I think he was also a primarily paper candidate in a 3-way race. coming out at the 10% mark is quite an accomplishment, especially since I don’t believe he had spent any money on the race either. But the two front-runners were running a very nasty, mud-filled race for the office while Zaitoon’s primary platform was simply to abolish the office as an elected office (revertint to appointed instead.) I think it is a more of a strong indicator of distaste and distruct for the two Republicans in the race moreso than acceptance for the Libertarian. Plus with the other two as Republicans and one of them actually getting enough of a majority to not force a run-off we can’t really say that even polling 10% that he was any kind of spoiler.
Maybe we’ll see something better for Libertarians in November, but I’m looking a lot more forward to some of the state races in 2007.