The TIME Magazine of January 27 has this interview with Clay Mulford. Mulford was in charge of ballot access for Ross Perot. Michael Bloomberg had met with him earlier in the month, so TIME mostly asked Mulford about what Bloomberg and he had discussed.
The interview is somewhat misleading, because it says that Bloomberg would need 74,108 signatures in Texas. In reality, he would only need 43,991 if he accepted the nomination of any of the three Texas parties that wants to nominate him. Thanks to Earl Divoky for this news.
Mr. Bloomberg’s support goes beyond New York. Jon Fisher, a 35-year-old technology entrepreneur in Tiburon, Calif., said Mr. Bloomberg’s background appeals to him. “Business experience, and specifically this kind of entrepreneurial business experience, is exactly the skill set we need in a president,” said Mr. Fisher, who sold his most recent venture, Bharosa, to technology giant Oracle Corp. last year.
Mr. Fisher, a Democrat, is inviting others who have sold companies to Oracle to a meeting in Tiburon at the end of the month. The goal, Mr. Fisher said, is to recruit people willing to dedicate time and effort to a Bloomberg campaign. (Mr. Bloomberg would presumably fund his campaign himself, making fund-raising unnecessary.)
There is a risk going the party route in Texas. There is no guarantee that the party would nominate Bloomberg as its presidential candidate.
Bloomberg could also end up on the same party line with persons he doesn’t want to be associated with.
It is also illegal to sign petitions of more than one new party. So if someone signs the petition for parties A, B, and C, so that Bloomberg can get on the ballot then all signatures void. There is no restriction on someone signing a party petition, and signing a Bloomberg petition (there is a restriction to voting in a presidential primary and signing a Bloomberg petition)
Jim R,
Yeah, Ross Perot chose the Independent route in Texas in 1996 even though he was running as the Reform Party candidate. This left no residual ballot status for the party after the election.
If a voter signs for more than one party, the first signature counts and the second one doesn’t. That’s better than having none of them count!
So you have a new Texas party that supposedly wants to nominate Bloomberg. That new party actually consists of (10?s) of activists from Austin, Dallas, and Houston who will show up for a state convention to nominate someone to run for US Senator and the state court seat that the Democrats didn’t contest. So they run around getting 90,000 signatures (200% of what is required just to be sure because of the affiliation restrictions, unregistered voters, duplicates, etc.) to be qualified. Do they say that this is the petition for the Phooey Party or the petition to get Bloomberg on the ballot? Why does Bloomberg send them money? What happens if there is a falling out and the state chair decides not to submit Bloomberg’s name as the party’s presidential candidate this summer? He can’t buy the party can he?
Or does Bloomberg petition as an indepedent candidate? He may need 110,000 signatures (150% to be sure). Since it is clearer what the petition is for and there are fewer restrictions, they should be easier to get. And if there are enough signatures, Bloomberg will know he is on the ballot.
Montag, It is not clear that votes for President maintain ballot status for a party in Texas, and even then, the Reform party would have needed a statewide candidate to maintain the status in 1998.
The article isn’t misleading, actually. But there are some facts that need to be put on the table, here:
In order for Bloomberg to seek any Party’s nomination in Texas, he’d have to have filed papers with the SOS’s Elections Division between Dec. 3rd of 2007 and Jan. 2nd of 2008 which demonstrated his intentions. If he were seeking a 3rd Party’s nomination, he’d have had to also commit in writing to the State Chairman of that designated Party on the same timetable. Had that happened, I believe we’d all know about it by now.
These conditions are in place regardless of a given 3rd party’s access to a ballot line, and can’t be overcome through the Courts or by any amount of wishful thinking to the contrary.
It may also be that Mr. Bloomberg should have filed intent as an Independent by Jan. 2nd to insulate himself from challenge later. I haven’t looked closely at that part of Texas’ Election Code in quite awhile, and I’ve always been more concerned with the party approach to things anyway.
Bloomberg is stuck with either running strictly as an Independent candidate here, or not seeking to secure a spot on the Texas ballot. There is no in-between. If he wants to run, he’ll have between March 5 and May 12 to obtain 74,108 good petition signatures and then submit them to the TX-SOS by that same May 12th date. Also required at the petition deadline is disclosure of his running mate and electors, who must also personally declare themselves in writing at that time, in conjunction with the submission of the petition doc.
Them’s the facts. All else is baseless speculation.
Bloomberg hasn’t contacted Reform’s State Chair here in Texas, nor the Chair of any other non-major Texas party that I know of.
The closest thing to that occurred last summer (July) when I called Frank MacKay (IP-NY) by phone on an unrelated matter. He blindsided me with demands that RP “get on board” with his project to build a nationwide IP, effectively expecting RPUSA’s remaining State ballot lines to be his (and Bloomberg’s) for the asking. Needless to say, he went away mad and empty-handed. It doesn’t work that way, he knew better, and I reminded him of both things.
Since then, he’s aligned himself with the noisy splinter-group (headed up by Rodney Martin & John Blare)of about 8 – 10 individuals nationwide who boycott the legitimate RP, but then claim to actually be RP’s National Organization. That bunch hasn’t a prayer of gaining a ballot line anywhere, and ZERO influence over those few RP ballot lines which already exist. Not a good plan.
On the heels of that, MacKay has also foolishly sought to recruit some of the legitimate RPUSA’s state-parties away on a piecemeal basis. He’s wasting his time with such an underhanded, back-door approach, but there it is.
Bloomberg may actually make a stab at running for the highest office in the land, even though it is really getting late in the game. But from where I sit in TX, it looks like his indifference is far more real than any of the speculation about his intentions.
Also, granted; Texas’ electorate isn’t everything in Presidential politics. But even with his vast resources at the ready, Mr. Bloomberg doesn’t appear to be taking this state very seriously at all (or any other for that matter) and his money can only make up for so much. His principal Cheerleader (MacKay) isn’t being very helpful, either – what with his lurching around the country like a drunken teenager, desperately schmoozing those who’ll listen to his grand schemes, or twisting their arms if they resist.
Aside from all that, the fact that IP-Minnesota has been taken in by MacKay’s BS is very sad. They deserve better.
Charles Foster
Immediate Past Chair
Reform Party National Committee
With all due respect to Mr. Foster, who knows a great deal about the Texas election system, it is not true that any presidential candidate ever needs to file a declaration of candidacy in Texas by January 2 (except, obviously, candidates running in the March presidential primary need to file by then).
The Texas election law requiring independents and minor party members to file a declaration of candidacy by January 2 does not apply to presidential candidates. The law specifically says the declaration applies to office in “this chapter”, but the presidential procedures are in another chapter. If Texas did require such a declaration, it would be violating Anderson v Celebrezze.
No Libertarian running for president ever has filed that form by January 2, and no Libertarian nominee for president has ever had any trouble being listed on the November ballot.
Also, it is not true that an independent presidential candidate in Texas needs to have chosen a final vice-presidential candidate by May. Texas and virtually all other states let independent presidential candidate John B. Anderson use a stand-in v-p. Anderson didn’t choose his actually v-p running mate until August 27, 1980, and the states let him substitute the real nominee for the stand-in.