Mainstream media in New England is giving considerable publicity to Lincoln Chaffee’s independent candidacy for Rhode Island Governor in 2010. Here is an article from the Boston Globe about Chaffee, dated July 19. Also on July 31, newspapers reported that campaign spending reports show that he raised $171,000 in the last three months and spent $38,000.
Democrats expected to seek the Rhode Island Governorship in 2010 include the Attorney General, Patrick Lynch, who hasn’t reported his campaign receipts yet; and the State Treasurer, Frank Caprio, who reported receipts of $211,000, which gives him a campaign warchest of $1,400,000. It is not yet clear which Republicans will run.
It is conceivable that Chaffee (who was a Republican U.S. Senator between 1999 and 2007) will be the gubernatorial candidate of the Moderate Party in 2010, although none of the recent publicity talks about that idea. If he were the nominee of a qualified political party, he would have a better position on the November ballot than if he were an independent candidate. The Moderate Party is not ballot-qualified yet, but expects to be soon.
Chaffee is a great guy, and I hope he decides to run on
the Moderate Party ticket if it achieves ballot access in RI. It would put the Moderate Party on the map, heighten its resolve to make the ballot in California and other places, and maybe launch it as the vehicle to
prove that Perot was right that the oxygen for a powerful new third-party movement lies not at the left or right but at the center. Independence Party people in NY, MN, and elsewhere are probably watching this closely.
I wonder if the leaders of the Independence Party of America (aka Frank Mckay) will try to get the Moderate Party to be the Rhode Island state affiliate.
Byron Sanford: after getting that $500 check back from California’s John [Bible Thumper] Bambey, for Frank’s 2008 position as national Reform Party USA GEO ?????
[No, I am not making this up …………]
———– Donald Raymond Lake