Raymond O. Boyd is one of eight candidates seeking the Republican Party’s gubernatorial nomination. The primary is July 20. Boyd is a newcomer to politics and he has already put $2,000,000 into his campaign account. Under Georgia campaign finance laws, even if he should drop out of the race, he could only recover $250,000 of his own money back.
The Georgia Republican Party requires candidates in its primaries to sign an oath that says, “I do hereby swear or affirm my allegiance to the Republican Party.” Boyd says he won’t sign the oath. The party says he can’t run if he doesn’t sign the oath. See this story. UPDATE: on Monday, April 26, Boyd made a personal appeal to the Republican Party to let him run in its primary without signing the oath, but the party refused. See this story.
It is conceivable that Boyd will choose to run as an independent candidate for Governor. He would need 44,089 valid signatures by July 13. This earlier story about Boyd suggests that running as an independent has crossed his mind. Georgia hasn’t had an independent candidate on the ballot for Governor since 1942. Back in 1942, any independent could get on the general election ballot just by filing a declaration of candidacy and a filing fee. In 1943, Georgia started requiring petitions of 5% of the number of registered voters for independent candidates, and no independent for Governor has ever met that test. Thanks to Kyle Bennett for these links.
Seems to me loyalty oaths should have gone out of fashion after the McCarthy era ended.
It’s ironic that major parties in Texas, Alabama and Georgia are so keen on party loyalty oaths, because those three states have horrible ballot access laws for independent candidates and new parties. On the one hand the parties keep people out of running in their primaries, and on the other hand state laws in those states make it very tough for people to run outside of the two major parties. So we have a class of people in those three states who can only run for public office with great difficulty.
Perhaps slavery is NOT dead in Texas, Alabama and Georgia!
Oaths of allegiance and party loyalty trumped the public interest in the Soviet regime of Stalin and the Nazi regime of Hitler. I never thought I would see the day when that kind of political mindset would find a home in America, let alone in Georgia. What on earth is happening to our values?
#2 In Texas, the only election where political party rules apply is for the presidential preference primary, which does not elect any public officials, but rather delegates to a private convention of the party.
Only the Democratic Party has a loyalty oath, which was originally intended to prevent Lyndon Larouche from running. How should a party treat candidates like Larouche and Dennis Kucinich who were not willing to support the party’s eventual nominee, but would expect the party to support them if they were the nominee?
In the recent primary, the Democrats nominated for Congress a woman who invited voters to attend a joint victory celebration and impeach the President rally.
In another race a candidate filed as a Republican for DA, withdrew that and filed as a Democrat on the same day. His web site had the same picture and banner, with the name of the party switched after a day.
Storer v Brown was about a Democrat who wanted to run as an independent in California, and was forbidden to do so because files that the State maintains on the political beliefs of its citizens had shown a change in loyalty a few months previously. The “Brown” in that case now wants to be Governor.
California requires many more signatures to run as an independent than in Texas. For Congress it is more than 20 times as many signatures. For statewide office it is about 4 times as many even though Texas has over 2/3 the population.
And it is harder for a new party to qualify in California than Texas. In California the party has to get voters to indicate on their voter registration that they intend to participate in the nominating activities of the party well in advance of the primary. If the party fails to qualify, they then have to change their registration or be forbidden to participate in a primary of any party.
In Texas, voters simply need to actually show up for the nominating activities of the party. If they are unable to attend, they can sign a supplementary petition.
Party loyalty oaths if enforceable by state law for federal office are “qualifications” beyond those specified in the U.S. Constitution and should be held unconstitutional on their face. OTH, party loyalty oaths if enforced by state laws for state offices need to meet state constitutional provisions. Note that a person elected to office is free to switch parties or switch to independent. Federal examples are numerous and there must be state instances as well.
However, this dual standard for candidates and incumbents suggest that state laws are violations of equal protection under the 14th Amendment. Perhaps Mr. Boyd will litigate.
IMO, as a matter of principle parties should be able to require loyalty oaths, but they should not be enforceable by statute. When a candidate refuses to commit to a party’s principles, public disclosure by the party should be the only sanction. Let the voters decide how important such oaths are on primary or general election day.
California is kinder to minor parties than Texas is. California has 6 ballot-qualified parties; Texas has three.
California requires 173,000 signatures to run for statewide office as an independent, but any registered voter can sign, and 105 days are permitted to get the signatures. The deadline is in August.
Texas, by contrast, requires an independent presidential candidate in 2012 to get 80,778 signatures, from the ranks of people who are registered but who did not vote in a presidential primary or attend a party caucus. Only 65 days are permitted to get those signatures and they are due in May, easily the earliest independent presidential petition deadline of any state.
Both states are too rough on independent candidates, but I, as a Californian, have made serious efforts (unsuccessful so far) to find a sponsor for a bill in the legislature to ease the burden on independent candidates, not only this year, but many years in the past. In 1986 I stopped the legislature from changing the independent candidate petition deadline from August to July. Jim Riley, who is extremely well-informed about election law, doesn’t seem to ever do anything in Texas to improve Texas election laws.
#5: “How should a party treat candidates… who were not willing to support the party’s eventual nominee, but would expect the party to support them if they were the nominee?”
This question, in my view, hits the nail on the head. Boyd seeks the party’s nomination, so he’ll have the advantage of the party’s “brand name” on the November ballot. He wants to use the party for his own convenience, and yet he’s not willing to pledge any allegiance to the party.
Boyd should either run as an independent or find a party to which he feels some loyalty.
It should be noted that neither Georgia, Texas, nor Alabama has party registration. If they did, a citizen would in all likelihood have to be a registered party member in order to seek his party’s nomination.
We once had a gubernatorial candidate in Mississippi who, after he had won the Republican primary, said that he was really an independent, but he was running as a Republican because he liked that party’s economic ideas.
My reaction was that, if he was “really an independent,” he should have run as an independent. I voted for “none of the above” that November.
#7 In the last 10 elections for the US House of Representative there have been 27 independent candidates in Texas in 288 possible races (I omitted the special elections in 1996 and 2006, since these had different filing rules). In California during the same period it was 5 of 517. The frequency in Texas has been 9.7 times that of California.
Texas had 2 independent gubernatorial candidates as recently as 2006. California had 1 independent gubernatorial candidate as not-so-recently as 1978. Texas has had 3 independent presidential candidates in the last 5 elections, compared to 1 in California.
Richard Winger should support Proposition 14 which will dramatically reduced the number of signatures needed for independent candidates in California.
When you mentioned loyalty oaths did you have any in mind with respect to Texas other than the one that the Democrats imposed on Kucinich and Larouche?
#9: “Richard Winger should support Proposition 14 which will dramatically reduced the number of signatures needed for independent candidates in California.”
Right… he should support Prop. 14 and help destroy small parties… he should help make it even more difficult for independents and small party candidates to get elected.
The signature requirements can be lowered without screwing up the whole election process by imposing the “top two open primary.”
How does one have *allegiance* to a bunch of party hacks — with any of their extremist party hack platform planks / resolutions ???
Allegiance is connected with government regimes — going back to the old Dark Age regimes after the fall of the Roman Empire.
See the oath that new naturalized U.S.A. citizens take.
Arguably, if candidate A wins party X’s nomination for office N — whether through public primary-election voting, or by a more private method such as a convention or caucus — then that means candidate A is representative of party X in office N’s constituency (or on the level/scale of office N). Is *the* representative of party X, to some extent. (And likewise for candidate A’s views, campaigning style, etc., although perhaps to a lesser extent.)
Now — what if candidate A were running at least in part to test whether her/his views, etc. *WERE* representative of party X? (Or *still* were, or had yet become, or whatever?)
What if candidate A ran in part because, without her/him, the only other choice for the party would have been diametrically opposite candidate Z? And A would see the [s]election of Z as a clear sign that party X was no longer a party he/she could support or belong to?
What if candidate A were running to defend the party, or to rescue it, or some such?
I think it is not so difficult as all that to suggest a scenario or two where candidacy is a person’s last effort of voice before deciding between exit and loyalty, in other words. Of course, I am borrowing those words from Albert Hirschman’s classic work:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit,_Voice,_and_Loyalty
(Though I see that some folks are adding a fourth option these days: neglect. Which, in this context, sounds like it might be understandable — and related to lowered voter turnout and other kinds of “what-does-it-matter-anyway” political disengagement.)
Perhaps Mr. Boyd’s problem is the same as the problem I would have.
I swore an oath as a US Marine, and it was a serious consideration. Perhaps, given the dynamic nature of party ideology over a short period of time, Mr. Boyd is uncomfortable taking something so strong as an oath if the target of that oath was not something as immutable as the “defense of the constitution, from all enemies, foreign or domestic.”
I think, perhaps, people who would swear such an oath, do not have an appreciation of the meaning of the act. Has Mr. Boyd mentioned his specific problem with the oath?
Semper Fi,
Terry