The Constitution Party National Committee holds a meeting in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, April 28-30. Among the speakers will be former Congressman Virgil Goode, Sheriff Richard Mack, Taylor Haynes (who polled 7.41% for Governor of Wyoming as a write-in candidate last year), and John McManus, President of the John Birch Society. See here.
Goode was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives 1997-2009. He was elected at various times as a Democrat, as an independent, and as a Republican. He joined the Constitution Party’s national committee on November 18, 2010.
Any word or guess on when the 2012 National Convention in Nashville will be held?
April 2012.
Goode was also a candidate in the 1994 Democratic primary for US senator, which incumbent Chuck Robb won. Goode was then a state legislator.
I’m not a member of the CP. But a 2012 ticket of Tancredo-Goode would be a “shot in the arm” for this party. Two former Congressman for President and Vice-President who have the savvy to “scare the pants off” the establishment GOP.
We have had lots of former congressman run for office on third party tickets, and the vote totals were still pretty low. Former congressman Bob Barr only received some 500,000 votes in 2008. Most voters don’t even know who their congressman are.
The CP has never gotten 500,000 votes for President so perhaps they would have something to look forward to. Don’t forget, former Congressman John Anderson running as an Independent in 1980 got some 4 million – or something close to it.
The late former Congressman John Schmitz received over 1 million votes on the American Party ticket in 1972 – despite a late start into that race and not being on the ballot in large states like Texas, Florida and New York State.
The point I was making is that former Congressmen like Tom Tancredo know how to “campaign” for office. He ran a good race for Governor in Colorado, and if he had gotten started earlier, might have won.
One of the major complaints against many 3rd party presidential candidates is they have no government experience. Being a former Congressman destroys that obstacle.
I all for Congressman Goode to run on our ticket for President at this point, but I couldn’t support Tancredo for President or Vice-President. I would like to see a Goode-Baldwin ticket though I think or a dream ticket (meaning I have no illusion of it ever happening) of a Paul-Goode ticket.
Jordon M. Greene
It was Baldwin that turned on Michael Peroutka at the lock out.
Sincerely, Mark Seidenberg
Vice Chairman, American Independent Party
Simply due to Mr. Peroutka’s association with John Lofton, I see no reason to support him. Baldwin though I support wholeheartedly. After looking at Congressman Goode’s past record on voting, I do have some issues there, but I’d need to talk with Goode to get some answers first. At this point though a Goode-Baldwin ticket sounds pretty good still.
All these US minor parties remind of an old John Derbyshire article:
http://www.johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/USPolitics/ronpaul.html
(…)
“It is a fact, a sad but a true one, that grass-roots political activism, the heart and soul of any democracy, attracts a lot of lunatics. I used to be a constituency activist for the Tory party in Kings Cross, London. Of the twenty or so people who turned up regularly to meetings, four or five were noticeably deranged (or, as an elderly fellow-Tory was wont to murmur in my ear when one of these cranks sought the meeting’s attention, “not quite sixteen annas to the rupee”). One or two were barking mad. My favorite was a gent with an Albert Einstein hairstyle and a permanent ferocious glare who, at every darn meeting, would try to advance his pet project for a law against class discrimination. (This was at a time, in the early 1980s, when laws against racial discrimination were being passed, to much controversy.)”
“If it’s like that in the Tory party, one of the Anglosphere’s oldest and solidest, at the heart of an ancient metropolis, I can imagine how things are further away from the political center. A friend of mine, a brilliant, charming, and highly civilized man I shall call X, runs a fringe political group here in the U.S. He invited me to one of the group’s annual conferences. Not sure what to expect, I asked a mutual friend, name of Y, who had attended a previous year’s conference. “Well,” said Y, “there are a dozen or so people like X, thoughtful and well-informed — people you’d be happy to hang out with. And around them buzzes this big cloud of latrine flies.” I decided not to take up X’s invitation.”
(…)
Minor parties in the US that want to escape a description similar to that provided in the second paragraph above should take the advice of a regular poster here and push for the adoption of Approval Voting and low-threshold PR wherever possible. There are about a dozen or so states that allow for amending the state constitution by initiative and referendum.
6) The CP got just under 200,000 votes for president in 2008, their highest total. If Keyes and Paul votes could have been added it would have been just under 300,000. If I remember right John Schmitz in 1972 got 1.25 million and would have gotten a lot more if it hadn’t been for ballot problems and/or campaign mistakes in Texas, Indiana, and Illinois. Texas-they would offered a line on the ballot but refused it to risk a lawsuit to get on the ballot in a number of other states. Indiana-there were two seperate groups getting signatures for Schmitz on petitions. They had the combined state total, however they were banned by state law from combining the petition totals. Illinois-they redid the petition drive for Schmitz after Governor George C. Wallace left the 1972 campaign. They didn’t get enough signatures for Schmitz. Then they found out they could have also used the Wallace signatures because they were trying to put the party on the ballot, not the candidate!!