On September 4, a We Ask America poll was released for the Illinois gubernatorial race. The results: Republican Bruce Rauner 46%; Democrat Pat Quinn 37%; Libertarian Chad Grimm 7%; undecided 10%. If the Libertarian Party gets 5%, it will be ballot-qualified for all office. Since the vote test was set at 5% in 1931, only two parties other than the Democratic and Republican Parties have held that status: Illinois Solidarity 1986-1990 and Green 2006-2010.
What has happened in the case wherer GOP operatives were attempting to get the Libertarian kicked off the ballot? Have the Republicans dropped this like a “hot potatoe?” Libertarians need to hound the GOP candidates in public asking why they don’t think 3rd parties have a right to the ballot. If I were the Libertarian gubernatorial nominee, I would follow Rauner around and publicly harrass him constantly asking why he tried to get me off the ballot. You can’t treat this people like an annoying neighbor. They’ve got to feel the heat to the point where eventually the media will start hounding them also. If Rauner were a Democrat, the media would ignore such. But being a Republican, and media types usually don’t like Republicans, and they might join in if enough pressure is exerted. This is a battle folks. Not just a little schoolyard tussle.
Alabama Independent’s idea is a good one!
Younger readers might be curious about the Illinois Solidarity Party. In 1986, two followers of extremist Lyndon LaRouche won the Democratic party primary for lieutenant governor and secretary of state in upsets. (The theory given often is that they had less ethnic names than their mainstream opponents in low-information races.)
The party’s nominee for governor, U.S. Senator Adlai Stevenson III, did not want to be associated with them — nor did most Illinois Democrats. So Stevenson abandoned the Democratic party ticket and set up the Illinois Solidarity Party, named in part after the labor movement in then-Communist Poland headed by Lech Walensa.
Stevenson lost the election to Republican Jim Thompson, but of course the semi-official “Democratic” Solidarity line got enough votes to remain on the ballot. Like a lot of these kinds of weak/artificial third parties — Tom Golisano’s Independence Party in New York, the various Reform parties started by Ross Perot in 1992, and perhaps some of the Americans Elect parties currently — it was able to be taken over by outsiders, in this case by the NYC-based New Alliance Party’s Leonora Fulani, who made herself Solidarity’s presidential candidate in 1988.
Speaking of Americans Elect, according to the official August 26 primary results today, the fairly active Arizona branch of that party had 1,474 voters in the AE primary; the Libertarians had 6,134 voters. (There are 26,915 registered Libertarians and only 399 registered Americans Elects, so that was a good showing for the latter party.)
There will, as in 2012, be two Americans Elect candidates for Congress, both winning with write-in votes: Rebecca DeWitt, who was previously a Green Party nominee, won the Americans Elect nomination in the 7th C.D. with 4 write-in votes; and Stephen Dolgos, the party’s 2012 nominee in the 8th C.D., won the nomination again with 2 write-in votes. (A “plurality” of the votes is needed to achieve nomination.)
Joe Cobb will be the 7th C.D. Libertarian nominee for at least the third time; he and DeWitt will be competing for second place against Democratic nominee Ruben Gallego since there is no Republican candidate in the district.
In the 8th C.D., Americans Elect candidate Dolgos is assured of running second to Republican Rep. Trent Franks since they are the only two candidates. I suspect many Democrats may end up voting for Dolgos, who could achieve a substantial percentage of the vote, perhaps 25% or more.
In the 4th C.D., another write-in candidate, Chris Rike, won the Libertarian nomination with 29 votes. He will face Republican Rep. Paul Gosar and Democrat Mike Weisser.
Finally in Congressional races, another Libertarian write-in candidate, Powell Gamill, won the 9th C.D. nomination, with 52 votes for the seat held by Democratic Rep. Krysten Sinema; the Republican nominee is Wendy Rogers.
J.L. Mealer will be the Americans Elect nominee for Governor, winning the primary over write-in candidate Janelle Wood 722-38. Barry Hess will again be the Libertarian gubernatorial nominee.
Two Americans Elect candidates will be on the ballot for the Arizona State Legislature: Kelly Gneitling for State Senator in District 7 (won the primary with 7 write-in votes), where there’s no Republican candidate; and Suzie Easter for State Representative in District 22 (won with 4 write-in votes), where she’ll face 2 Democrats and 2 Republicans, one of whom each is an incumbent.
(Arizona legislative districts have one State Senator and two State Representatives, so the two running with the highest number of votes in each district are elected.)
There are several Libertarian candidates for the legislature, but apart from the Governor’s race, none of the other seven state offices have any minor party candidates.
The Green Party is no longer an official party in Arizona.
http://www.azsos.gov/election/2014/primary/Canvass.pdf
Pretenting to be the voice of the people, the Americans Elect spent millions of dollars getting on the ballots that year and then the organization’s “insiders” suddenly decided that there would be no candidates offered, and if my memory is correct (Richard Grayson or Richard Winger surely can inform us),did all they could to keep candidates off the ballots where state laws overruled them.
This is a good lesson for all of us. Any time a new party arrives on the scene, if it does not allow the common people who are members to have a voice and set the direction of which the party will go, you can pretty well bet your last dollar that it is a phoney group designed to mislead the people, or it is a doctrinnaire party where the self-annointed nabobs make the decisions rather than it’s members.
As a Independent, I’d be willing, for example, to join the CP in Alabama for the sake of 3rd party unity in this state even though I am in disagreement with much of its core party doctrine. But if I am told I must abolish my views on being FOR Social Security and Medicare, and being AGAINST Alcohol, Tobacco, and Gambling to be a member, then the insiders that obviously rule the party can take it and put it where the sun doesn’t shine.
Just as the Preamble of the Constitution begins with: “We the people…” the preamble of any 3rd party by-laws likewise should read: “We the members…”
Essentially, with the Arizona Americans Elect Party, they created — given Arizona’s write-in primary law for new party candidates — a way for any independent to get on the ballot without having to get a large number of signatures on petitions.
It’s a shame that no Arizonan ran for State Treasurer on the Americans Elect line in the primary, since now we have only one candidate, a Republican, on the ballot for that office in November.
An acquaintance who’d run as a Green a couple of times filed as a write-in candidate in the otherwise empty Democratic primary for Treasurer, but since the law requires that established party write-in candidates garner the same number of votes as they would have needed for petitions, there was no chance of him being nominated as a Democrat. He could have been nominated with just his own write-in vote as an Americans Elect Party candidate.
Anyway, the party will disappear after the election, in Arizona and wherever else it is on the ballot. But it was an example of very easy ballot access, and I’m sorry that Ballot Access News doesn’t think the Americans Elect Party is worthy of any posts of its own.