Arizona Green Party Continues to Suffer from Insincere Candidates

Posted on by April 15, 2026

According to this story, the Arizona Green Party this year is again suffering from insincere candidates running in its primaries. This is an old problem for the Arizona Green Party. It shows once again that small qualified parties ought to have the ability to nominate by convention.

Comments

Arizona Green Party Continues to Suffer from Insincere Candidates — 68 Comments

  1. The major parties have insincere candidates, too. A lot of Republicans who now support the war in Iraq ran against military involvement in the Middle East. At least one Democrat in California was elected on a platform opposing sexual harassment.

  4. There would be no insincere candidates if there are no candidates. I propose a system of voting by party, with the winning party appointing officeholders that can be replaced or swapped out by the party at will as many times as they wish until the next year’s election.

  5. So Winger actually does support different rules for different parties after denying it in the past.

  7. Why shouldn’t large parties be able to nominate by convention as well? It’s their endorsement; they should be able to decide how they arrive at it, shouldn’t they? If it’s a ballot spot thanks to them being a recognized party, shouldn’t they decide how they decide who to give that spot to?

  8. There is no more need for local and state or any other kind of candidate’s anymore. His Royal Highness Emperor Trump will just run everything from golden toilets in his ballroom and Mar A Lago by posting to truth social on his phone with a mandate from heaven. Thanks for your attention to this matter. And by matter I mean fecal matter in the toilet bowl. As you can plainly see, I ate at McDonald’s. President DJT.

  10. The pope is “Catholic,” but not Christian. He’s a Marxist Communist. They don’t actually believe in God.

    But they do infiltrate every type of institution, pretending to be anything and everything in order to gradually achieve total control of everyone and everything in the world. They use every kind of ideology, religion, institution, communication medium, etc to twist everyone’s perception of reality.

    For example, the pope says the Bible doesn’t approve of war under any circumstances, even though there are many passages where it plainly does. The same is true of his insistence that countries must accept unlimited numbers of unvetted migrants, among other things.

    The Catholic Church is particularly well suited for communist infiltration because the pope is considered infallible, so he can tell Catholics what the Bible teaches and many of them can believe what he says even when it contradicts what it actually says.

    Trump is not Catholic, so he can only be Pope if he converts. JD Vance is Catholic, so he’s theoretically eligible, but he would have to get divorced and become a priest first.

  11. “Trump is the only true pope” is accidentally correct, while attempting and failing at satire.

    The Bible says that Jesus will rule from a golden throne in the new Kingdom of Heaven after the apocalypse. The apocalypse is now.

    And Trump has come very close to coming out as the second coming of Jesus this week. Rejoice, He has returned!

    The pope holds the throne of Jesus in between Jesus coming and going. Therefore, now that Jesus is back in the form of Donald Trump, there’s no more need for the pope. Daddy is back, and he’s taking off his belt!

    The “no kings” protesters are obviously against Jesus, because Jesus is King. And Trump is Jesus. QED.

  12. Lol, I have always been a supporter of different rules for major parties and minor parties. When I was in college in 1965 I wrote a proposed bill in the California legislature to let big qualified parties nominate by primary, and wmall qualified parties nominate by convention. My bill was introduced in both houses of the California legislature. SB 127 in the Senate and AB 137 in the Assembly. The leading expert on election administration at the time, Dr. Joseph P. Harris, had recommended that idea in 1951 in his book for the National Municipal League, “A Model Direct Primary System”. My activism has brought that idea into reality in Colorado, Georgia, Nevada, South Dakota, and Wyoming. Unfortunately it hasn’t happened yet in California, my home state.

  15. Can anything be done about an insincere pope who pretends to lead the world’s largest Christian denomination when he’s actually a godless communist?

  16. Just wondering,

    Sure. You could put Trump in charge of picking the next pope. He always picks the best people.

  17. HOW MANY *Peace* candidates are devil WAR mongers ???

    see the serial killer monster in the Oval Office

  18. In order to have a true lasting peace, sometimes war is the only recourse.

  19. A judge cannot determine a candidate’s sincerity. A judge *can* determine if she has the requisite number of valid signatures for her to get on the ballot.

  20. A plaintiff proved that David Redkey did not have enough signatures to get on the ballot for the Green Party primary in AZ-01, so yesterday Redkey withdrew from the race before being removed from the ballot by a judge. Today Redkey is a write-in candidate for Congress in the Green Party primary in AZ-03.

  22. Well, I am not a sham. The LD4 Democratic Chair Patricia VanMaanen strung me along, and she acted as gatekeeper for Donorcrats. That was February 22nd, I believe. So, I switched to 💚 around February 25th, 2026. I used my signatures because I promised everyone who signed that I would turn them in. I was challenged on the last day of challenges and the DNC fucked up the challenge on a number of technical issues that I pointed out (see-McAdams v. Redkey, CV2026-014423). We were gonna have a hearing but I believed the Zionist, AIPAC Puppet Yassamin Ansari was more vulnerable. The DNC doesn’t like Foundation Economics or the idea of taxing the ultra wealthy is deflationary since it reduces the money supply on those who actually set the prices, the wealthy. Also, being anti-Zionist from a scientific, logical position didn’t win me any DNC friends (if the Ashkenazi entered Europe in 63-53 BCE, and are semitic and they are not significantly European, that would REQUIRE over 2000 years of inbreeding). So, yeah.

  23. …in other words, stay in a highly competitive CD1 or go into CD3, since my TikTok has videos about me being living out of hotels along Van Buren, in CD3 and going to David Crockett Elementary School (part of their G.O.A.L Program for Gifted students). It was about going back to stomping grounds.

  24. So, Zionist Yassamin Ansari (AZ-03) has accepted over $800,000 in donations from Israel while the next highest Schweikert (AZ-01) has dropped out to run for Governor. So, I got the voting info for all the CD3 voters from the AZ SOS office (D, R, G, etc). So, yeah.

  28. Too many retards is right. The green pukes showed up with their communism and antisemitism. Someone needs to flush this toilet.

  29. David Redkey is indeed antisemitic. Anyone who thinks Yassamin Ansari, who is Iranian-American, is either going to be beaten—there’s no Republican on the ballot in the primary—is a moron. If the Green Party promotes this schmuck as its candidate, then it is a worthless piece of shit. Most Green Party voters will vote for Ansari anyway. Redkey is a groyper follower of Nick Fuentes, just dumber than most.

  30. It sounds like he could definitely make a serious play for the key nazi skinhead and KKK demographic.

  31. That might be challenging as a write in, given the high rates of illiteracy among the hardcore racists, especially the youth.

  35. I can’t tell if Redkey is more of a communist or more of a Nazi. So, yeah.

  36. In addition to the Soylent Greens, Redkey is proudly endorsed by the Retard Party.

  39. Minor parties always attract crackpot candidates. The core dynamic is one of adverse selection — the structural features of third parties in America systematically filter out mainstream talent and filter in unconventional figures.

    Serious, ambitious politicians rationally join major parties because that’s where governing power lies. The people willing to run under a minor party banner are, almost by definition, those who prioritize ideology, ego, or protest over winning — which selects for true believers and eccentrics.

    Major parties have automatic ballot access. Minor parties often require signature drives and legal battles just to appear on the ballot. This grueling process weeds out casual candidates but attracts obsessive ones — people with a consuming cause, which can shade into zealotry or crankishness.

    The major parties have donors, consultants, party officials, and primary electorates that quietly screen out embarrassing candidates. Minor parties lack this vetting apparatus entirely. Anyone who wants the nomination can often simply have it.

    A marginal candidate who would be ignored in a Democratic or Republican primary for Congress or even the state legislature can be the Libertarian or Green presidential nominee — a genuinely attractive proposition for people with outsized self-regard.

    Minor parties often form precisely around a rigid ideological commitment (hard libertarianism, socialism, etc.), which creates internal cultures that reward purity over pragmatism — itself a magnet for absolutist or conspiratorial thinking.

    Libertarians, Greens, and all the other minor parties will always attract people, like the one mentioned in earlier comments, who are essentially crackpots.

  41. “Poli sci” is itself junk science, even though the professor isn’t wrong in this case.

  42. In the mid 1990s, a coalition of eight minor parties in Colorado worked with Richard Winger from Ballot Access News in lobbying the state legislature for two bills: one to reduce petition signatures for independents; the other for minor party nomination by assembly. Arizona needs a Coalition for Fair and Open Elections now to lobby for ballot access reform.

  43. My comment about “sham candidates” in Arizona was in reference to the history of Republicans running stealth campaigns on the Green Party ballot line and recruiting other insincere candidates to occupy the Green Party ballot.

    The Arizona Green Party will hold an endorsement meeting to vote on supporting or opposing candidates who are running on the party’s ballot line.

    The Green Party of Arizona itself cannot control who files to run on the party’s ballot line.

  45. The first thing a new member of Congress or the state legislature must do is vote for the leader of the body to which he or she is elected. If a fringe party candidate like the ones commenting here were, by some incredible fluke, elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, he would have to decide if he would vote for a Republican or a Democrat as speaker and which party he would sit with on committees and even the chamber because there is one aisle.

    We currently and recently have had independent legislators who sit with one side or the other. Yet in the view of these crackpots running as fringe party candidates, both major parties are equally bad. The overwhelming majority of Americans see a difference between Republicans and Democrats, but these crackpots, like Richard Winger, do not perceive any difference. That alone disqualifies them from serious consideration by nearly all voters. They have airy-fairy ideas on how to change the electoral process that will never happen, but they refuse to deal with political realities, and at best come across as well-meaning lunatics who the average voter sensibly pays no attention to.

  46. Pro-Tip:
    Palestinians are semitic.
    The Lebanonese are semitic.
    Israel’s persecution of Palestinians and war on Lebanon is antisemitic.

  47. @Poli Sci Professor

    For someone relying upon fallacious reasoning, logic wasn’t part of your discussion.

    So, applying Hitchens Razor, since you offered no evidence, I can safely dismiss your position.

  48. @H.R. Pufnstuf

    Remember, anyone who supports antisemitic behavior of Israel is antisemitic.
    Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.
    Judenhass is the hatred of Jews.
    Antisemitism is hatred of the people of the Levant, which includes Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey, prior to the illegal colony of Israel.
    But morons rely upon reductio ad Hitlerum…because they are morons.

  49. Actually, a better term is the weaponization of antisemitism, the tool of the Zionist. It is a variation of the ad hominem by claiming any criticism of the Israel is a form of Judenhass. It’s a way to silence criticism. In reality, to say antisemitism only applies to people who practice Judaism is a form of erasure, even more insidious than Southern Democrats arguing Black people were 3/5th a person under Three-Fifths Compromise of 1787.

  50. Redkey, the voters will flush you down the toilet, which is where you and your butt-ugly face belong. Drop dead, you subhuman douchebag piece of excrement.

  52. Before the 3/5 compromise, Southern Democrats argued for counting negroes as whole persons in the census, and anti-slavery northerners argued for counting them not at all.

  53. @Pig Farmer,
    The northern people didn’t want to give more power to people who own slaves. That’s why the Compromise came about.
    If the Slaves counted as one person, the South would have had way more power, meaning the Civil War may never had happen and black people would still be slaves.

  54. @Rex and Pauline

    Arguing that Palestinians need to be free and hatred of Palestinians is anti-semitic is hateful?
    Semite means people of the Levant, like Palestinians.
    Anti means “,against”
    Anti-semitic thus meanshatredof the people of the Levant…like Palestinians.

  55. Ranting about Semites proves that you are an ass who would be an embarrassment to any political party. Tell us more about your views about Semites. How did you come to obsess about this, you lowlife loser?

  56. Or just admit that you hate Jews, Redkey, if that’s something a simpleton like you finds simpler.

  57. As a Jewish psychiatrist, I can diagnose Redkey as a malignant narcissist with sociopathic tendencies and borderline psychotic disorder. His obsession with the congresswoman’s contributors indicates he is a danger to others and requires involuntary confinement to a mental hospital for the criminally insane. I recommend that the Green Party find a psychologically healthy candidate to run against him in their CD3 primary.

  59. I will vote to actively oppose William Pounds and David Redkey at the Arizona Green Party endorsement meeting. They are unfit to be candidates for any office.

  63. Nobody cares. People see a Green candidate on the ballot, they see a communist even if the Green is really a patriotic MAGA.

  64. I would quibble with Pete’s choice of words, but his general position is correct. When voters select a Green Party candidate, they are expressing a *policy preference* regardless of any particular individual candidate. Thus, even an “insincere,” “sham,” or morally dubious candidate in effect serves the party’s broader message.

    Gary Swing and the party leadership may oppose a particular candidate, but nearly all voters will be unaware of the party’s opposition. An ostensible Green Party candidate will garner votes, perhaps enough to swing the election for governor of Arizona from Democratic Gov. Hobbs to her Republican opponent. Whether the Green Party candidate is “sincere” or not is irrelevant. A “spoiler” third-party candidate can swing an election (I assume Gary has selected his own surname, which proves my point); his or her views or individual character make no difference when voters make their choices on Election Day.

  65. From a strictly numerical standpoint, my academic colleague is right: In a close race, any third-party candidate can draw votes away from a major-party candidate with similar voters, so whether the Green Party nominee is ideologically pure on the one hand or misaligned or even “insincere” on the other hand, it doesn’t change the basic spoiler potential.

    That’s why Democrats are concerned about someone like Risa Lombardo in a race involving Katie Hobbs: the effect (vote splitting) can occur regardless of the Green Party candidate’s authenticity.

    Why Greens still care who their candidate is that even though the math is the same, the meaning of those votes is very different depending on the candidate. For the Green Party, the ballot line isn’t just a vehicle—it’s a signal of policy positions and a way to build long-term credibility

    If a candidate doesn’t reflect those values, then votes cast for that line no longer represent what the party stands for. The party risks becoming a label others can appropriate.

    There’s a difference between:
    A voter choosing a Green candidate because they support Green policies
    A voter choosing a Green candidate who doesn’t actually hold those policies

    In both cases, the effect on the election might be similar, but:
    In the first case, it’s genuine political expression
    In the second, it’s arguably misleading or distorted representation

    Minor parties depend heavily on trust in their label and consistency across elections.

    If voters start to think, “I don’t really know what a Green candidate stands for anymore,” then the party risks losing its core supporters and becoming irrelevant except as a tactical tool for others.

  66. There’s also a structural issue: If outside actors can successfully place candidates on your line, it suggests the party doesn’t control its own nominations. That’s a problem for any political organization, regardless of ideology.

    So what does it matter?

    You can think of it this way:

    Short-term (election outcome): It may not matter much because any Green candidate could draw votes.

    Long-term (party identity and legitimacy):It matters a great deal—because the party’s meaning depends on who represents it.

    It’s similar to a brand name: If any product can be sold under the label, the label loses meaning even if sales numbers (votes) look similar in the short run.

    The bottom line, Political Science Professor, is that you’re correct about the mechanics of vote splitting: they don’t depend on candidate sincerity.

    But for the Green Party, the issue isn’t just how many votes are cast, it’s what those votes actually represent and whether the party still controls that meaning.

  67. “The northern people didn’t want to give more power to people who own slaves. That’s why the Compromise came about.”

    Many of them also didn’t want negroes in the country at all, regardless of slave or free.

    “If the Slaves counted as one person, the South would have had way more power, meaning the Civil War may never had happen and black people would still be slaves.”

    The first part is correct. The second is absurd. Aside from civil war being a misnomer – the South had zero interest in governing the north; it was no more a civil war than the American Revolution was – it’s completely ridiculous to think we’d still have legal chattel slavery today if not for that war.

    In the real world, every country in the Americas abolished the practice during the 19th century, and the only other nation where violence was involved in that abolition was Haiti, where the entire White population was massacred in a slave rebellion and which has been a basket case ever since.

    All the other American nations ended it peacefully with compensation for loss of previously legal property. There’s no reason to believe that wouldn’t have worked in the USA and or CSA. Brazil was the last nation in the western hemisphere to abolish legal chattel slavery, in 1898.

    Had Southern secession been successful, as it ought to have been under the US Constitution, European markets for Southern cotton and other products would have forced abolition within a few short years. As it was, those same European nations refused to intervene on the side of the CSA, despite their desire for low or no tariff Southern cotton and other products, because they disapproved of the practice by that point.

  68. From what I’ve read, Genetic research shows that Jews are Semitic. Arabs are also Semitic.

    As many or more of the Jews in Israel are descended from Jews who lived throughout the Muslim world during the diaspora as are descended from European (Ashkenazi) Jews, or are of mixed heritage. There was also a significant Jewish presence in the Levant throughout the Jewish diaspora.

    More significantly, a large majority of Jews in Israel now were born right there in Israel.

    It is, if anything, less accurate to call Israel a settler colony or whatever term was used above than it is to call the US, Canada, Australia, etc. in the 21st century settler colonies.

    I likewise wonder why Mr. Redkey is so concerned with mideast matters.

    If it’s because the United States government sends foreign aid – incidentally, to more than one side there, among other parts of the world – I’d suggest a total cessation of all US government foreign aid and military intervention in all foreign affairs, aside from Congressionally declared wars, and repeal of all laws which preclude individual US citizens or groups thereof from interfering in foreign conflicts in any way they wish, up to and including joining foreign military forces or paying others to do so, on any side they wish (other than enemies of the USA in legally declared wars), as long as they don’t compel anyone who is unwilling to join or aid them in doing so.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.