The Sooner State Party, a party organized in just the state of Oklahoma, is hoping to qualify for party status this year. It needs 34,599 valid signatures by February 28. If it qualifies, it will be the first time that any third party that is not nationally organized will have been on the Oklahoma ballot.
The only other ballot-qualified third parties in Oklahoma history (since statehood in 1907) have been Prohibition, Socialist, Progressive, Farmer-Labor, American, Libertarian, Reform, and Americans Elect. Also the New Alliance Party in 1988 had presidential ballot status but not ballot access for other offices.
Third parties that were qualified in many states, but never qualified in Oklahoma, in the last fifty years, have been Constitution, Green, Natural Law, and No Labels. The reason Oklahoma has had so few minor parties has been its severe ballot access laws.
The Sooner State Party is centrist. Here is a news story about the party. Thanks to Independent Political Report for the link.
If the party fails to obtain enough valid signatures by the February 28 deadline, it is possible it could win a lawsuit against the early petition deadline. Oklahoma is in the Tenth Circuit. The Tenth Circuit said in 1988 in Rainbow Coalition v Oklahoma State Election Board that the old May 31 petition deadline is constitutional. However, the Tenth Circuit also suggested in Populist Party v Herschler, another 1988 case, that the Wyoming petition deadline of June 1 is likely unconstitutional. Oklahoma would defend its February 28 deadline by saying that the deadline is needed to give new parties their own primary. However, courts have said in decisions from Arkansas, Ohio, Tennessee, Nebraska, South Dakota, Idaho, and Nevada that early deadlines for new parties cannot be justified by any so-called state interest in putting new parties in primaries. Instead the states can provide that new parties nominate by convention, thus eliminating the need for an early petition deadline.
Centrist, or communist?
Central communist plan.
There has been some confused reporting in local media on this effort, putting forth the idea that voters affiliated as independent could be candidates of the new party which is not the case. If Sooner State does get the required signatures they may open their primaries to unaffiliated voters, but there would only be a short window of time between the party being announced as officially recognized and the beginning of the blackout period for party registration changes on April 1st. As I recall, when the OKLP was recognized in 2016 that time period was about 11 days. Any potential Sooner State candidate who misses that window will not be able to run under the new party’s banner.
A centrist party, comparatively lacking in strong ideological stances, with a narrow window for required but not widely understood administrative steps to be a candidate and not possessing a significant base of voter support is likely to have very view candidates. Alternative parties in Oklahoma do not often have primaries and those that do occur are usually manufactured by the party as a means of promotion or to obtain legal standing, the OKLP has done this several times since the 90s. To my knowledge the only genuinely contested alternative party primary since at least 1972 was the 2018 Libertarian gubernatorial primary. Independent candidates do not face primaries in Oklahoma, they go directly to the general election ballot.
There have also been some concerns brought up about the main organizer behind this Sooner State Party effort. I don’t know anything first-hand about that but if a person wanted to run a grift it’s a plausible way to go about it. The number of signatures that supposedly has been collected is higher than I would think based on what little I’ve heard about petitioning activity and if accurate still lower than what would make success more likely than not since there is no national organization to back a final push. We’ll see what happens but I would not be shocked if come the end of March we’re left wondering about this deal.
They have an ideological stance which they falsely portray as centrist as a form of propaganda. The notion that it’s centrist is not backed up by election results. They simply declared their views to be at the center.
Similar to No Lube, American Select, etc.