Dr. Eric Ostermeier here describes the minor party U.S. Senate candidates in 2020 who set new percentage records for their respective parties. His blog Smart Politics is known for its historical election returns record-keeping. Thanks to Eric Wong for the link.
William J. Hunt, Libertarian nominee for Rhode Island State House, district 68, polled 40.53% earlier this month. The vote was 2,995 for Hunt and 4,394 for his Democratic opponent.
Hunt has good name recognition in the district, because this is the fourth time in a row he has run. In 2016 he polled 38.28%; in 2018 he got 35.57%. In a special election in March 2019, he got 28.4% in a four-way race, finishing second. The district is centered on the town of Warren.
Although independents are sometimes elected to the Rhode Island legislature, no party, other than the Democratic and Republican Parties, has elected a legislator in Rhode Island since 1920.
This Jacobin article describes the 2020 Puerto Rico election for Governor legislature, and shows that in 2020, the Commonwealth moved toward a multi-party system.
This month, New Mexico voters elected Brittney Aileene Barreras as an independent to the state House of Representatives, district 12. She was the only name on the ballot, but she had a write-in opponent who was the newly-appointed Democratic incumbent, Art De La Cruz. The vote was 4,183 for Barreras, and 1,482 write-ins for De La Cruz.
Democrats had no one on the primary ballot because the earlier incumbent, Patricio Ruiloba, made a technical error on his primary petition. He couldn’t be a write-in in the Democratic primary because New Mexico does not permit write-ins in primaries. Ruiloba’s primary petitions omitted the district number. Ruiloba sued to regain his position on the primary ballot, but he lost. Since he couldn’t be re-elected anyway, except as a write-in in the November election, he resigned from the legislature and filed to run for Sheriff.
Barreras was able to qualify as an independent candidate because she had previously been registered as an independent. However, she says it was just an accident that she became a registered independent. When she filled out the voter registration form, somehow she missed seeing the blank for partisan affiliation, so she was coded as an independent by default. She says that she will switch her registration to Democratic to make it easier to run for re-election in 2022.
New Mexico did not permit independent candidates to run for any partisan office until 1977. The state was forced to pass a procedure for independent candidates after independent presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy sued the state and won. Thanks to Rick Lass for the news about Barreras.
This month, Massachusetts re-elected Susannah Whipps to the State House. She had been elected as an independent previously, and she was re-elected as an independent. Some years ago she was a Republican state legislator. She lives in Athol.
