This month, Alaska elected two independent state representatives. Daniel Ortiz of Ketchikan was re-elected. Josiah Patkotak of Barrow won his first term.
3
This month, Maine elected four independent state representatives. Walter Riseman of Harrison; Jeffrey Evangelos of Friendship; and William Pluecker of Warren, had been elected as independents in 2018. Sophia B. Warren of Scarborough is a new state legislator.
This month, Vermont elected five independent state representatives. Four of them had been elected in 2018 as independents as well, and one of them had been elected in 2018 as a Republican.
They are: Terry Norris of Shoreham; Paul Lefebvre of Island Pond; Barbara Smith Murphy of Fairfax; Laura Sibilia of Dover; and Kelly Pajala of Londonderry. Lefebvre is the one who had been elected as a Republican in 2018.
Vermont had also elected five independent representatives in 2018.
This month, Wyoming State Representative Jim Rosco was re-elected as an independent. He had also been elected as an independent in 2018. Before that he had been a Democratic state representative. He lives in Teton County, in the northwest part of the state. In 2020 he got 52% of the vote against his Republican opponent.
In the November 3 election, New York Assemblymember Rebecca Seawright was re-elected in the 76th Assembly district, even though she was only on the ballot as the nominee of an unqualified party, the “Rise and Unite” Party. The initial election returns show her with 16,151 votes. Her only opponent received 9,734 votes on the Republican line and 3,429 on the Liberal line.
She would have preferred to be the Democratic Party nominee, but she was knocked off the Democratic primary ballot earlier this year.
This is the first time anyone has been elected to the New York legislature without the nomination of a qualified party since 1970. In 1970, incumbent John J. Walsh was re-elected even though he was only on the ballot as the nominee of the “Upper Manhattan Apartment Building Party.” Walsh had lost the Democratic primary and had then petitioned using the independent candidate procedure.