Filing for major party presidential primaries in Texas closed on December 9. This news story mentions the seven candidates who qualified for the Republican ballot: Rocky De La Fuente, Bob Ely, Zoltan Istvan, Matthew Matern, President Donald Trump, Joe Walsh, and Bill Weld. Candidates in this primary needed either a filing fee of $5,000, or 4,500 signatures.
On December 9, the New York Libertarian and Green Parties held a joint conference to say they will sue if New York state goes ahead and makes the definition of “political party” more stringent. See this story.
UPDATE: see this New York Daily News story.
Four states hold their legislative elections in the odd year before presidential election years. The Libertarian Party had legislative candidates in all four of these states in 2019 (Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Virginia), and polled the best vote it has ever received in this set of elections. It ran fifteen legislative candidates in 2019. The number of legislative candidates on the ballot in prior years: 2015 nine; 2011 twelve; 2007 twelve; 2003 five; 1999 five; 1995 five; 1991 four; 1987 one; 1983 two; 1979 eight; and 1975 six.
The 2019 Libertarian legislative candidates polled a total of 37,751 votes, the highest for any of this set of election years.
This blog post only concerns regularly-scheduled legislative elections, not special elections, which in most states can be held at almost any time.
The Libertarian Party is the only nationally-organized third party that had any legislative candidates in the regularly-scheduled 2019 elections.
Generally minor parties don’t exert much energy in these election years; there is too much distraction with the upcoming presidential election.
Mississippi elected all its state officers on November 5, 2019. Independent candidate Angela Cockerham was elected to the House, 96th district, by 4,841 votes to 3,585 for her Democratic opponent. Cockerham had been elected as a Democrat in each of the four previous elections. She is the new chair of the House Judiciary Committee.
Another state house incumbent who ran as an independent, Steve Holland, was narrowly defeated by his Democratic opponent. Holland received 2,538 and his Democratic opponent received 2,773.
America Votes 33, another in the series of election returns reference books, has just been published. It covers 2017 and 2018 elections for Governor and Congress, both primaries and general elections. The America Votes series began in 1956. Most good libraries have all the volumes. One is published every two years. America Votes 33 costs $265.
The Federal Election Commission also publishes congressional election returns, although not gubernatorial election returns. The FEC’s book for 2018 is still not in print, although it is on-line at the FEC web page.
