Seventeen Democrats will appear on the March 2020 Texas Democratic presidential primary: Michael Bennet, Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Julian Castro, Rocky De La Fuente III (son), John Delaney, Tulsi Gabbard, Amy Klobuchar, Deval Patrick, Bernie Sanders, Tom Steyer, Elizabeth Warren, Robby Wells, Marianne Williamson, and Andrew Yang. Thanks to Jim Riley for this list.
On December 9, the Arizona Libertarian Party filed this cert petition in the U.S. Supreme Court in Arizona Libertarian Party v Hobbs. This is the case over ballot access for members of a small qualified party that is not in its first four years on the ballot. In 2015, the Republican majority in the Arizona legislature passed a law that singles out the Libertarian Party and makes it virtually impossible for any Libertarian to get himself or herself on the Libertarian primary ballot. The same law did not apply to the Green Party, or to any party that is in its first four years on the ballot. UPDATE: the case number is 19-757. The state’s response is due January 13, 2020.
Because Arizona forces all qualified parties to nominate by primary, this meant that no Arizona Libertarians could get on the ballot for congress or partisan state office in both 2016 and 2018. Yet the Ninth Circuit upheld it earlier this year. The U.S. Supreme Court has never before had a case on petitions for access to a primary ballot.
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.
