The New York Libertarian Party held a state convention in Rochester on October 25, and nominated Larry Sharpe for Governor. Sharpe was also the party’s gubernatorial nominee in 2018, when he polled 95,033 votes and gave the Libertarians party status for the first time in history. However, that was taken away in 2020 when the legislature changed the definition of a qualified party to a group that polled 2% for Governor. Sharpe had polled 1.56% in 2018.

Sharpe has been campaigning for the 2026 election for weeks. He is planning to visit all 62 counties. The party’s state convention was unusually early, but the party will need 45,000 valid signatures to get Sharpe on the 2026 ballot, and it wants to get an early start on the campaign. The petitioning period is only six weeks, in April and May 2026. It is likely that a lawsuit will be filed against the short petitioning period and the early deadline. New York’s deadline had been in August, until it was moved to May in 2019.

The Octdober 26 Denver Post has a lengthy news story about the new leadership of the Colorado Libertarian Party. It says that former state chair Hannah Goodman, a stalwart of the Mises Caucus, says she will leave the party and become a Democrat.

On October 24, Ireland elected an independent president, Catherine Connolly. This is the third time Ireland has elected an independent president. The first was in Ireland’s first presidential election, the 1938 election, in which only one candidate ran. In 2018, incumbent president Michael Higgins, who had been elected as the Labour Party nominee in the previous election, was re-elected as an independent.