According to the latest California vote tally, Gavin Newsom polled 61.3% of the gubernatorial vote at the recent election. That is the highest percentage of the vote ever received by the Democratic nominee for California Governor. California has been a state since 1850.
The Arizona Green Party nominee for Governor, Angel Torres, polled 2.14% last week. This is the best the party has ever done for that office. The party was only on the ballot for Governor of Arizona once before, in 2010, when it got .93%.
No 2018 Green Party nominee for Governor of any other state received a higher percentage than Torres, except Jim Brewer in Hawaii, who got 2.59%.
The Pennsylvania elections office has posted the number of registered Libertarians and Greens as of the close of registration for the recent election. See the tally here. The new Libertarian total is 44,848; the new Green total is 11,534.
Earlier, the office had released this data for the Democrats and Republicans, but no other parties. The changes for the two minor parties are small, compared to the May 2018 tallies. In May, there were 44,399 Libertarians and 11,548 Greens.
Despite all the court cases holding early petition deadlines unconstitutional, for newly-qualifying parties, there are two states that require new parties to have qualified by November 2019, if they wish to be on the ballot for all partisan office in 2020. They are California and Utah.
California requires a new party to have finished its registration drive by November 4, 2019, if it wants to participate in the 2020 election for office other than president. Utah requires a new party to have completed its petition drive by November 30, 2019, in order to be on the ballot in 2020. In the past, Utah let candidates who use the independent procedure have a party label next to their names on the ballot, but that law was repealed in 2009, and now candidates who use the independent procedure can only have the label “Unaffiliated.”
No group has ever sued Utah over its early petition deadline. The Justice Party and the Constitution Party sued California over its early deadline for new parties in 2012, and they won the case. But the legislature only changed the deadline for parties that want to run for president.
As of the afternoon of November 16, the race between Jeff Hewitt and Russ Bogh had tightened. They are the candidates for Riverside County, California, Supervisor, district 5. Bogh now leads by 252 votes. The vote is Bogh 36,185; Hewitt 35,933.
The race is non-partisan. Bogh is a former Republican state legislator. Hewitt, a member of the Libertarian Party, is outgoing Mayor of Calimesa. Bogh’s margin had been 360 votes as of a week ago, and there are still many uncounted ballots.
If Hewitt were to win, he would have almost 500,000 constituents. That would be the largest jurisdiction to elect a member of the Libertarian Party, in the entire nation, in the last 25 years.
