The Florida Democratic Party sued the Secretary of State earlier this year, over the law that says the party that won the last gubernatorial election will always have its nominees listed first on general election ballots. Jacobson v Detzner, n.d., 4:18v-262. On July 12, the U.S. District Court set forth some deadlines for the case. Discovery will not be complete until November 8, 2018, so it is obvious that the case won’t be settled until after this year’s election is over.
California may elect an independent candidate to the office of Insurance Commissioner in November 2018. Steve Poizner, who held the same job as a Republican 2006-2010, is on the ballot as one of two candidates for that office again. His only opponent is a Democratic State Senator, Ricardo Lara. As far as is known, there have been no polls predicting who will win this race. If Poizner does win, he will be the first independent to be elected to California statewide office in history.
Joel Fox, editor of Fox & Hounds, here writes that Poizner was John Kasich’s California fundraising manager in 2016, when Kasich ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. Poizner was also a national co-chair of the Kasich campaign. Fox says that Kasich encouraged Poizner to run as an independent. Fox suggests that if Poizner wins, that will make it more likely that either John Kasich, or some other prominent person, will run for president as an independent in 2020.
Geoffrey Skelley has this article listing all the U.S. Senate general election candidates who got at least 35%, yet who were not Democratic nor Republican nominees. There are only fourteen, if races in which one major party did not run anyone are excluded. Of the fourteen, the third party or independent candidate won eleven times.
The article has a slight error. It says that James Buckley was a registered member of the Conservative Party of New York when he was elected as the Conservative nominee in 1970. Actually he was always a Republican registrant. Thanks to Ken Bush for the link.
New York Democratic congressman Joe Crowley was defeated for re-election in the Democratic primary on June 26, for New York’s 14th U.S. House district. The winner of the primary is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The Working Families Party, which almost always desires to cross-endorse the Democratic nominee, especially in congressional races, had expected Crowley to win the Democratic primary, so it already nominated Crowley. Now the Working Families Party wants Crowley to withdraw as the WFP nominee, but according to this Vox story, he is not inclined to do so.
The story accurately quotes some experts as saying the only way Crowley can withdraw from the WFP nomination is to be nominated by the WFP for some other office that is up this year, but he doesn’t want to do that. He says it violates the spirit of the election law, because whatever other office he would be nominated for, he would not sincerely want that other office.
The story also quotes Bill Lipton, New York director for the Working Families Party, as saying that Crowley should establish his residence outside New York state, for example Virginia. Lipton is wrong about that. The matter has already been litigated, both in New York and in Texas. A congressional candidate does not lose eligibility by being a resident of another state before the election. The only residence requirement for congress in the U.S. Constitution is residency as of election day. But ballots must be printed well before election day, so moving to another state would not make any candidate ineligible.
On the evening of July 12, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra spoke at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. He was asked what he thinks of the California top-two system. He said, “I am not a fan.” He then criticized it for locking minor parties out of the election itself. He also disparaged the idea that an election system should be designed to make an easier path for moderates to win. He said the election arena is for all points of view.
