According to this story, California Republican Assemblymember Chad Mayes is considering running for Governor in 2018. If he did, he would be one of three high-profile Republican candidates for Governor. As the story says, having three leading Republicans in the race would make it extremely likely that the November 2018 ballot would only list two Democrats.
New Mexico Politics blog has this op-ed by Rick Lass, advocating fairer ballot access laws for minor parties and independent candidates in New Mexico.
Greg Gerritt, a leader of the New England Green Party, wrote a history of the Green Party for the years 2002-2004, called Green Party Tempest: Weathering the Storm of 2004. It is 70 pages and can now be read electronically at this link. Thanks to Jackie Deveneau for the link.
The Socialist Party is having a national convention in New York city, October 20-22. Here is the web page for the convention, which includes a twitter feed.
The Ninth Circuit expects to hear Soltysik v Padilla, 16-55758, in February 2018. This is the case on whether California is violating the First Amendment and/or the Fourteenth Amendment by letting some candidates have their party membership listed on ballots (for Congress and partisan state office), but not letting certain other candidates have their party membership listed. The plaintiff, Emidio Soltysik, is a registered Socialist, but because the Socialist Party is not a qualified party, Soltysik can only have the ballot label “Party preference: none”.
