The Bangor Daily News this story about the Libertarian Party’s struggle to become a qualified party in Maine. Thanks to Thomas MacMillan for the link.
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On January 22, the Arkansas Libertarian Party filed this 13-page request for injunctive relief in its pending lawsuit over the Arkansas law that says qualified minor parties can’t nominate any candidates within the 365 days before the election. The law says qualified minor parties had to choose all their nominees by November 2015. The party did nominate some candidates by then, but it wants to nominate some more. The major parties in Arkansas don’t nominate until March 2016.
The Reform Party was once a qualified party in California, but it went off the ballot in November 2002 because none of its statewide nominees polled at least 2% of the vote. The party has recently informed the Secretary of State that it intends to re-qualify. It needs approximately 60,000 registered members by July 11. The last time the state did a tally for the Reform Party, in January 2014, it had 16,377 members.
The Reform Party filing is not complete yet. Its notification only listed a state chairman, but the Secretary of State has said that a political body needs at least two state officers, not just one, so the paperwork will need to be refiled. Once the paperwork is complete, the state will tell county election officials to calculate how many registrants the party has. The first tally that will include the Reform Party will be in April. The January tally won’t include the Reform Party because the paperwork wasn’t filed in time to be included in that tally.
“The Week” is an English-language publication that originated in Great Britain, but which has U.S. and Australian versions. It has this interesting analysis of Donald Trump’s appeal. It says that Samuel Francis, an intellectual and an advisor to Pat Buchanan twenty years ago, urged Buchanan to run for President as a nationalist, not a conservative. Thanks to Phil Berg for the link.
According to this major New York Times story, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg is seriously thinking about running for president as an independent. The story says that Donald Trump has already said that he would welcome Bloomberg into the race, if Trump himself were the Republican. Trump is said to think that Bloomberg’s entry into the race would injure the Democratic nominee. Others quoted in the story believe Bloomberg would injure the Republican nominee.
Here is another story in Slate, although it is shorter and doesn’t add any detail. Also see this from TIME magazine.