Filing closed on March 14 for candidates running in the District of Columbia primary. Three parties have their own primaries: Democratic, Republican, and Green. No Republican filed for Delegate to the U.S. House. See the list here.

D.C. defines a “political party” as a group that got at least 7,500 votes for one of the partisan districtwide offices (excluding shadow U.S. Senate and shadow U.S. House). Because there will be no Republican running for Delegate to the U.S. House in November, it should be fairly easy for any party that is not now ballot-qualified to run for Delegate, and to expect to receive 7,500 votes. In 2012, when the Republicans also ran no one for Delegate, the Libertarian nominee, Bruce Majors, got 16,524 votes and gave the Libertarians party status. However, in 2014, a Republican did run for Delegate, and no Libertarian ran, and the Libertarian Party lost its party status.

This fairly lengthy New York Times story talks about the hopes and plans of Republican Party leaders who are so opposed to Donald Trump that they are thinking of independent candidate activity. Toward the end of the story, Nicholas Sarwark, national chair of the Libertarian Party, is quoted.

CNN has this interesting interview with Ron Paul, on the national Republican convention rule that says only a candidate who has a majority of the delegates in 8 states or territories may be placed in nomination by a nominator speaking from the stage. It is widely believed, without contradiction, that the rule was passed in 2012 to prevent anyone from giving a speech from the podium to nominate Paul.