This story discusses the recent vacancy in Florida’s U.S. House seat, District 13. According to the story, the Florida Governor has no legal limit on how long he can take to set the date of a special election, and no dates for a special election have been set yet.
On October 28, a New York city Mayoral poll was released by The New York Times and Siena College. See it here. The “other” vote is at 3%, most of which will presumably go to Adolfo Carrion, the Independence Party’s nominee.
On October 26, Charles Wheelan, a professor of Economics and Public Policy, spoke at Dartmouth about his proposal that a new Centrist Party be established. See this article in The Dartmouth, the campus daily newspaper.
On October 28, Ken Block, founder of the Moderate Party of Rhode Island, re-registered as a Republican. He will seek the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 2014. In 2010, Block was the Moderate Party’s gubernatorial nominee, and he polled 6.47%, giving the party ballot status through 2014. Although the Moderate Party will still be on the ballot in 2014, without Block, it probably won’t survive beyond 2014.
The party’s biggest achievement was probably winning a ballot access lawsuit that struck down a Rhode Island law that made it illegal for anyone to circulate the party petition during an odd year. The party also tried very hard to persuade the 2013 session of the legislature to abolish the straight-ticket device. Even though the party persuaded a majority of Rhode Island state legislators to support that bill, the bill didn’t pass because the Speaker of the House blocked it.
On October 11, the Florida Department of Corrections reversed course, and decided that prisoners who subscribe to The Militant can receive the paper. The Militant is the weekly newspaper of the Socialist Workers Party. The paper had initially been blocked because of its coverage of the hunger strike in certain prisons in California. See this story.
