On June 27, the North Carolina First Party said it would try to qualify for the 2012 election in North Carolina. The North Carolina Party is the party formed by the Service Employees International Union. It tried and failed to qualify as a party for 2010. See this story.
Kristin Davis, who sought the New York Libertarian Party gubernatorial nomination earlier this year, but failed to obtain it, now says that she will petition onto the November ballot this year as the gubernatorial nominee of the Reform Party. The Reform Party name has not appeared on the New York ballot before. The New York state affiliate of the national Reform Party between 1995 and 2000 was the Independence Party. Thanks to Tom Stevens for this news.
The Reform Party is still ballot-qualified in Florida, Kansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. The New York Independence Party is also still ballot-qualified, but it cut its ties with the national Reform Party in 2000.
Kristin Davis is somewhat well-known in New York state, as the ex-madam who gained fame when Eliot Spitzer, who was elected Governor of New York in 2006, resigned after a sex scandal.
On June 23, seven candidates for Governor of Rhode Island debated each other. See this story. Participating were two Democrats, two Republicans, two independents, and the only candidate running in the Moderate Party primary. The Rhode Island primary is not until September 14.
The news story is notable for giving a fair amount of space to describe what each candidate said. Sometimes press stories about multi-party debates say virtually nothing about the non-major party candidates.
Ray Boyd, who had formally announced on May 8 that he would be an independent candidate for Governor of Georgia, has decided to suspend his petition drive. He would have needed 44,089 signatures by July 13.
This is the second gubernatorial election in a row at which someone has set out to be an independent candidate for Governor of Georgia, and has not completed the petition. John Dashler had a similar experience in 2006.
Petition requirements as difficult as Georgia’s function as a gargantuan filing fee that is applied on a discriminatory basis. Neither Dashler nor Boyd was willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get on the ballot.
SurveyUSA recently released a poll for the U.S. Senate race in North Carolina. See the details here. The poll shows Republican incumbent Richard Burr at 50%, Democratic nominee Elaine Marshall at 40%, and Libertarian nominee Michael Beitler at 6%, with 5% undecided.
The poll also shows that 4% of Republicans support Beitler, 3% of Democrats support him, and 12% of independent voters support him. The poll also breaks down the respondents by age and sex. Voters least likely to support Beitler are those over age 65.
Past North Carolina Libertarian vote percentages for U.S. Senate have been: 1980 .42%, 1984 .42%, 1992 3.33%, 1996 .99%, 1998 1.84%, 2002 1.45%, 2004 1.38%, 2008 3.12%. Thanks to Political Wire for the link to the poll.
