On January 26, Oregon held a special statewide referendum on two tax measures. Voters voted to preserve both types of tax increase that the legislature had passed last year. See this story.
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With 85% of the vote counted, the election returns for Minnesota’s special election, State Senate, 26th district, are: Republican Mike Parry 43%, Democratic-Farmer-Labor Jason Engbrecht 35%, Independence Party Roy Srp 22%.
Last time this district elected a Senator, in 2006, the vote was: Republican 54.6%, DFL 45.4%.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation has a candidate on the ballot for Mayor of Long Beach, California. She is Stevie Merino. The election is April 13. This site doesn’t normally try to post news about every minor party nominee’s campaign announcement, because it’s outside the scope of this blog and there are other web pages that do a better job of that, especially Independent Political Report and Third Party Daily. However, an exception is being made in this case because the Party for Socialism and Liberation is the newest nationally-organized party in the nation that has run as many as a dozen candidates, and it is interesting to see which races the party chooses to contest.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation ran its first candidates in 2008. In 2009 it had candidates for Mayor of Los Angeles, and for Mayor of New York city.
The New York Independence Party received contributions of $1,200,000 from New York city Mayor Mike Bloomberg, according to the party’s recent campaign report. See this story, which contains a link to that page of the party’s report. Bloomberg gave $600,000 on October 30, 2009, and another $600,000 on November 2. Thanks to Nancy Hanks of the Hankster for the link.
The McCain-Feingold law makes it illegal for anyone to give more than $28,000 per year to the national committee of a political party. However, the Independence Party of New York is not a nationally-organized party and therefore it is not a national committee.
California State Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) is about to introduce a bill for election-day registration in California. See this story.