The U.S. News & World Report has this November 25 article, which suggests that candidates running for office outside the two major parties could be strong, in both 2010 and 2012.
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On November 25, California elections officials announced that an initiative to modify California’s legislative term limits law is cleared for circulation. It would not apply to any legislators now in office. It would provide that no future legislator could serve more than 12 years in the legislature. However, all 12 years could be served in one house of the legislature.
Under the current limits, no one may serve more than three 2-year terms in the Assembly, and no one may serve more than two 4-year terms in the State Senate. But, an individual who serves three terms in the Assembly may then serve two terms in the State Senate, for a total of 14 years of legislative service.
The new proposal has substantial financial backing and is very likely to qualify for the November 2010 ballot. Proponents will argue that under the existing term limits law, the office of Assembly speaker is always filled by someone who only has had four years of prior legislative experience, and furthermore that Speakers must leave office after just two years. Proponents argue that having inexperienced Speakers who only serve two years has injured the Assembly.
Proponents also argue that under the current law, Assembly members generally spend so much time concentrating on how they can win a seat in the State Senate when their Assembly service must stop, that they are poor legislators. Under the proposed new type of term limits, generally, the habit of an Assembly member going on to the State Senate would be mostly curtailed.
Dean Barkley, a key founder of the Minnesota Independence Party, and the only U.S. Senator in the last 60 years who was a member of a party other than the Democratic or Republican Parties, says Lou Dobbs is his choice for president in 2012. See this story. Barkley wishes Dobbs would accept the nomination of the Minnesota Independence Party. The only other time the Minnesota Independence Party ever had a presidential nominee was in 1996, when it ran Ross Perot. At the time, the party was the Minnesota branch of the Reform Party.
Although James Buckley was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1970 from New York as the nominee of the Conservative Party, Buckley was a registered Republican. Barkley was appointed to the U.S. Senate in October 2002 by Minnesota’s Governor at the time, Jesse Ventura, to fill the vacancy when Senator Paul Wellstone was killed. So although Barkley only served for a few months, he is the only minor party U.S. Senator since 1946, when Robert La Follette Jr. left the Wisconsin Progressive Party and became a Republican.
In Connecticut in 2006, Joe Lieberman was elected to the Senate as the nominee of the Connecticut for Lieberman Party, but, as in the case of James Buckley, Lieberman was never a member of the minor party that nominated him.
On November 23, the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. Commonwealth in the western Pacific, held a run-off gubernatorial election. The Covenant Party nominee, incumbent Benigno Filial, appears to have defeated the Republican Party nominee, Heinz Hofschneider, by a margin of 52%-48%. See this story.
Several prestigious good-government organizations have tentatively decided to file an amicus curiae brief with the North Carolina Supreme Court, in the pending ballot access case filed in 2005 by the Libertarian Party. The Green Party had joined somewhat later as a co-plaintiff. The North Carolina State Court of Appeals had recently upheld all of North Carolina’s laws on how minor parties get on the ballot, but the vote had been 2-1, so the case is automatically being heard by the State Supreme Court.
The organizations interested in supporting the minor parties in court include North Carolina Common Cause, and the League of Women Voters of North Carolina.
North Carolina requires more signatures to get a new party on the ballot than any other state, except for California. North Carolina is also one of the few states that won’t let voters register into unqualified parties. And North Carolina is the only state that lists some of the qualified parties on the state income tax form (to facilitate a donation from the taxpayer to the political party) but won’t list all of the qualified parties. North Carolina says the tax form should only list the parties with registration of at least 1% of the state total, so that even though the Libertarian Party is on the ballot through 2012, it can’t be listed on the tax form.