Free and Equal is sponsoring a presidential debate on Friday, July 12, in Las Vegas, at Caesars Forum. The event is simultaneous with Freedomfest.
Chase Oliver, Jill Stein, and Randall Terry are confirmed. Invitations have also been extended to Cornel West, Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
The debate moderators will be Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie, and Free & Equal founder Christina Tobin. Massie is a Republican who has served in Congress since 2012.
On June 5, an Illinois state trial court ruled that the new law passed by the legislature last month is unconstitutional, at least as applied to the 2024 election. The new law abolished the ability of qualified parties to nominate anyone for the legislature after the primary was over. Collazo v Illinois State Board of Elections, Sangamon Co. Circuit Court, 24-CH-32. Here is the decision.
On June 4, candidate filing in the Hawaii primary closed. Two individuals filed in the No Labels Party primary in Hawaii to run for the state legislature. They are Thomas Brandt in the 25th House district, and James Pirtle in the 37th House district. They will be on the ballot in November. There is no sign that No Labels tried to prevent anyone from running in its Hawaii primary, even though No Labels had gone to court in Arizona to stop candidates in its own primary in that state.
We the People Party, which is the vehicle for getting Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., on the Hawaii ballot, has candidates for U.S. Senate, both U.S. House seats, and a state legislative candidate. There are also Libertarian and Green candidates for federal and state office.
On June 4, New Mexico held presidential primaries for the Democratic, Republican, and Libertarian Parties. See here. Lars Mapstead won the Libertarian primary with 58%, defeating the uncommitted slate.
The primary is not binding. No Libertarian presidential primary is ever binding. The ballot-qualified Libertarian Party of New Mexico will choose a presidential nominee on June 12, Wednesday.
On June 3, former Texas Republican congressman Tom DeLay endorsed the Constitution Party’s presidential ticket. See this article. DeLay was the U.S. House Majority Leader between 2003 and 2005.
DeLay argues that boosting Randall Terry would actually help former President Donald Trump defeat President Joe Biden. More attention for the Terry candidacy, he reasons, would influence some voters to shift their vote from Biden to Trump. This is a more sophisticated argument than may be first apparent. In 1936 the Communist Party ran a ticket in opposition to Franklin Roosevelt and Alf Landon, but the party believed that its campaign propaganda would actually help Roosevelt.
This type of thinking is bolstered by the book Predictably Irrational, which presents experimental evidence that when there are three choices, and two of the choices are somewhat similar but one of the two is superior to the other, that helps the superior choice defeat the dissimilar choice. In the case of voting, one could say the 1936 Communist and Democratic tickets were similar, in that they both supported the New Deal. The Republican campaign was the dissimilar one. But the Democratic choice was “superior” to the Communist choice because the Democratic Party was far more likely to be competitive than the Communist ticket.
Modern day spokespeople for the Democratic Party, who vociferously oppose candidates like Jill Stein and Cornel West and try to keep them off the ballot, don’t seem to comprehend the findings of Predictably Irrational.
