On February 2, Anthony W. Williams, pastor of the Good Shepard Lutheran Church in south Chicago, won the Green Party congressional primary, 2nd district. Williams had an opponent in the Green Party primary who was backed by the party leadership.

In each of the three preceding elections, Williams ran against incumbent Jesse Jackson, Jr. He has now run under four different party labels. In 2004 he ran in the Democratic primary, but in a 4-person race polled only 4.3% of the vote. In 2006 he entered the Libertarian Party primary and won it without opposition (in 2006, the Libertarian Party wasn’t ballot-qualified in the entire state, but it was ballot-qualified in the 2nd U.S. House district). As the Libertarian nominee in a 3-way race in November 2006, he polled 3.33%.

In 2008, he was the Republican nominee, and polled 10.6% in a two-way race. Here is Williams’ campaign web page for 2010.

In the 2010 election, the Republican nominee is Isaac Hayes, youth pastor of the Apostolic Church of God.

The Connecticut Constitution, Article 15, section 3, says, “Every elector who has attained the age of 18 years shall be eligible to any office in the state.” But a Connecticut statute, sec. 3-124, says, “The Attorney General shall be an attorney of law of at least ten years’ active practice at the bar of this state.”

To the extent that these two conflict, the Constitution takes precedence. This apparent discrepancy has received publicity because Connecticut Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz is a candidate this year for Attorney General. She became an attorney in Connecticut in 1986, but she served in the legislature between 1992 and 1998, and then in 1998 she became Secretary of State. Some believe that since she wasn’t “actively” practicing law during those years, she doesn’t meet the statutory definition. But, even if she doesn’t, the statute appears to violate the State Constitution. In any event, staff in both the Secretary of State’s office, and the Attorney General’s office, say that “active practice at the bar of this state” is fulfilled for anyone who was a member of the bar, whether that attorney was actually participating as an attorney or not.

Florida’s Republican Governor Charlie Crist is running for U.S. Senate this year as a Republican. However, polls show him losing this year’s Republican primary to a more conservative Republican. The Washington Post has this column, featuring poll results that Christ would do better as an independent. Thanks to Third Party Daily for the link.

One reason Crist might not want to run as an independent is that in Florida, independent candidates are put at the bottom of the list of candidates. Also, they don’t have “independent” next to their names; they have “NPA”, which is a meaningless abbreviation to almost everyone. It means “non-partisan”.