Rasmussen Reports released this poll on November 25, asking about a 2012 presidential line-up that includes Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, and Lou Dobbs as an independent. It shows 42% for Obama, 34% for Romney, 14% for Dobbs, and 11% don’t know or other.
Wyoming has very difficult ballot access for both new parties and independent candidates. The only party, other than the Democratic and Republican Parties, that has appeared on the Wyoming ballot since 2001 has been the Libertarian Party. The Constitution Party is working on an all-volunteer petition drive to obtain the 4,988 valid signatures needed for party status in 2010, and now has 2,400 signatures.
Although 4,988 signatures may not sound difficult, Wyoming is the nation’s least populous state. The law requires 2% of the last U.S. House vote. If the Constitution Party succeeds in 2010, this will be the first new party petition to succeed in Wyoming for a mid-term year election since the Libertarians last did it in 1994 (Libertarians have not needed to petition since 1994, because the party always meets the vote test to remain on the ballot). Neither the Green Party nor the Constitution Party has ever been on the Wyoming ballot. Wyoming was one of seven states in which Ralph Nader failed to get on the ballot in 2000.
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.
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.
