On October 16, Massachusetts held a special election in the 5th U.S. House district. The results are: Democrat Niki Tsongas 51.32%, Republican Jim Ogonowski 45.10%, Constitution Party nominee Kevin Thompson .47%, independent Kurt Hayes 1.06%, and independent Patrick Murphy 2.05%. Thanks to Tony Roza.
On October 16, the Iowa Republican State Central Committee voted to set the Republican presidential caucus on the evening of January 3, 2008. Iowa Democrats don’t necessarily need to choose the same date, and have not yet decided when the Democratic caucus will be. Thanks to Tony Roza for this news.
Utah’s deadline for candidates to file in presidential primaries is the earliest in the nation. That deadline was October 15. Candidates needed to file a declaration of candidacy and pay $500. Sam Brownback, for unknown reasons, did not file in the Utah Republican presidential primary.
Names that will be on the Republican primary are: Giuliani, Huckabee, Hunter, Keyes, McCain, Paul, Romney, Tancredo and Thompson. Names on the Democratic primary are: Biden, Clinton, Dodd, Edwards, Gravel, Kucinich, Obama, Richardson, and a relative unknown, Frank Lynch of Florida.
The Constitution Party is the only other ballot-qualified party. It could have had a presidential primary, but chose not to. Newly-qualifying arties that wanted to have a 2008 presidential primary were required to file their petition to create the party by July 2007. No group did that. The Libertarian Party will finish that petition soon, but didn’t finish in time for its own presidential primary.
The New York Independence Party has been ballot-qualified since 1994. When Ross Perot started the Reform Party in September 1995, the Independence Party of New York became the New York state affiliate of the Reform Party. The New York Independence Party disaffiliated from the national Reform Party in 2000, and has since then just been a party in New York state. It ran John Hagelin for president in New York in 2000, and Ralph Nader for president in New York in 2004.
Now, leaders of the New York Independence Party want to create a nationwide Independence Party. A meeting was held on September 23 in White Plains, New York. Frank MacKay was elected national chair. MacKay has been on a trip around the eastern half of the United States, trying to organize the party. The Minnesota Independence Party, which has also been ballot-qualified since 1994 and which was also once a state affiliate of the national Reform Party, will hold a state convention on December 1. It will decide at that convention whether to join the national Independence Party. Dean Barkley, a founder of the Minnesota Independence Party, has already agreed to advise the national Independence Party.
Leaders of the national Independence Party are aware that there is a great deal of similarity between Unity08 and the Independence Party. Both groups would be helpful to Mayor Michael Bloomberg if he were to decide to run for president outside the major parties in 2008.
Oklahomans for Ballot Access Reform (OBAR) has re-launched the initiative that would ask the Oklahoma voters if they wish to ease the ballot access laws. Oklahoma law requires initiative petitions to be completed within 90 days, but the group backing the initiative chooses its own 90-day period. The original petition was launched on September 15, but since it was mostly dependent on volunteer circulators, it had only collected 2,700 signatures during the first three weeks.
The new campaign will run from October 15 through January 13, and will depend on paid circulators. The Committee will be quite careful to make sure all circulators are Oklahoma residents. The new initiative has been re-worded somewhat. The biggest change is that the vote test for a party to remain on the ballot will be 2%, not 1% as in the first attempt. Circulators of the first attempt got a sense that some voters thought a 1% vote test is too easy. The national median vote test of all 50 states is 2%, so the new initiative can honestly tell voters that the initiative merely will put Oklahoma into the national average. The vote test is 2% of the vote for any statewide race at either of the last two elections. Oklahoma has approximately 10 statewide partisan races in mid-term years.
For more information, see www.okvoterchoice.org. If you have donated to this initiative, your contribution has not been wasted. The first attempt only used up $1,500.
Oklahoma state officials recommend that an initiative be submitted eight months before the election. The new initiative attempt will be complete on January 13, so, assuming it qualifies, it will appear on the November 2008 ballot. Any attempt to qualify the initiative earlier than that might have meant that the initiative would have appeared on the primary ballot, which would have been a strategic error, since independents can’t vote in Oklahoma primaries (except they can vote on ballot questions). It is desired that the initiative be placed on a ballot when sizeable numbers of independent voters will be voting.
