On December 29, 2006, the New York Times repeated a factual error that it has repeated many times in the past. In an article titled “In Minnesota Shift, Case Study for National Political Shake-up”, reporter Kirk Johnson says that Jesse Ventura was elected Governor in 1998 as an independent.

The truth is that the Reform Party recruited Jesse Ventura to be its candidate for Governor in 1998. He won the Reform Party primary and then he won the general election. Because he was the Reform Party nominee, he received equal public funding with his major party opponents, and he received the top line on the general election ballot. As Governor, he played an important role in the Reform Party nationally. He endorsed Jack Gargan for national chair, and Gargan was elected national chair in 1999, against the wishes of Ross Perot. When a special national convention of the Reform Party in 2000 removed Gargan as national chair, Ventura and the entire Minnesota Reform Party disaffiliated from the national Reform Party and the Minnesota Reform Party changed its name to the Independence Party. The Independence Party of Minnesota is still a ballot-qualified party. It elected a State Senator in 2002 and in 2006 polled 7% for Governor. It is unfortunate that the New York Times cannot tell the truth about this bit of important history.

A new party in Oregon, called the Independent Party, turned in approximately 26,000 signatures on December 6, 2006. The state will know if the party has enough valid signatures by January 20, 2007 or so. The Independent Party seems to be either centrist or somewhat “progressive” and wants to stiffen Oregon campaign finance laws. It also wants to make it easier for independent candidates to get on the ballot. Because the 2005 session of the Oregon legislature made it much more difficult for independent candidates to get on the ballot, the existence of the Independent Party offers a second vehicle for such potential candidates in the future. Also, the 2005 session of the legislature passed HB 2167, which says that in the future, independent candidates are to be labeled “Non-affiliated Voter” on the November ballot, not “independent candidate”. So, there was no problem with the Oregon Independent Party’s name being rejected as too similar to the term “independent candidate”.

In 2002, the Missouri Clean Water Commission was expanded from 6 members to 7 members. Unchanged at that time was an earlier law, that no more than 3 members of any political party sit on that Commission.

Recently the Sierra Club noticed that the Missouri Water Commission has 4 Republicans and 3 Democrats, and brought this to the attention of the press. Missouri Governor Matt Blunt pooh-poohed the problem, saying it is only “common sense” that one major party must be allowed to have 4 members on the Commission, notwithstanding the clear language of the law. The Sierra Club, in response, pointed out that the Governor is free to appoint an independent, or a member of some party other than the Democratic and Republican Parties.

Missouri does not have registration by party, so it is sometimes somewhat unclear how to characterize any individual’s party affiliation. Thanks to Eric Dondero for this story.