The Working Families Party of Massachusetts is about to start petitioning to get Rand Wilson on the ballot as its candidate for State Auditor. No Republican is running for that office, so it is very likely that Wilson will get more than 3% of the vote, and the Working Families Party will then be ballot-qualified in Massachusetts for 2008.
The Kansas Reform Party has nominated several candidates for statewide office and placed them on the ballot. It is possible Kansas will be the only state in November 2006 with statewide nominees for the Reform Party, although there are still other states where the deadlines haven’t passed.
On June 16, the Idaho Secretary of State approved the name change of the ballot-qualified Natural Law Party, to the United Party. The United Party is a centrist party headed by Andy Hedden-Nicely, formerly a publisher of a weekly newspaper in Boise. Hedden-Nicely is also the United Party’s candidate for US House in the 1st district.
Idaho had previously let qualified parties change their name, so the decision was no surprise.
Across the nation, the Natural Law Party will not be ballot-qualified in any state after the November 2006, except it will probably still be on in Michigan.
The state elections officials in Ohio and Texas both say they will be finished checking independent petitions by the end of June. In Ohio, the independent gubernatorial candidates are really the Libertarian and Green Party candidates, but they are both using the easier independent candidate petition methods. In Texas, the only two statewide independent petitions are those of Kinky Friedman and Carole Strayhorn.
The South Carolina legislature has now gone home for the year, and the bill to outlaw fusion failed to pass. H4331 had passed overwhelmingly in the House, but it never made any headway in the Senate.
