The American Solidarity Party (“ASP”) announced on June 2, 2023, that Peter Sonski was nominated as its 2024 candidate for President of the United States. The Vice Presidential nominee will be chosen later by ASP members but deference to Mr. Sonski’s preferred VP candidate is likely.

According to its Wikipedia article, “The American Solidarity Party (ASP) is a Christian-democratic political party in the United States. It was founded in 2011 and officially incorporated in 2016. The party has a Solidarity National Committee (SNC) and has numerous active state and local chapters…The American Solidarity Party has been characterized as socially conservative while supporting government intervention in economic matters. The ASP encourages social development along the lines of subsidiarity and sphere sovereignty, with a stated emphasis on ‘the importance of strong families, local communities, and voluntary associations’. It favors fiscally progressive policies and a social market economy with a distributist character, that seeks ‘widespread economic participation and ownership’ and providing a social safety net program.”

Mr. Sonski was nominated through online voting that occurred May 24-June 1 that would have used Ranked Choice Voting, but for his majority vote (328 votes, 52%) received on the first ballot. Four other candidates received the remaining 48% of the votes.

Peter Sonski is the former Assistant Editor at the National Catholic Register. He has a long history in the pro-life movement, with previous registration in both the Democratic and Republican Parties before finding the ASP during the 2020 election cycle. Peter is concluding his second term as an elected member of Connecticut’s Regional School District 17 Board of Education. His campaign plans to fund raise aggressively for ballot access and pursue a strong media strategy.

The ASP’s 2020 presidential ticket of Brian Carroll for President and Amar Patel for Vice President was on the ballot in eight states and was a certified write-in ticket in 31 states, receiving over 42,000 votes, according to Wikipedia.

Sonski’s website is:

http://www.petersonski.com

and ASP’s website is:

http://www.solidarity-party.org.

On May 26, 2023, a lawsuit was filed in Lewis and Clark County, Montana, challenging the state constitutionality of Senate Bill 93, which was recently passed. According to The Daily Montanan, SB 93 “implements a nonrefundable $3,700 filling fee for an initiative or referendum when a proponent files the proposal; adds layers to the review process that give the attorney general and secretary of state power to reject the language of a proposal; and implements more reporting requirements on the face of the petition about its effect on business and its overall fiscal impact. Further, it prohibits a proposal from being run if a similar one was defeated in the past four years; bars the use of electronic signatures; and adds a requirement that paid signature gatherers register with the secretary of state and pay a fee of up to $100 unless they can show their inability to pay.” The complaint was filed by John Meyer, Esq. of the Cottonwood Environmental Law Center. Here is the Filed Complaint

On June 1, the Libertarian National Committee filed this brief in Libertarian National Committee v Salika, e.d., 5:23cv-11074. There are competing factions among Michigan Libertarians, and the National Committee argues that the faction it recognizes can force the other faction to cease to exist under its name, because of trademark law.

This blog post is by Richard Winger. Even though I have retired, and Bill Redpath will be adding most blog posts, I will also be adding some.