Excerpts from a posting today on the Libertarian Party blog:
Joe Kennedy, a member of the Libertarian Party, is running to fill the unexpired Senate term of the deceased Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy. The special election will be held on January 19, 2010.
David Blau, chair of the Libertarian Party of Massachusetts, says, “While [Mr. Kennedy] will appear on the ballot as an Independent due to a provision of state law, I have spoken with him at length and believe him to be an excellent libertarian candidate.”
Visit Joe Kennedy’s campaign website.
On his website, Mr. Kennedy claims no relation to the family or relatives of President John F. Kennedy. He was born in Boston, has spent most of his life in Massachusetts, and works in the technology field.
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The other big stumbling block is still money. Joe took out personal loans to pay us at a rate that would allow the larger numbers of petitioners who were in Mass to get enough signatures in time before the other campaigns ended to work on the campaign and get enough signatures for him to qualify.
The campaign is looking for commission-only paid telemarketers to raise the money to make up the remainder of those loans as well as to move forward with advertising and other actual campaign activities, especially after Joe is (hopefully) qualified for the ballot. Again, if anyone is interested or knows anyone who is, call me at 415-690-6352 and I will give you more info and have the campaign get in touch with you. I will not be online to check followup comments until at least late tomorrow evening or later. Unlike the driving job, you can be located in any state for the phone calls.
This should go without saying, but of course we are also looking for donations at JoeKennedyForSenate.com. If anyone is in a giving mood, your help would be much appreciated.
For anyone who does not like to contribute online, Donations can be mailed to Committee to Elect Joe Kennedy to Senate
P.O. Box 368
Needham Heights, MA 02494-0003
RE: candidates listed by TPR
Those may be people who took out petition forms from the state but Dr. Phillies is correct that it is unlikely that the other independents will be on the ballot. If any of them were making a serious effort to collect enough signatures, chances are we would have bumped into their circulators in the field, heard about it from the petition companies, or both.
Kennedy did in fact get enough raw signatures that he has a good chance of being on the ballot.
However, some stumbling blocks remain.
In addition to collecting the signatures, they then have to be distributed to each of the 351 towns in Mass., validated by the town clerks of each of those towns, then picked up by the candidate or campaign from each town, and delivered to the state.
At this time, the Kennedy campaign is looking for volunteers to help with some pickup and delivery from towns. If anyone reading is in Mass. or knows people who are and who may wish to help, have them give me a call at 415-690-6352 and I will put them in touch (I haven’t asked Joe if it’s OK to give out his number here).
I will not be reading followup comments here for at least a day or two, and maybe significantly longer, so if anyone is interested please call me.
There’s a chance the campaign may be able to reimburse gas and/or offer small payments for drivers, but I haven’t checked whether any money is left.
Volunteers are also needed to get some additional insurance signatures. These are due at the towns on the 24th, and so they would have to be gathered from individual towns and delivered to and picked up from the town halls as the campaign will not have any more resources to distribute them. To my knowledge, there is no more money for any additional signatures.
To be continued.
The Globe article was most effective at demonstrating why Boston could use a newspaper.
If you work through it, you will note they claim that there is only one Republican running. There are actually two, the other being at least as credible as one of the Democrats. However, it would appear that white racism is alive, well, and going full bore on the Globe, because they candidate they neglect to mention is, one notes, the only African-American in the race. They also, in piling up this list, did not try the minimal level of competence in reporting, namely seeing which of these people have filed with the FEC and how much money they have raised.
“Another candidate in the race, though, is so eager to claim a connection to the Kennedys that she has tried contacting the family and offered to submit DNA for testing.
Jean Anne Kennedy-Windsor, who lives in rural Michigan, says she is the illegitimate child of Kathleen “Kick’’ Kennedy and King George VI, though neither the family nor the royal court have confirmed it.”
http://www.boston.com/yourtown/somerville/articles/2009/10/07/lesser_known_hopefuls_seek_to_shape_senate_race/?page=full
The article linked above has some background information on a few of the candidates mentioned in TPR’s post.
And speaking of those 9 other candidates, these are the names of those candidates along with descriptions:
John Adams – Physician
Adam Azia – Advertising Salesman
Sean Brady – Unemployed Auto Salesman & Army Veteran
John Howard – Anti-Biotech Engineering Activist
Jean Anne Kennedy-Windsor – Teacher, Michigan Resident & ’08 State Rep. Candidate (and interesting to note is that unlike Joe Kennedy, she claims to be related to the JFK family and the British Royal Family)
Stewart “Lusty” Lustgarten – Author
Steve MacAusland – Episcopal Minister
Brian Muello – Teacher & ’07 Braintree Mayor Candidate
Peter White – Hotel Manager, Socialist Activist, ’02 State Rep. Candidate & ’06 Congressional Candidate
Actually he would drop out if any member of the JFK family ran.
So would this clown still be running if the “real” Joe Kennedy had gotten into the race?
George, are you supporting the PLAS Experiment in MA & CA in January or not?
To the best of my knowledge, there is no indication that anyone other that four Democratic Party candidates, two Republican Party candidates, and Mr. Kennedy have collected enough signatures to be on the ballot. Petitioning periods for the Democrats and Republicans are over; we know exactly how many of them there are. Persons not linked to a major party have until later November to get nominating papers to town clerks and until early December to deliver validated signatures to the Secretary of State.
From what I can tell, there are at least 9 other independent candidates in this race. I will provide a list later though.