Access North GA reports that independent conservative Eugene Moon will begin his ballot access petition drive in Georgia’s 9th Congressional District. From Moon’s campaign website:
The Georgia ballot access law for U.S. House is the most unique in the nation. The state requires 21,685 signatures or 5% of the total number of registered voters in the 9th district, along with a check for around $6,800 dollars (non-refundable). No other state has a ballot access law for Congressional candidates this tough. So come out and let’s make History together.
The petition drive begins January 14th, we will be having a kickoff ceremony on Friday, January 15th, 7:00 pm at the Gainesville Masonic Lodge. 621 Lake Shore Drive, Gainesville, GA 30501- everyone is welcome-for more information call 678.478.8386
Why?
Early last year, a number of people who are conservatives, old fashioned democrats and traditionalists, from all walks of life, across generations and from far-flung areas of the 9th district, came together. This was out of a common distaste for what the two existing major parties represent. We came from many political backgrounds yet none of them adequately represent who we are “The American People” anymore.
I support Mr. Moon’s fight to gain ballot access in the most backwards state in the Union. I intend to do all I can to help give the ballot, in every sense, back to the people. Thank you, Mr. Moon, for starting this arduous task. If you do not succeed this time, please know you have helped inspire others to take this to the next level. Ballot access is going to happen. It is just a matter of when. Your struggle to do the right thing NOW will not be in vain.
Let Freedom Rock!!!
No doubt that getting 21,000 signatures is an arduous task. And the establishment’s ballot access laws are so insanely inappropriate for a free Republic as to be insulting.
That being said, Mr. Moon has the full support of the American Conservative Party, and we, along with many other independent political movements across Georgia are going to whatever we can to make sure that the people of the 9th District are heard.
If Mr. Moon’s campaign is able to meet 21,000 people and get on the ballot, then there is a chance that people will begin to demand more of their electoral system than the closed process of “it’s either me or ‘those other guys'”.
Thanks to the Third Party Revolution’s endorsement. It goes to show you that regardless of political perspectives, we can all agree that having open debate, and fair and equitable ballot access laws is preferable to the oligopoly that we have in place.
Butch Porter
Chairman
The American Conservative Party
That made my day, Paulie! I was thinking the same thing when I responded to Trent last night.
You are both correct. (just kidding, LOL)
I could be mistaken, but I think Fulbright’s sister was Tucker Carlson’s grandmother.
“Senate Foreign Relations chairman J. William Fulbright of Arkansas”
Who was Tucker Carlson’s grandfather.
For anyone interested, Representative Hagan — the guy who defeated independent Milton Lent in ’64 — was also a segregationist, as were many Georgia politicians at the time. Fortunately, however, he wasn’t a very effective one.
As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, the Georgia congressman served on the CIA oversight committee, a post he shared with rabid segregationist Mendel Rivers of South Carolina and other southerners staunchly opposed to civil rights, including Senators Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Mississippi’s John Stennis. Georgia’s Richard B. Russell, who made numerous speeches and led several filibusters denouncing the civil rights movement, chaired the CIA “watchdog” committee.
It appears that nobody on the CIA oversight committee, including Hagan, was even vaguely aware that the Central Intelligence Agency had been secretly funneling money since the early sixties into several organizations that were actively funding African-American voter registration drives in the segregated South — a covert operation justified by the CIA as way to counter the disastrous foreign publicity generated by the growing unrest and violence spawned by the civil rights movement. In what later became a major scandal, the CIA had clandestinely supplied massive funds to the National Student Association — the largest student organization in the country — among other groups, encouraging them to push voter-registration drives in the South.
This story came to light in early 1967 shortly after Eugene McCarthy, who called for better supervision of the espionage and covert operations agency more than a decade earlier, and Senate Foreign Relations chairman J. William Fulbright of Arkansas — both of whom shared a growing distaste for American arrogance and aggression abroad — tried unsuccessfully to place members of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the CIA oversight committee. The oversight committee was then composed entirely of members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, mostly conservatives who were “trusting to the point of somnolence,” as McCarthy caustically put it.
Hagan and the other segregationists on the committee resisted their efforts, claiming that they knew everything the CIA was doing.
Obviously, they didn’t — and that was a good thing in that particular instance.
One has to admire Eugene Moon’s enthusiasm, but as Richard Winger has noted, qualifying for the ballot as an independent congressional candidate in Georgia will be an almost insurmountable task. I wish him well.
At first blush it would appear that J. Milton Lent, a plant manager from Savannah and chairman of that city’s short-lived Conservative Party, had considerably more political experience than Mr. Moon when he launched his long-shot independent candidacy for Congress in 1964. Lent ran against Elliott Hagan, a two-term Democratic lawmaker who could do a hilarious impression of segregationist Eugene Talmadge, the immensely popular “Wild Man of Sugar Creek” whose gaudy red suspenders and carefully-honed rural “Cracker” accent dominated Georgia politics for more than twenty-five years following the death of the state’s most colorful politician of all — Populist Tom Watson.
Unlike Mr. Moon, Lent also had a huge feather in his cap at the time of his candidacy, having been instrumental in convincing the Georgia legislature to pass the Liberty Amendment in 1962 — legislation still championed by Ron Paul and other constitutionalists to this day.
Having personally lobbied almost every member of the Georgia legislature, the conservative Savannahan’s efforts paid off handsomely when the measure was overwhelming approved in February of that year by a vote 88-17 in the House and by a lopsided 39-2 margin in the state Senate. Largely because of his efforts, Georgia joined four other states — Wyoming, Texas, Nevada and Louisiana — that had previously approved the Liberty Amendment to the Constitution.
In any case, the little-remembered Lent, whose candidacy was covered extensively in the Savannah press, waged an active campaign in 1964, forcing the incumbent, who had run virtually unopposed during his first two general election campaigns, to actively take to the stump against his lone independent challenger. Despite Lent’s vigorous campaign and strong Goldwater sentiment in the state that year, Hagan — a conservative himself — prevailed against his ultraconservative challenger, polling 65,146 votes to Lent’s 25,006.
We here at Third Party Revolution endorse Eugene Moon in his campaign for Georgia’s 9th Congressional District, along with many other third party and independent candidates seeking public offices nationwide, ranging from local to federal levels.
As Ballot Access News reports it:
http://www.ballot-access.org/2010/01/07/independent-eugene-moon-will-try-to-get-on-georgia-ballot-for-u-s-house/
An independent candidate in Georgia, Eugene Moon, is launching an attempt to get on the ballot for U.S. House in 2010, in the 9th district. [Moon’s] web page notes that the legal requirement is over 21,000 valid signatures, plus he must pay a filing fee of over $6,000. As noted many times previously on this blog, no one has completed the Georgia petition for that office since 1964. No candidate in history, in any state, has ever overcome a petition hurdle for that office in excess of 12,919 signatures, if the signatures were checked.
The Georgia 9th district is in the northwest part of the state. No incumbent is running in that district this year. The current incumbent is leaving Congress so as to run for Governor.
When a candidate did succeed in 1964 in Georgia with this type of petition, the number required was 6,500 signatures. Back then, the Georgia petitions were due in October of the election year and they were not checked for validity. The candidate who successfully petitioned in Georgia in 1964 was Milton Lent, an independent.