Posted at http://politeaparty.blogspot.com/ and http://thirdpartydaily.blogspot.com/
In the Colorado Statesman, Anthony Bowe has filed a report on the many third party and independent candidates for office in Colorado in an article entitled, “Third party candidates take root.” The piece provides an overview, by name and affiliation, of twenty-four Libertarian Party, Unity Party, Green Party, Constitution Party and Independent candidates for governor, the US Congress and Senate, while supplying the most detail on the efforts of the Libertarian Party and Unity Party. An excerpt:
Third party candidates in Colorado are galvanized by grassroots efforts permeating the country this election season. A large number of so-called alternative candidates have joined a mix of Republicans trying to unseat Democrats by capitalizing on the pulsing tea party movement and a growing number of unaffiliated voters.
The Libertarian Party, for instance, trumpets eleven candidates in Colorado for U.S. senate, congress and governor. The Unity Party of America follows with four candidates, the Green Party has two, and the American Constitution Party has one in the state. Half a dozen independent candidates are also running in 2010.
With regard to Michael Seebeck’s comments, he is correct in stating that 12 candidates is a drastic decline from 56 Libertarian candidates in 2002. However, in 2002 the VAST majority (virtually all) of the Libertarian candidates were “line holders”. These were essentially candidates who were primarily concerned with having “Libertarians” appearing on the ballot with no intention of running serious campaigns. Now, the majority of candidates are running much more serious campaigns. Several, such as Christine Smith, are running to win. So I would characterize the shift as being from quantity to quality. And I would like to see this trend continue.
What’s not mentioned are a couple of things. First is the simplicity of ballot access for minor parties in CO, which is a good thing. That and only twelve candidates for LPCO is a drastic decline from the slates we were running in the early 2000s (56 in 2002, for example). Credit Joe Johnson and the John Bernsten LPCO crowd for that era back then (and by extension BetteRoseRyan who laid the groundwork and Jon Geltemeyer for the behind-the-scenes strategies), and I was proud to be a part of it, despite the Rick Stanley fiasco.
But the article is not entirely correct. In 2002 CO also had nine federal candidates and two races were contested. The difference between then and now is then we didn’t have primaries–we decided contested races at the state convention, which resulted in 8 federal candidates on the November ballot. So this will not not the most federal candidates ever for the LPCO. Once the primaries are over, they’ll be back at 7 candidates for federal office. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to see contested races, and all the best to them…