From Richard Winger at Ballot Access News:
On Saturday, September 5, Deez Nuts (alias Brady Olson) appeared at the Minnesota Independence Party’s booth at the Minnesota state fair. That was good for some publicity for the party. Even the Washington Post took note, as this column attests.
From the article cited, written by Aaron Blake:
Third parties have been known to ally with celebrities or even quasi-celebrities like young Mr. Nuts in hopes of attaining enough of the vote in one election (usually 1 to 5 percent) to earn larger share of the vote or even a ballot line in future elections. There was Howard Stern for governor of New York as a Libertarian Party candidate; more recently, Roseanne Barr was the 2012 nominee of a little-known third party. Other examples aren’t uncommon.
Nor would a party supporting a candidate who is ineligible to serve in the office he’s seeking (the age requirement for president is 35) be completely unheard-of. Marxist political parties have run candidates who are under 35 three times, according to Richard Winger, the expert in all things third-party and independent at Ballot Access News. The Socialist Workers Party did it in 1972, with Linda Jenness, who was 31 years old.
About half of states allow such a candidate to appear on the ballot despite not being eligible to actually serve, and Minnesota is one of them, so the Independence Party could feasibly back him. The state in fact has had ineligible candidates in the past three presidential elections — including 2004 and 2008 Socialist Workers Party nominee Roger Calero, who met the age requirement but was not born in the United States or naturalized. (Calero was also a felon, having been convicted of drug trafficking in 1988.)
But if the Independence Party viewed Deez Nuts as its ticket to ride in future elections, it would have been sorely mistaken. That’s because the threshold for third-party ballot status in Minnesota is a whopping 5 percent. (Despite that North Carolina poll showing him at 9 percent that we’ve all laughed about, his hope for getting to even 5 percent in any state is basically nil.)
And indeed, the party says it won’t back Olson’s candidacy. “I don’t see a realistic path to the IP offering any sort of comprehensive support or any endorsement,” spokesman Philip Fuehrer said in an e-mail.
And if you’re looking for struggling third parties desperate for attention, the Minnesota Independence Party doesn’t really fit the bill. The party isn’t a laughing-stock in need of a celebrity name on its ballot line. Back when it was known at the Reform Party in 1998, it elected former pro wrestler Jesse Ventura as Minnesota governor. The party soon became the Independence Party, and Ventura appointed an Independence Party member — Dean Barkley — to a brief U.S. Senate vacancy.