Original analysis by Krzysztof Lesiak at American Third Party Report:
The filing deadline for the 2016 elections in Arkansas was on November 9th. Arkansas will have a U.S. Senate election and U.S. representative election in each of the state’s four congressional districts. Interestingly, only one of the four districts, the second district, has a Democratic candidate challenging the incumbent Republican. The remaining three districts have only Libertarian Party (LP) challengers on the ballot. Baptist bi-vocational pastor Mark West is the Libertarian candidate in the first district, Chris Hayes is the LP nominee in the second district, 2014 Libertarian U.S. Senate candidate Nathan LaFrance is running in the third district, and Kerry Hicks is the LP contender in the fourth district. Two write-in candidates, Charles Neely and Michael Wescott, are running in district two along with Democrat Dianne Curry.
U.S. House district one candidate Mark West
Three two-way congressional races mean that the Arkansas Libertarian Party has a very good chance at breaking 20% of the vote in at least one of the districts races, and possibly all of them. Akransas has a history of third party candidates performing well in two-way races. In 2008 Rebekah Kennedy won 20.47% of the vote against Democrat Mark Pryor in the U.S. Senate election (the Green Party’s highest percentage for a Senate race), and in 2010 Kennedy received 26.79% in the state attorney general election. Greens Mary Hughes-Willis and Bobby Tullis received 29.35% and 32.48% in races for state auditor and state treasurer, respectively.
Have no clue. I have stated my interest, because Womack has to go
I just called his office to encourage him, got put through to one of his aides whose ear I talked off for a few minutes.
Has LPAR selected a replacement yet?
he has been called out and has not replied yet
@00:22
If that’s the case, the Governor needs to be called out and shamed very loudly for refusing to allow any opponent on the ballot in that race against the GOP incumbent. He’s a lot more likely to get away with refusing substitution, if he can do so quietly and without attention being raised.
In 2008, the Green Party of Arkansas had 3 US House candidates who were in 2-person races. The three Greens got 155,851 votes (19.80% of the total vote cast in those 3 districts).
Only by permission from the Governor in which he has not replied
If I remember correctly, they are allowed substitution.
Bad news Nathan LaFrance backed out he is moving out of state
This is excellent news. Sometimes the major parties are weak in some places, and these are places where minor party and independent candidates can have a big impact.
There needs to be a big effort put into exploiting this opportunity with money and manpower. Libertarians around the country should donate to this effort.
At first I thought that couldn’t be correct, that this very early deadline only applied to minor/new parties nominating by convention.
But, looking at what I could find at the Ark. Secretary of State website, this does indeed appear to be correct. The primary isn’t until March 1, but the same bill set the same deadline for candidate filing in the major-party primaries, as the date on which parties nominating by convention must have their nominees chosen. There’s no other deadlines before the primary mentioned. Previously the major-party filing deadline was in March.
If this is indeed the case, this is very cool, and looks like LP-Ark. is making the most of the utter collapse of the donkey party in what had, until recently, been the last bastion of the Blue Dogs.
Has it ever happened before, that Libertarians were the only opponents in a majority of a state’s House districts?