Minor Party Primaries Results and Discussion

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Reform Party National Convention on June 13th with their Florida and Mississippi ballot access up for grabs.

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Liberty Union Party Nominates Gloria La Riva for President

The La Riva-Peltier ticket now has access to the ballots in California and Vermont.

This is ultimately a bad sign for Howie Hawkins. Not only will the vote be split in two states where there is a huge population of democratic socialists and other leftists willing to vote for him, but he has failed in forming an “independent, nonsectarian left” front. The only question is why, why did two clearly democratic socialist parties choose the PSL’s Gloria La Riva/Leonard Peltier ticket over a person influenced by communalist ideology?

Looks like the vote of the left is going to be very much split between the GPUS/SPUSA/Solidarity front, PSL/LUP/PFP front, the Socialist Action party, and the irrelevant cult of the SEP so far. That isn’t accounting for what the DSA will do as a backup plan later in the race, or if SAlt runs their own candidate.

Gloria La Riva on the Vermont Liberty Union Party ballot line in 2016 got 327 votes. By the standards of 3rd party electoral performance, that's bad. The Party for Socialism & Liberation owes its performance to the outsize influence of gaining the California Peace & Freedom Party ballot line which I think was about 86% of their total nationwide vote in 2016. The harm if any to Hawkins was done there. Remove the P&F ballot line, PSL was about on par with the Socialist Workers Party.

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Speaking of Rocky, is he and the Alliance Party okay? The Twitter accounts of both haven't posted in nearly two weeks, which is weird because he's usually so verbose online, and a quarantine is a time period where social media buzz actually has more real-world impact. It's like they had their virtual nomination and then lost all momentum.

The party released their June newsletter this week, and announced they're working on litigating ballot access and an alliance with the ballot-qualified Michigan Natural Law Party.

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Monds or Gray would have been great VP picks, I have no idea why Cohen got the VP slot. To be fair though, Gary Johnson did say there were some great people, and then some that are just bat**** crazy.

Was supposedly Vermin Supreme's choice for VP candidate, and the LP commenters at IPR said he impressed a lot of delegates with his speech/debate performance.

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Here’s my question: will Blankenship do better than Castle in 2016? I feel like his wealth he could drop some ads, his net worth is $40 million.

Depends on ballot access. Covid has thrown a monkey wrench into everyone's petitioning plans (some major party candidates for state office as well). Democrat and Republican Attorneys General are trying to make sure none of them get relief. Illinois just asked for a $41 billion bailout from the federal government and the state government thinks it's a good use of state financial resources to fight against a U.S. District Court decision that put the Libertarian and Green Party candidates on the general election ballot.

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The Alliance Party say on their website that the Reform Party of Florida have become an affiliate member, so probably tells you the result of that Convention this weekend.

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So the Reform Party (which has ballot access in Florida and Mississippi) elected new officers on Saturday. The Committee Secretary defeated the incumbent Chairman. The convention was then adjourned as delegates apparently were not aware they had more choices than just Rocky De La Fuente to nominate for president. So they'll have a 60-to-90-minute Q-and-A session with the 4 people seeking their nomination, one each night this week. These will be streamed online and recorded, public allowed to view. All sessions beginning at 8pm. The convention will reseat this coming Saturday at June 20th where they will select the presidential ticket.

Tuesday - Ben Zion
Wednesday - Rocky De La Fuente
Thursday - Souraya Faas
Friday - Max Abramson

The Alliance Party had listed the Reform Party of Florida as an affiliate on its website, and that has since been removed.

Not that I know the political leanings of Reform Party national delegates, but my guess is De La Fuente or Abramson as the 2 most credible options.

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Interestingly, Ben Zion is no longer the head of the Transhumanist ticket.

what the hell happened?

The USTP hereby confirms the departure of Johannon Ben Zion (J. Ben Zion) from our organization. As the USTP and several other groups combined and reorganized, Mr. Ben Zion found himself better aligned with a more directly techno-progressive platform and has opted to head that initiative, leaving his capable running-mate as the USTP’s candidate. Accordingly, the Officers of the USTP have determined to release Mr. Ben Zion from any of his roles and affiliations with the USTP, as well as from any previous endorsements by the USTP.

I like how now the Reform Party has been reduced to the destination of also-rans from the Libertarian Party and the Transhuman Party. Just give it to Rocky de la Fuente and the Alliance Party as an affiliate.

I was completely unaware of Transhumanism as a political philosophy before this.

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The Reform Party, along with the oddly comparatively sane few state chapters of the Constitution party, need to either close up shop or merge with the Alliance party. The era of Ross Perot or the other various personalities making up the Reform party has been dead for 15 years at best, and they’re political dinosaurs with no real base anymore but old timey populism. At least the Alliance party has a better defined platform and isn’t as much of a one-man band tagged along with interesting local personalities.

I kind of figure that's the hope for some, considering the party's most recent gubernatorial nominee in Florida is the Alliance Party's VP nominee.

I'll give the party credit, the candidate Q&A throughout this week is better than what 3rd parties not named the Greens or Libertarians do.

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So this is the end of the primaries for third parties, really the only thing left is for the nominee apparent in the Green Party to be declared so in the upcoming GNC.

American Independent Party of California. The various parties in New York.

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Things are heating up before the Green National Convention

Greens have primaries. They have delegates assigned based on those. Hawkins has won most all of them. Nice Mr. Hunter wants his 5 minutes of time but based on the rules Hawkins has pretty much won their nomination. #READ THE F-ING RULES

La Riva looks to have gained ballot access in New Mexico. The party though might have lost their Florida ballot access.

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Because I’ve seen so many people on Twitter and Facebook from my age group posting about Jorgensen, I’m going to start giving periodic weekly updates on her Facebook likes (a skewed measure for sure, but somewhat relevant in terms of reach).
7/6, as of 9:30 AM: 225,454

Just out of curiosity how old are you? Because I haven't seen ANYONE in my age group even know she exists.

I'm not the person you responded to, but outside of me going to LP-specific media/sites, I've seen one person on my Facebook timeline say they were backing Jorgensen.

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Alliance Party's latest newsletter on ballot access:

"As of now we either are, or fully expect to be, ballot qualified in South Carolina, Delaware, Mississippi, Tennessee, Vermont, and Colorado. We have, in collaboration with the Reform Party of Florida and the Natural Law Party in Michigan expectations of gaining qualification for our ticket in these states as well.

We are feverishly working in many other states such as California, Oklahoma, and Louisiana and are petitioning in Maine, Minnesota, Washington State, Iowa, New Jersey, Idaho, Alaska, and will soon be in Wisconsin, Ohio, Utah, Connecticut, New York, New Mexico, and Virginia. Also on our radar is Rhode Island and others that we hope to petition in."

They also say the Secretary of State of Mississippi has officially recognized the Alliance Party as a qualified political party.

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Hawkins officially nominated by the Greens over the weekend. Alleging "vote rigging", runner-up Dario Hunter plans to run as "Independent Green". No word on his ballot access.

The Blankenship nomination whether cause or just a symptom seems to have splintered the Constitution Party as a number of state parties have disaffiliated. There's a new organization called the Life & Liberty Party that looks to be trying to take a lot of those people up. Presidential candidate J.R. Myers.

Per BAN:

The American Independent Party, which is only ballot-qualified in California, will hold its presidential convention on Saturday, August 15, at the home of the Sacramento County chair of the party. Some delegates will participate remotely.