2024 Third Party and Independent Candidate General discussion

[StateBoiler]

Who is running the MPP as far as getting it organized, nationally?

[StateBoiler]

I feel parties (or really any politics-based organization) should be much more cautious in their use of Twitter, as in every single tweet that a party puts out should be vetted and voted on by their national board. When you look at the tweets of the American Solidarity Party, is this the views of the American Solidarity Party as a whole or just the person that controls their Twitter account? For example, no national party's tweet (be it the American Solidarity Party or the Republicans or Democrats) should ever publish a tweet contrary to the party's platform or bylaws.

[StateBoiler]

I feel parties (or really any politics-based organization) should be much more cautious in their use of Twitter, as in every single tweet that a party puts out should be vetted and voted on by their national board. When you look at the tweets of the American Solidarity Party, is this the views of the American Solidarity Party as a whole or just the person that controls their Twitter account? For example, no national party's tweet (be it the American Solidarity Party or the Republicans or Democrats) should ever publish a tweet contrary to the party's platform or bylaws.

Well someone’s a buzzkill. Lighten up a little man and enjoy the memes, this strategy helps attract young people to the party.

For the record, nothing on there breaks their bylaws.

You know what I mean. Is the person in charge of the party's Twitter account reflecting party values in the post or his or her own personal beliefs? The Alliance Party Twitter from reading it through some of 2020 was clearly a person's individual points of view that he or she was acting like reflected the entire party. There's a philosophical discussion to be had there, but a party shouldn't be forced to defend the points of view of whoever went off the reservation and acts like they're representing the entire body, but how you do that is never give the person the rope to go off the reservation to start with.

It's an instrument of great power as far as the party facing the public and I don't think governing boards of parties even realize it. I'd venture controlling a party's social media is more powerful than most all positions on a national governing board save perhaps Chair and Treasurer: you're controlling what people see of the party from the outside which also colors who chooses to join and who does not. So if you want for example a certain recruiting tack to encourage more people of your ilk to join and less of another competing branch and you own the Twitter account, you have the power to do that with what you decide to post.

[StateBoiler]

This move further entrenches the PSL into not just Indiana, but the wider Midwest.

Ballot access in Indiana requires 2% of the vote in the Secretary of State race. So who do they have running in 2022 and where do they stand currently on petitioning his or her way onto the ballot?

[StateBoiler]

This move further entrenches the PSL into not just Indiana, but the wider Midwest.

Ballot access in Indiana requires 2% of the vote in the Secretary of State race. So who do they have running in 2022 and where do they stand currently on petitioning his or her way onto the ballot?

Do they count write-ins?

Yes. The Greens recently have had a write-in candidate for Secretary of State. Good luck getting a write-in up to 2% however.

Outside of joint endorsements in California and the US presidential race, the party doesn’t run anyone else bar one time where Eugene Puryear ran in D.C. I’m pretty sure they don’t even have ballot access outside of California on the P&F label.

My take is if you're a third party and you don't have ballot access, what worth are you? At that point all you are is an activist group with no ballot presence, or you can run in nonpartisan races, but in Indiana that's limited to School Boards.

[StateBoiler]

SAM Party (which is largely a paper centrist organization in New York and Connecticut) is being funded by Charles Wall.  https://www.axios.com/tobacco-third-party-serve-america-movement-2c285be1-805c-423d-bd2d-4b4b16397728.html?force_isolation=true

SWP petitioning to get on the New Jersey governor ballot this year. They need 800 signatures.

[StateBoiler]

They also compiled their data from the 2000s. Aside from the Libertarians greatly surpassing the Green Party in membership since 2004; the rolls for Constitution, Reform, and Natural Law have tanked. Other minor parties have also went up as well along with independent voters

Yeah from 2004 to now the Libertarians have slightly more than doubled. Still scale-wise we're talking 0.27% to 0.57%. It's been a pretty steady incline since 2008 when they bottomed out this century at 0.24%.

With the new Alaska laws they really need to boost their membership there. I think they can get there if they work at it.

Yeah so I’m pretty sure HR1 is going to cripple the last of the third parties who don’t have dues. Mainly paper organizations only present statewide, but it could also cripple parties who don’t get enough money to qualify for each state. The ballot access and expansion of mainly smaller organizations like the Alliance Party, ASP, PSL, and SAM while also shedding off the dead weight still there on the Green Party is seriously going to impede things.

To be fair, I think the minor parties should have membership and dues. It gets rid of the entryists, the chancers, the hacks, and requires a very small amount of buy-in before you can have a voice. I know for the Indiana Libertarians that "buy-in" is $25 annually at a minimum. People that want to be politically engaged yet cry poverty will spend more than that on craft beer in a month or two.

[StateBoiler]

People that want to be politically engaged yet cry poverty will spend more than that on craft beer in a month or two.

Would you be willing on sharing your experiences of these folks near you?

I'm an officer that helps do governance for my rugby club. We're required to self-fund our club for it to exist and us to play games. With the exception here and there of some guys we know aren't well off and we'll help them out, the guys that we always have to twist arms to get to pay dues, even in a piecemeal fashion, you always see at the bar buying drinks. For the high school grads that recently came in, they just expect their parents to pay for everything because that's what they're used to, but we know most of them are on pot and their parents aren't paying for that. So our general response to those people is don't sit and cry you don't have money, pay up or you're not playing.

[StateBoiler]

The Socialist Party offers its criticism on the People’s Party, entryism


Essentially they are critiquing them on their purported undemocratic structure, lack of a coherent ideology, and naïvety on electoral processes and barriers in general—nothing that hasn’t been said before. What is striking is twofold; including a statement from “dual card” carrierHawkins along with its statement against entryism. I suppose they mean entryism into the DSA, PP, or Democratic Party.

Still, it’s interesting that the Green Party is apparently socialistic enough to work with in their view.

Do people on the left pay attention to the Socialist Party USA? Real question.

To people watching this sort of thing for a longer while, what was the most disappointing attempts? What had potential only to fade away fast?

Reform Party clearly. I'd've joined them in the 2000s if it was still credible by third party standards and had an underlying organization. There's real questions to be asked of even remove all the entryists in 2000 hostile taking over the party to get access to the $12 million of federal funding (Pat Buchanan and Lenora Fulani political allies, that was a thing people) if it could've carried on post-Perot, but 2000 just killed it long-term.

Maybe the best thing that could have happened with hindsight was Perot chose not to run in '96 and Lamm instead won the primary and Perot acted as chief endorser. Lamm performs worse than Perot did obviously but acts as an organization building run, and maybe Perot made a comeback run in 2000 where he should bump up higher. Guessing that's unlikely though as Perot probably wasn't going to run against Bush.

Always felt the '92 and '96 Perot voters are so little understood in political science academic circles. It's not like all those people just up and died. They went and voted afterward, probably in D or R primaries as well as generals.

[StateBoiler]

Dissident right-wing Green faction now up and running as IGP, already have candidate for 2024. Includes such controversial figures like Cynthia McKinney and David Rolde. The link provided shows recent anti-Semitic and Vaccine denialist antics they’ve recently posted.

In the article they have said that there are “Communists” in this party, something I doubt given that the aforementioned members are apart of the right and the Green Party has no history with Communist entryists.

While they’ll be irrelevant and most likely dissipate into the wind by 2023 the latest, indeed most likely their chances of getting ballot access will be in Alaska, the main reason I posted this is to show what the current Green Party ideological slant is now leaning towards the Left and to document what becomes of the splinters.
The Green Party on April 6th elected their first mayor in Illinois. Mainly it seems like ticket splitting between this three-way race made him win. Either way, Illinois is a state where I’m surprised hasn’t seen more attempts at local and statewide races given the safe D lean in urban areas ripe to be taken advantage of in their dissatisfaction and easy ballot access laws. Outside of Willie Wilson pouring immense amount of money for his vanity campaigns, no other serious attempts statewide were done since 2010 and it’s not like national third parties make inroads here locally.

ASP got .5% in a special election in Wisconsin, in a 4-way race between the duopoly and a perennial “Trump Conservative”. There’s also this race

Libertarians won a council seat in the city of Alva in Oklahoma. Given the fact that the Democratic brand is incredibly toxic in the plain states, I expect further gains there along with the mention of Indiana as indicated by Stateboiler.

Plains states and Mountain states. And Alaska. It's where they should focus if I was in charge of national strategy.

Attended the Libertarian Party of Indiana Convention a couple weekends ago. So there's 138 elections in 2022 that involves the state party - 100 State House, 25 State Senate, 9 Congress, Senator, and 3 statewide constitutional offices. The plan for 2021 is to organize the party in all 92 counties. We've gone from 25 at start of year to 44 as of end of March. The plan for 2022 is to have candidates in all 138 of those races, and right now they already have more than a hundred vetted.

[StateBoiler]

With the inauguration of a new president comes a new thread to serve as a space for future discussions of where the third party scene is heading for the next 4 years. This thread is free to serve as a space for a variety of discussion relating to such topics. The emergence and growth of new parties and perennial personalities, ballot access changes, and election predictions.

The parties and personalities listed here are in a dynamic list subject to change, but have an active national or regional presence. Do note that it is topical to talk about other parties not listed here. Due to instances where there is electoral fusionism, the list below will not include exclusively entryist and/or factional pressure groups such as the DSA, Working Families Party, Conservative Party, etc. However, this could be subject to change and discussion on these parties are acceptable in this thread.

Please be respectful for the most part; no inane thread hijackings over partisan squabbles, no whining about lesser evilism, no undeserved blaming over a party being a spoiler without sufficient evidence. If not, above all else keep it brief. Another thing I’d like to be avoided is the splintering of discussion without reason to. I still maintain that there was no reason to have an entire thread dedicated to Kanye West at that time given that it was not relevant to do so as far as the election was concerned. Now, while there is now a thread on USGD dedicated to the Libertarian Party, discussion may also happen there as well as here.

Well I expect the next four years to be eventful

Considering their historical bad showing in 2020, you would think that the Libs and Greens would just dissolve their parties. They never had a chance to win but the whole point is to splitter votes and they failed to do so in 2020

2020 was the 2nd-best presidential candidate performance for the Libertarians ever, behind 2016.

[StateBoiler]

Re Green Party turmoil, if you'd like a good slanted view on that but one with lots of details and occasionally history, Socratic Gadfly's blog is an excellent place.

The writer is from Texas and backed the Hawkins push to make the party one of ecosocialism, which has proven controversial in GP circles. There's some sort of like in the case of Rolde trying to be an entryist and pushing your left-wing anti-vaccine views to convert a larger group. The 2020 partial disintegration of the party as there wound up being a lot of anti-Hawkins voices. He's right on Ventura. Hunter I'm not educated enough on GP internal politics to comment.

https://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2021_04_04_archive.html

[StateBoiler]

Hunter was first and foremost an opportunist who went to the Green Party after being #cancelled by endorsing BDS. He was only in the party for two years and, outside of losing fair and square, would have alienated the party even further by awful campaigning. Greens dodged a bullet.

Ba’athist Rolde, Wilson, and the rest of the Conspirat@rds and National Liberals were insane and alienating to the party and public at large. The Rhode Island Greens, rich trust fund babies who were purists in not being apart of the Democrats but hated Trump, should have been kicked out for not running local candidates for ten frickin years per SG’s blog. Literal misandrists who believe heterosexual sex is rape and have positions on gender identity alienating to most left wing women are fair game to be made an example of. SM Curry’s debate performance and general time in the party was an embarrassment. All these jokes needed to have been purged for the party to be not a joke anymore, and a unifying figure hellbent on centralization needed.

In no shape or form is the Green Party even that radical or centralized under Hawkins, but these reforms were necessary to keep it alive. Hawkins brought in actual young people and Green leadership finally looks more like America. The only people complaining are the purged and those doing so under bad faith. The Ecosocialists are really the only people who actually care about the direction of the party, and under their full control they’ve revitalized local state parties and are starting to build local infrastructure the party desperately should have had a long while ago; podcasts, newsletters, even something as “Green Twitter”.

Like Libertarians who began cleaning house way back by preventing rejects in, and whom have built a consistent line even with many wings and factions, it payed off. SB, can you really say it would be best to let Objectivists and Republican rejects wreck the party? Because at some point you end up with a Pat Buchanan or Roseanne Barr who wrecks the entire thing up, killing the party or causing it to end up  encouraging unknowing college Trot parasites to enter in.

I'm not a member of the Green Party, it's not my place to tell them how to run their internal affairs. If I were though, yes, chancers and entryists should be viewed with caution and not allowed to win. Part of doing that is having a robust enough party infrastructure and membership to fend off external threats. You can look at the two main parties where the Republicans and Democrats have proven weak at ousting external threats outside the party (Trump, Sanders).

In an ideal world, there'd be a party rule most all parties of a certain size should adopt for something like to run for an executive office (president, governor), a person has to have been a party member for 5 years (5 to ensure it's prior to the last presidential/gubernatorial cycle).

[StateBoiler]

And why is BAN filled with such anal commenters too, like the most cool-headed person is Richard Winger on both forums lol.

A poster named "Demo Rep" trolls every story. Frankly Winger should consider some level of tying your name to an email address or just get rid of the comments section. Every now and then there's a serious discussion in the comments but they're sparse.

LPedia is great. I think one of the driving creators of it was Caryn Ann Harlos, the pink-haired National Secretary from the Radical Caucus.

https://lpedia.org/wiki/National_Historical_Preservation_Committee

The Libertarian Party Historical Preservation Committee (LPHPC or HPC) was formed in 2017. It is responsible for the collection, preservation, and sharing of hhttps://lpedia.org/wiki/National_Historical_Preservation_Committeeistorical records re, Joe Dehn, Ed Fochler, James Gholston, and Andrew Martin Kolstee.

[StateBoiler]

Unity Party now ballot-qualified in Florida.

[StateBoiler]

Both from BAN:

The Democrats' 2020 Senate nominee in West Virginia, Paula Jean Swearengin, is now the State Director of the People's Party in the state.

Arkansas Secretary of State certifies Libertarian Party petition.


Also, the national Libertarian Party's new Chair is Whitney Bilyeu following Joe Bishop-Henchman's resignation. She was immediately preceding the Chair of the Texas Libertarian Party.

[StateBoiler]

BAN:

On July 29, former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm died, at the age of 85. He had served two terms as Governor of Colorado, and in 1996 sought the Reform Party presidential nomination. He was one of only two candidates who qualified for the Reform Party’s presidential primary, which was conducted by postal ballot. The other candidate was Ross Perot, who had started the Reform Party in 1995 but who had originally said he didn’t want the party’s nomination. But after Lamm declared for the party’s nomination, Perot also declared for it. The results of the party’s presidential primary were: Perot 32,145; Lamm 17,121. Lamm only won in Alaska, Colorado, Minnesota, and the District of Columbia. Thanks to Independent Political Report for this news.

[StateBoiler]

So I got an email that was sent to Libertarian Party of Indiana members of a lady that left the Green Party and joined ours. What's noticeable is she left and joined us on August 7th, but on June 26th at the Greens' State Party Congress had been made their Secretary of State nominee for 2022. (Write-in but the Secretary of State's race is how your party can get ballot access, so it's kind of required if you're the Greens to have someone for that race.) She was Chair of the Indiana Greens' Cannabis Caucus as well. So this all happened in the span of 5 weeks. Here's her reasons in the email for leaving the Indiana Green Party:

I will share, and I make no secret of the fact, that I am distressed and disappointed at what is happening inside the Indiana Green Party. I am choosing to change political parties at this time. This comes after much thought and lengthy consideration. Frankly, at a time when our country is in need of unity and healing, the new leadership of the Indiana Green Party has aligned to embrace a very toxic element which is taken over at the National level of the Green Party. This has led to an alarming turn of events. I can no longer support the Indiana Green Party and I have formally left.

She stated in her email of "then-Chair Teri Ulm" appointing her June 26th. So I did a Google search for Teri Ulm Indiana Green and found this letter.

https://www.dialoguenotexpulsion.org/sites/default/files/internal-democracy-threatened/gnc-debate-silenced/2021-07/Rpt--corruption_within_Indiana_Green_Party_0.pdf

Mass walkout of feminists leaving the party? It's been discussed some here in the past, but the U.S. and Canadian Green Parties undergoing some very rough times.

[StateBoiler]

For reference, these were the TERFs and other Gender Essentialists caucus in the party.

No idea what a TERF is other than like most acronyms they can be used to dehumanize individuals.

I have mentioned previously that the Green Party will be in the woods trying to find itself for another cycle or two, but honestly it all seems for the best given so called “greens” are joining the environmentally lax Libertarian party then. These people leaving have no political scruples or basic idea on what their politics are. It would be harmful if this was the rank-in-file, and not the high level operatives who led the Green Party down a path of failure for decades until the left faction exerted pressure in 2016. A warning for the Libertarians is to not accept these people in keeping their high positions.

What does the party's position on transsexuals have to deal with environmentalism? Are you saying it's not possible to be a feminist and a Green Party member?

Anyway, a lot of these moves are due to the long and vicious purge of loons in the party. From the 2019 takeover of the Colorado state party to the purge of the inactive liberals and rightists in the party. I’ve documented a lot of the transition here, and the difficulties expounded by the pressure by outside and inner fifth columns, and I still see it necessary and a good thing for the complete overhaul of the party.

Teri Ulm's letter has links to audio and video recordings on YouTube. So if she made the sh**t up about bylaws and the party's democratic procedures being ignored, it should be relatively easy to demonstrate her words as false.

[StateBoiler]

I actually think the Yang Gang can work on a 3rd party level because his pet issues fill a niche both major parties leave unfilled and for being a losing presidential candidate the primary cycle was pretty successful for him. I said elsewhere he has the money to be a Perot. However:

1.) He of course wouldn't be doing this in the event he won the New York Mayor Democratic primary, so that he's doing it now when nothing is going on until the 2022 midterms shows he still wants to be in politics. So...what then? Does he announce this now to wait to run for president in 3 years' time? Is he working on ballot access nationally? Is he just locally focused and running for Governor of New York?
2.) He needs more stuff than just UBI.
3.) Doesn't he seem like the perfect Alliance Party candidate or the type of guy they would choose to co-endorse?

[StateBoiler]

Like Rocky Anderson and the People Party, ego’s get in the way of pragmatism.

Well it's the concept of power. For the main parties, unless you're Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders, you're required to compromise to climb the flag pole and achieve power which is the point of politics. Once you've decided you're not going to be a member of one of the main parties' power structure, the incentive to compromise on anything disappears. Because compromising and having no power is the same as not compromising and likewise having no power.

One reason for the heavily splintered left: cohesion requires them to all agree with one another - i.e. compromise. Even if you have all left-wingers or all right-wingers in a room together, you're still going to be required to compromise for the group to work. The only other option is you have a dictator in charge or a "politboro" running affairs.

[StateBoiler]

Well, I was referring to the fact that former Democratic and Republican officials usually don’t join already established third parties and stick to their own.

Justin Amash. I agree in general though.

Strom Thurmond and Wallace formed their own party

Thurmond at least was more the state Democratic Party affiliates leaving the national Democratic Party rather than Thurmond going off forming his own thing. Wallace was the same way but a much less organized extent than Thurmond was.

[StateBoiler]

I do enjoy following UK and Canadian elections which are the ones I follow the most outside of the U.S. I like how their media cover elections with nuance instead of how it works here of "did you win? awesome spectacular job; did you lose? f#%$ you, you're a failure". I feel it's due to here the election coverage is presidentially focused whereas in those 2 countries it's legislatively focused. And that's where the most real chance of a gain for minor parties can occur, especially if you believe that the vast majority of these districts are gerrymandered, there's no such thing as a wasted vote in a contest you think only one of the two major parties can win. Unfortunately, there's no real focus on running Congressional candidates instead of say running someone for president. PSOL I believe posted up the only party that's ran more than 100 candidates for the House are the Libertarians going back several years. Ballot access is part of it but even counting the partial ballot access that does exist, it's not fully utilized in the slightest.

I think one of the most successful non-presidential campaigns ever in this country was Newt Gingrich's Contract with America. Would it really hurt the Libertarians or the Greens or whoever to take a page from a Westminster-style democracy, "nominate" a leader pre-election, and that leader is charged with coming up with a Contract with America-style platform that gets every candidate's signature on it? The only way 3rd parties are ever going to get anywhere in a legislative sense is it has to be nationalized, which means nationalizing the campaign for everyone running for Congress.

[StateBoiler]

The thing is that the Libertarian or Green party would collapse if that was the case due to the many diverse interests in the parties.

They're still smaller tents than the 2 main parties.

I'm not saying this thinking it'd be easy. But any party that has a practical platform should be able to take said platform and build up a list of legislative priorities that 75% can agree on and put their name to. There's very low-hanging fruit that is uncontroversial out there. Said item can also make who does run a little more serious which is not a bad thing.

[StateBoiler]

I think one of the most successful non-presidential campaigns ever in this country was Newt Gingrich's Contract with America. Would it really hurt the Libertarians or the Greens or whoever to take a page from a Westminster-style democracy, "nominate" a leader pre-election, and that leader is charged with coming up with a Contract with America-style platform that gets every candidate's signature on it? The only way 3rd parties are ever going to get anywhere in a legislative sense is it has to be nationalized, which means nationalizing the campaign for everyone running for Congress.

StateBoiler, could this strategy work statewide presuming there is a gubernatorial election with a "good" third party candidate running for Governor? 

Don't see why not. Needs a governor candidate there to represent the party doing well instead of being a one-man show of a wealthy independent however. (So if Andrew Yang does start his 3rd party, does he actually help all the other people running for office that are not him or is he Ross Perot?)