Independent candidates as “de facto” party nominees

[JMT]

What are some examples of independent candidates serving as the “de facto” Democratic or Republican nominees? Do you think this strategy helps or hurts a candidate’s chances of winning?

There are, of course, the two most notable success stories: Bernie Sanders and Angus King. But I can think of some other (successful and unsuccessful) examples: Bill Walker and Al Gross in Alaska, as well as Greg Orman (Kansas) and Evan McMullin (Utah). Are there other examples of this?

I think this strategy probably somewhat helps candidates, but probably only to a very small degree. I think most voters can see through it and know which party they mostly align with. But, it may be worth employing this strategy more often if it boosts the chance of winning.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Adlai Stevenson III in 1986, though that was for extremely specific reasons.

[beaver2.0]

The Democratic nominee for North Dakota's house seat in 2022 dropped out and the Democrats endorsed an independent candidate in his place. She had the best performance of the primary non-Republican candidate since 2014.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Kind of an interesting example is MN-05 in 2006. The seat was open and Keith Ellison won the nomination but a bunch of stuff dumped on him really soured voters (some of this stuff later resurfaced before his AG run in 2018 hence his underperformance.) But of course the seat was uber-titanium D. However the Independence Party candidate Tammy Lee was a former Democrat who had previously worked for HHH III's 2002 gubernatorial campaign and served as a staffer for ND Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan, and so a lot of DFL voters voted for her, but she was actually backed by most Republican "establishment" figures too and conservative personalities endorsed Republicans in the district to strategically vote for her. Despite this she actually finished narrowly behind the Republican albeit with a very impression third party performance (21.3 to 21.0) and her votes obviously overwhelmingly came from Democrats. And she actually endorsed Ellison in 2008 and Democrats for every race since then.

[GM Team Member and Deputy PPT WB]

The Democratic nominee for North Dakota's house seat in 2022 dropped out and the Democrats endorsed an independent candidate in his place. She had the best performance of the primary non-Republican candidate since 2014.

She was also previously Miss North Dakota, and is now a lawyer.

[Dr. MB]

Any election where there's a third party or independent running against one of the major parties, and the other major party isn't on the ballot, a solid number of voters of the excluded party are gonna vote for the third party.

You can see this in a congressional election in Florida from last year:



The gray precincts voted for independent Keith Hayden Jr. over the Republican, Scott Franklin. They all are normally very heavily Democratic. Hayden ran on a conservative platform but a lot of people voted for him just bc he wasn't the Republican. You can also see that with Libertarian vs. Republican elections in a lot of places.

[H.E. VOLODYMYR ZELENKSYY]

The Democratic nominee for North Dakota's house seat in 2022 dropped out and the Democrats endorsed an independent candidate in his place. She had the best performance of the primary non-Republican candidate since 2014.

She was also previously Miss North Dakota, and is now a lawyer.

Wait a minute, I know her! I went to law school with her and was on one or two Zoom calls with her back in 2020-2021. I never actually interacted with her, but she was the talk of the town for a bit, in the sense of “hey, did you know there’s a former Miss America in our class? Oooh” (because she wasn’t just Miss North Dakota, she was Miss America). I’d laughed her off when I originally saw she was running as an independent and had no idea she’d become the de facto Democratic nominee :0

In Alaska alone:
2022: Bill Walker (I) is arguably the de facto Democratic nominee for governor, though splitting with a Democrat dooms that effort
2020: Al Gross (I) is the de facto Democratic nominee for Senate; Alyse Galvin (I) is the de facto Democratic nominee for House
2018: Alyse Galvin (I) is the de facto Democratic nominee for House
2016: Lisa Murkowski (R) is the de facto Democratic nominee for Senate; Joe Miller (L) is the de facto Republican nominee
2014: Bill Walker (I) is the de facto Democratic nominee for Governor
2010: Lisa Murkowski (write-in R) is, more or less, the de facto Democratic nominee for Senate

You could say Murkowski (R) was the de facto Democratic nominee in 2022 as well.

[JMT]

Any election where there's a third party or independent running against one of the major parties, and the other major party isn't on the ballot, a solid number of voters of the excluded party are gonna vote for the third party.

You can see this in a congressional election in Florida from last year:



The gray precincts voted for independent Keith Hayden Jr. over the Republican, Scott Franklin. They all are normally very heavily Democratic. Hayden ran on a conservative platform but a lot of people voted for him just bc he wasn't the Republican. You can also see that with Libertarian vs. Republican elections in a lot of places.

That’s a good point! It seems like this also happened fairly recently in the 2020 Senate race in Arkansas. Democrats didn’t field a candidate, and it appears the Libertarian candidate (Ricky Harrington) carried the Democratic areas of the state.

[JMT]

It looks like Democrats may try this in Nebraska in 2024 (not that it really matters, since the race is unwinnable anyways). But, Dan Osborn (a local union president) is running as an independent against Deb Fischer, and it doesn’t look like a Democrat has filed for the race. 

Also, speaking of Nebraska: Democrats abandoned their Senate nominee in 2020 (Chris Janicek) due to scandal, and fielded a write-in candidate for the general election (Preston Love Jr.). Janicek still got more votes than Love, but in a way, Love was the de facto Democratic nominee, since he had the official support of the state Democratic Party.

[JMT]

In Alaska alone:
2022: Bill Walker (I) is arguably the de facto Democratic nominee for governor, though splitting with a Democrat dooms that effort
2020: Al Gross (I) is the de facto Democratic nominee for Senate; Alyse Galvin (I) is the de facto Democratic nominee for House
2018: Alyse Galvin (I) is the de facto Democratic nominee for House
2016: Lisa Murkowski (R) is the de facto Democratic nominee for Senate; Joe Miller (L) is the de facto Republican nominee
2014: Bill Walker (I) is the de facto Democratic nominee for Governor
2010: Lisa Murkowski (write-in R) is, more or less, the de facto Democratic nominee for Senate

Wow, Alaska has done this a lot! I forgot about Alyse Galvin. Galvin actually ended up winning an Alaska State House seat in 2022, where she also was the de facto Democratic nominee.

Democrats united behind Galvin in 2018 and 2020, presumably because they thought she’d have an easier time winning than a Democrat. Ironically, Mary Peltola, an actual Democrat, would then win the seat in 2022 (I know the circumstances were much different, but still interesting).

[JMT]

Just remembered Joe Lieberman’s 2006 re-election race. Even though he was previously a Democrat and caucused with the Democrats after winning, you could argue he was the Republican’s de facto candidate against Ned Lamont. The Republicans technically had a candidate (Alan Schlesinger), but he was involved in some financial scandals and was disavowed by his party. Schlesinger only ended up receiving about 10% of the vote.

You could make a similar argument in the 2010 CO Governor race. Tom Tancredo was arguably the de facto Republican candidate, as the actual Republican nominee (Dan Maes) also only got about 10% of the vote.

[quesaisje]

Doug Hoffman, running on the Conservative line, became the effective Republican nominee in the 2009 special election for NY-23 after Scozzafava dropped out. Fusion balloting seems to lend itself to this.

[JMT]

Democrats also attempted this in FL-13 in 2014 but it backfired. No Democrats filed because the DCCC  announced it was supporting Independent Ed Jany. But then Jany dropped out.

Libertarian Lucas Overby was then David Jolly’s only opponent. Overby got about 25% of the vote (presumably from mostly Democrats, but not sure).

[RI]

I've been seeing this more and more at the local level here in Washington. A prime example would be the 2022 Washington State Senate race in WA-31 where former state GOP chair Chris Vance ran against a conservative incumbent and the Democratic Party cleared the field for him. He lost, but he did better than a Democrat would have done.

Something somewhat similar happened in the Washington Secretary of State race last year, which was D vs. I, and the I did better than an R would have done while taking most (but crucially not all) R support.

[Sumner 1868]

Henry Howell ran as an independent in Virginia's 1973 gubernatorial race and was endorsed by the party.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Ignore them, I doubt Manchin runs they wantta flip EDAY to Trump

[JMT]

Sorry, I keep sporadically thinking of some examples. Another I thought of was the 2018 California Insurance Commissioner election. Steve Poizner, who previously held this office as a Republican and ran for CA Governor in 2010 as a Republican, ran in the 2018 race as an Independent. While he didn’t win, he came a lot closer to winning than any Republican would have.

Also, I was thinking of Charlie Crist in the 2010 Senate race in Florida, but not sure if this counts given that Democrats had a legitimate candidate here (Kendrick Meek, a Congressman) who got 20% of the vote. But, Crist outpaced Meek by about 10 points and undoubtedly got a good amount of the Democratic vote. Also, Bill Clinton reportedly tried to convince Meek to drop out in an effort to get Democrats to unite behind Crist.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

There was I believe in 2020 a Safe R Minnesota Senate seat where no Democrat filed but one of the weed parties had a candidate who did as well as an independent. Their combined total was just like 7 points less than Biden.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Bloomberg, Al Gross, Evan McMullin, and Bill Walker.

[JMT]

Well, I guess Dan Osborn isn’t interested in this strategy:

https://twitter.com/janekleeb/status/1790781237272904135?s=46&t=-r8JGlJno4tb...

https://twitter.com/osbornforsenate/status/1790834759909757082?s=46&t=-r8JGl...