Conservative Third Party Candidate Ramps Up Efforts
Despite multiple attempts at drafting, soliciting, cajoling, arm twisting, pleading, and oftentimes begging, conservative media and establishment types repeatedly failed to draft a third party candidate into the presidential race.
Right when all seemed lost for any third party movement to get on individual state ballots, raise the money necessary, or hire enough staff, Evan McMullin decided to throw his hat into the circus ring.
Facing long odds, McMullin’s campaign does seem a bit surreal in the sense that he’s actually running a bread and butter Republican campaign. The former CIA agent subscribes to a hawkish foreign policy and generally tows the traditional party line on social and domestic issues. Given the unpopularity of the current GOP nominee, one argument goes that McMullin gives an added incentive for disaffected GOPers to go out and vote.
One of the main issues facing his campaign is ballot access. According to a campaign memo provided to GeorgiaPol, McMullin’s team has succeeded in getting him on the ballot in Utah, Colorado, Iowa and Louisiana. While that’s only a whopping total of 29 electoral votes, they are also collecting signatures in Minnesota, Virginia, Idaho, and Wyoming. Assuming that they acquire ballot access in all of those, their total number of contested electoral votes increases to 59.
The memo goes on to say that their grassroots efforts are looking at getting on ballots in Oregon, North Dakota, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Arizona for another 35 electoral votes. Despite facing a steep uphill climb, the former policy director for the House GOP conference may be in position to contest 94 electoral votes by September 9th.
The campaign contends that in concert with the ballot initiatives described above, their efforts to be listed as the presidential candidate for other, smaller national parties will serve as their vehicle to even more ballots, including Florida and South Carolina.
Interestingly enough, the McMullin campaign readily admits it is counting on denying both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton the necessary 270 electoral votes needed to become president, asserting that McMullin’s “unifying message will prevail” once the presidency is kicked to the House of Representatives.
Perhaps acknowledging the tough road ahead, the end of the memo says that two points of their “end game” are to 1) Build up for a future, presumably one that no longer has only two major parties, and 2) standing up for what is right.
Conservatives wanting a clear conscience after polls close on November 8th may welcome a clear contrast from two very unpopular major party nominees. Indeed, McMullin’s positive message of integrity, respect, principle, and inclusiveness seems to be in direct opposition to what Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are offering the electorate with roughly two and a half months to Election Day.
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Cody
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We don’t have strong third parties because the third party candidates are bad or just unacceptable and in some cases, the dem or repub candidate is more acceptable. Gary Johnson would poll higher if he said he would enforce immigration laws and the tenth amendment. I see mostly generalities from McMullin. Statements that we need a simple, lean tax code and we need to have the strongest military in the world are useless statements w/o specifics.
It’s a chicken-and-egg thing though. Most good candidates aren’t going to waste their time when it is almost inevitable that they would lose.
First Past the Post elections (i.e. he with the most votes wins, even if the results are 40-30-18-13) default into two party systems. It just means that coalitions are formed before elections instead of after. So you have a Republican Party where, say, Evangelicals, Rural Whites, Office Park Guys, National Security People, and Anti-Immigrant Nationalists all have to bargain and make their presence known before coming together before the fall. Ditto a Democratic Party where Unions, Environmentalists, African Americans, Latinos, Suburban Soccer Moms, and the rest do the same. If you had Proportional Representation or something close to that which empowers third parties, then you’d just have elections where there were still two mainstream parties (Say the Clinton Party and the Ryan Party). Those parties would still get most of the votes (say, one of them wins 38-32) but to form an effective government, they’d have to make concessions to other minor parties that would then partner with them to form a government. So the Sanders Party and/or the Greens would get a cabinet ministry or two and some policy concessions to join the Government. Or the Ryan Party would have to negotiate with the Evangelical Unionists, Libertarians, and/or the Trump Party to form a majority. And if the Trump Party was intolerable, you might end up with a Centrist Grand Coalition between the two main parties to the exclusion of the extremists on either end. But you wouldn’t quite know what you got until the election was already done. Having that done in advance isn’t the worst thing in the world.
I’ve heard McMullin speak a couple of times and he’s not a crazy. He’s a conservative whose politics are informed by his CIA background and his Mormonism. That may bother some people.
gcp, I disagree, at least as far as candidates go. Platforms are for discarding and I don’t mind a lack of detailed proposals as long as they’re otherwise consistent and appropriate. It’s a different matter with elected officials. For example, the House Speaker needs to say something about his Path to Prosperity besides ‘and then we all lived happily ever’.
Cody, what has happened in this campaign to make you think Clinton and Trump have the same views on ‘integrity, respect, principle, and inclusiveness’?
Perhaps in the name of brevity I oversimplified my point. Let me try to (again, briefly) explain:
McMullin has made his campaign on the premise that Donald Trump is unfit for the presidency both morally and in terms of policy preferences. He has also said that HRC repeatedly has shown disregard for the spirit of many ethical and legal standards. I think he has presented himself as a policy and moral/ethical critique to both Trump and Clinton. I hope that clarified it to some extent!
In states like Utah, LA and Kentucky I suspect McMullin would pull more votes from Hillary than Trump. The #NeverTrump crowd who might otherwise hold their noses and vote for her would have a better option.
Frankly I am quite suspicious of this guy and what his real motives are. Ex-CIA doesn’t exactly give me a “warm fuzzy feeling.”
Who enters an event to lose? This lifelong government employee / political party official has absolutely no chance of getting 270 electoral votes. He is like the mini-me to Mittless who has been frustrated throughout this campaign at his inability to affect the outcome. McMullin might as well be from Atlanta where our sports teams have about the same expectation of winning as he does, none.
2 weeks in, McMullin at 9% in Utah:
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2015/PPP_Release_UT_82316.pdf
He and Gary Johnson are polling strong. Could get interesting to see if a third party candidate could actually end up with electoral votes if Trump continues to…Trump.
I found nothing in his platform I could align with. But the same could be said for both the other candidates.
Obviously, the problem is them. Fix it, guys.