[Lnc-business] Pagans advising Libertarians?

[Joshua Katz]

I generally agree, but do not agree about state rep races that are
considered 'safe' being competitive.  If the idea is to get a head to head
race, there's generally a reason the other old party didn't run.

Joshua Katz

Joshua A. Katz
Westbrook CT Planning Commission (L in R seat)

On Fri, Nov 14, 2014 at 10:31 PM, Scott L. <scott73 at earthlink.net> wrote:

>    From:  Scott Lieberman
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> I admit that a blog for Pagans is one of the last places that I would look
> at for political advice, but nevertheless:
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> GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
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> http://wildhunt.org/2014/06/wiccan-minister-kathryn-jones-to-run-for-office-in-pennsylvania.html
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> Deborah Bender
> <http://disqus.com/embed/comments/?base=default&disqus_version=c6ed14e4&f=the-wildhunt&t_i=13211%20http%3A%2F%2Fwildhunt.org%2F%3Fp%3D13211&t_u=http%3A%2F%2Fwildhunt.org%2F2014%2F06%2Fwiccan-minister-kathryn-jones-to-run-for-office-in-pennsylvania.html&t_e=Wiccan%20Minister%20Kathryn%20Jones%20to%20Run%20for%20Office%20in%20Pennsylvania&t_d=Wiccan%20Minister%20Kathryn%20Jones%20to%20Run%20for%20Office%20in%20Pennsylvania&t_t=Wiccan%20Minister%20Kathryn%20Jones%20to%20Run%20for%20Office%20in%20Pennsylvania&s_o=default&l=>
> • 5 months ago
> <http://wildhunt.org/2014/06/wiccan-minister-kathryn-jones-to-run-for-office-in-pennsylvania.html#comment-1449263264>
>
> More on the subject of third party candidates. At various times, I've been
> registered as a voter with three different third parties, though I never
> was an activist in any of them. In the decades that I've been following the
> fortunes of these parties, none of them has had any electoral success other
> than one candidate who was elected to a single term in the state
> legislature and promptly changed her party affiliation to advance her
> career (it didn't work). Rarely do their candidates even get enough votes
> to affect which of the major party candidates wins.
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> In a state with a large and growing number of independent registered
> voters, third parties ought to be winning elections once in a while.
> Certainly the deck is stacked against third parties in a non-parliamentary
> system, but IMHO a greater reason for the dismal failure of these parties
> to do the most important job of a political party, which is to elect their
> candidates, is their electoral strategy. Third parties tend to put most of
> their energy into campaigning for candidates at the top of the state ticket
> and for national office; these candidates have no chance of winning.
> Because the party knows they have no chance of winning, they frequently
> nominate celebrities and party activists who don't have relevant experience
> or qualifications for the post they are running for. (An exception is third
> party nominations for the more technocratic statewide offices like
> controller. These offices are less political and third parties can
> sometimes find qualified ordinary citizens to run for them.)
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> Because their candidates always lose, all these parties have is a bench of
> perennial losers. No wonder they aren't taken seriously. In this country
> the way to build a political party that fields more than protest candidates
> is to forget about the glamour jobs and make a serious effort to elect 1)
> candidates for local offices where they can build local support and 2)
> candidates for state assembly in districts that have historically been safe
> seats for one of the major parties, which is most of them. Once a candidate
> has been elected, he or she can climb the ladder in the normal fashion: run
> for re-election, run for another local post, serve one or two terms in it,
> build a resume, a track record and a contact list of supporters and allies.
> Then run for a more powerful office as a credible candidate.
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> [image: Avatar] <http://disqus.com/Northern_Light_27/>
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> Northern_Light_27
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> All I can say is ^^^THIS! I also see the shoot-self-in-foot strategy with
> third parties and I don't understand it at all. As much as I hate to cite
> them as an example, people should be paying attention to how the Christian
> right took over the Republican party-- pretty much exactly the way you
> stated. Going for the smallest, most local positions and building a turnout
> machine that produced passionate voters for positions that were otherwise a
> political afterthought, and then slowly proving the potency of that
> reliable turnout machine for more and more powerful offices. It isn't quick
> or easy, but a quick look at the mess we're dealing with in this country as
> a result of that strategy proves that it really works. It's such an obvious
> lesson that I don't get why progressive groups have proven so incapable of
> learning from it.
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> [image: Avatar] <http://disqus.com/deborahbender/>
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> Deborah Bender
> <http://disqus.com/embed/comments/?base=default&disqus_version=c6ed14e4&f=the-wildhunt&t_i=13211%20http%3A%2F%2Fwildhunt.org%2F%3Fp%3D13211&t_u=http%3A%2F%2Fwildhunt.org%2F2014%2F06%2Fwiccan-minister-kathryn-jones-to-run-for-office-in-pennsylvania.html&t_e=Wiccan%20Minister%20Kathryn%20Jones%20to%20Run%20for%20Office%20in%20Pennsylvania&t_d=Wiccan%20Minister%20Kathryn%20Jones%20to%20Run%20for%20Office%20in%20Pennsylvania&t_t=Wiccan%20Minister%20Kathryn%20Jones%20to%20Run%20for%20Office%20in%20Pennsylvania&s_o=default&l=>
>  • 5 months ago
> <http://wildhunt.org/2014/06/wiccan-minister-kathryn-jones-to-run-for-office-in-pennsylvania.html#comment-1450567286>
>
> I definitely had the Christian Right in mind. Besides the fact that shoe
> leather and personableness can beat money in a local election, local
> elections often have a low turnout and three-quarters of the voters know
> little or nothing about the candidates. That means that a single issue,
> point of information or conversation can sway the voter to check off your
> party's candidate instead of any of the others.
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> When Quentin Kopp was running for an office in San Francisco, I voted for
> him even though he held more conservative positions than I usually favor,
> simply because he stood outside my local supermarket and shook my hand, and
> none of his opponents did.
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>     - A small but determined faction of activists can get their people
>          onto a school board running either a stealth campaign or an open one,
>          because the vast majority of voters are uninformed and apathetic. The
>          Christian Right has used this tactic successfully again and again.
>
>
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