<div dir="ltr">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.<div><br></div><div>Joshua Katz</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br clear="all"><div><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr">Joshua A. Katz<div>Westbrook CT Planning Commission (L in R seat)</div></div></div></div>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Nov 14, 2014 at 10:31 PM, Scott L. <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:scott73@earthlink.net" target="_blank">scott73@earthlink.net</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Verdana"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana">From: Scott Lieberman<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Verdana"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Verdana"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana">I admit that a blog for Pagans is one of the last places
that I would look at for political advice, but nevertheless:<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Verdana"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Verdana"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Verdana"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana">GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Verdana"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Verdana"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Verdana"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana"><a href="http://wildhunt.org/2014/06/wiccan-minister-kathryn-jones-to-run-for-office-in-pennsylvania.html" target="_blank">http://wildhunt.org/2014/06/wiccan-minister-kathryn-jones-to-run-for-office-in-pennsylvania.html</a><u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Verdana"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Verdana"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Verdana"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><a href="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=" target="_blank">Deborah
Bender</a></span></font></span><span> </span><span><span>•</span></span><span> <a href="http://wildhunt.org/2014/06/wiccan-minister-kathryn-jones-to-run-for-office-in-pennsylvania.html#comment-1449263264" title="Sunday, June 22, 2014 4:54 PM" target="_blank">5 months ago</a> </span><u></u><u></u></p>
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<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">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.<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">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.)<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">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.<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><a href="http://disqus.com/Northern_Light_27/" target="_blank"><u></u><span style="text-decoration:none"><img border="0" width="92" height="92" src="cid:image003.jpg@01D00041.872668E0" alt="Avatar"></span></a><u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:.5in"><span><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><u></u>Northern_Light_27</span></font></span><u></u><u></u></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">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.<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:.5in"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><u></u> <u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:1.0in"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><a href="http://disqus.com/deborahbender/" target="_blank"><u></u><span style="text-decoration:none"><img border="0" width="92" height="92" src="cid:image004.jpg@01D00041.872668E0" alt="Avatar"></span></a><u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left:1.0in"><span><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt"><a href="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=" target="_blank"><u></u>Deborah Bender</a></span></font></span><span> </span><span><span>•</span></span><span> <a href="http://wildhunt.org/2014/06/wiccan-minister-kathryn-jones-to-run-for-office-in-pennsylvania.html#comment-1450567286" title="Monday, June 23, 2014 3:44 PM" target="_blank">5 months ago</a> </span><u></u><u></u></p>
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<p style="margin-left:1.0in"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">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.<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
<p style="margin-left:1.0in"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">When Quentin Kopp was running for an office in <u></u><u></u>San Francisco<u></u><u></u>, 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.<u></u><u></u></span></font></p>
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<li class="MsoNormal"><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-size:12.0pt">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. <u></u><u></u></span></font></li>
</ul>
</ul>
</ul>
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