Skip to main content

Now the GOP tries strong-arm tactics against Libertarians in Idaho

Not content with trying to talk Libertarians off the ballot in Texas, or suing to get them off in Pennsylvania, prominent Idaho GOPers including Representative Bill Salli are trying to convince all third-party candidates to drop out in the Idaho Senatorial race.

From Independent Political Report:

Three alternative candidates for the U.S. Senate in Idaho “were contacted by Republicans including Congressman Bill Sali, urging them to exit the race to help Republican Jim Risch,” the AP reports. Libertarian Kent Marmon, independent Rex Rammell, and independent Pro-Life (formerly Marvin Richardson) “all say they were asked to make an early exit.”

Marmon said Sali “urged him to leave because he could draw votes from Risch” and help Democrat Larry LaRocco. A Sali spokesman confirmed the reports, saying the calls were “political, nothing personal.” LaRocco “says the GOP ‘power elite’ is trying to manipulate the Nov. 4 election.”


Yeah, nothing personal, just don't interfere with our God-given right to be the only candidates on the ballot.

It is important to draw a distinction between Democrats and Republicans here, after the third example. Although Dems have occasionally tried it on Ralph Nader, this year we haven't seen them going after third party candidates, even though polls are now showing the Libertarians are drawing Democrat votes as well, especially in North Carolina, Georgia, and Indiana.

Maybe that's because the Dems think that they're in pretty good shape and can afford to look magnanimous; or maybe there really are some people starting to believe in equal ballot access.

Naw.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I think you need to check your facts Steve - I don't have the exact states at hand right now, but I distinctly recall Democrats doing things to get candidates off the ballot during this cycle - and being nastier about it than just asking the candidate to withdraw (which is a pretty weak approach, as it depends on the candidate cooperating)

The Democrats have been challenging sigs, and or petitioning methods specifically to keep people off the ballot by LEGAL methods - IIRC, Maine was one of the states in question...

I'm sure if you checked w/ Richard Winger from Ballot Access News, he could cite multiple instances for you...

Popular posts from this blog

Comment Rescue (?) and child-related gun violence in Delaware

In my post about the idiotic over-reaction to a New Jersey 10-year-old posing with his new squirrel rifle , Dana Garrett left me this response: One waits, apparently in vain, for you to post the annual rates of children who either shoot themselves or someone else with a gun. But then you Libertarians are notoriously ambivalent to and silent about data and facts and would rather talk abstract principles and fear monger (like the government will confiscate your guns). It doesn't require any degree of subtlety to see why you are data and fact adverse. The facts indicate we have a crisis with gun violence and accidents in the USA, and Libertarians offer nothing credible to address it. Lives, even the lives of children, get sacrificed to the fetishism of liberty. That's intellectual cowardice. OK, Dana, let's talk facts. According to the Children's Defense Fund , which is itself only querying the CDCP data base, fewer than 10 children/teens were killed per year in Delaw

With apologies to Hube: dopey WNJ comments of the week

(Well, Hube, at least I'm pulling out Facebook comments and not poaching on your preserve in the Letters.) You will all remember the case this week of the photo of the young man posing with the .22LR squirrel rifle that his Dad got him for his birthday with resulted in Family Services and the local police attempting to search his house.  The story itself is a travesty since neither the father nor the boy had done anything remotely illegal (and check out the picture for how careful the son is being not to have his finger inside the trigger guard when the photo was taken). But the incident is chiefly important for revealing in the Comments Section--within Delaware--the fact that many backers of "common sense gun laws" really do have the elimination of 2nd Amendment rights and eventual outright confiscation of all privately held firearms as their objective: Let's run that by again: Elliot Jacobson says, This instance is not a case of a father bonding with h

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?