Tag Archives: Green Party

Quick updates

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What do you know? They’re acting like they’re having an actual congressional race in the 9th District Memphis. (HT: @Kontji)

The Green Party often attracts self-described progressive Democrats. And about as often, it seems, they return whence they came. (HT: NPP)

Blogging is dead. Long live blogging! There is a new conservative voice on the scene, subtitled “Political Commentary from Fly-Over Country.” Oscar Brock is a Republican State Executive Committee member and served as former party chair Robin Smith’s congressional campaign treasurer in 2010. He is also a regional coordinator for the Romney/Ryan campaign.

Will the joke that keeps on giving, start taking away? Opinions vary on how offensive the joke actually is, but most agree that it was a stupid move on Paul Smith’s part to include it on an official meeting agenda. The Chattanooga Times editorial page is as incredulous as I am about any connection between printing the joke and comments made previously by U.S. Rep. Todd Akin about rape. What??

The list of candidates for Chattanooga City Council keeps growing. It’s still very quiet over here in my part of town, though.

Steck in the middle with you (Greens)

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The Tennessee Secretary of State’s office has published the list of minor party candidates for the November election. They’re all together on a separate file from the Republican, Democratic, and independent candidates.

All but one of the candidates are nominees of the Green Party of Tennessee.

The lone Constitution Party candidate, who is running in the U.S. Senate race, must feel some affinity for his Green counterparts, though. After all, he hails from Greeneville. And their two parties joined together in the legal challenge to Tennessee’s ballot access laws.

And his name is Kermit.

More from Tom Humphrey.

It’s a tad easier being Green

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For the first* time in recent memory (1968, if I read my history right**), voters in some Tennessee legislative districts will see a party label next to candidates’ names other than (DEM) or (REP). Over objections from attorneys for the State of Tennessee (why?), a federal judge ruled former ballot access restrictions unconstitutional, and granted the Constitution Party of Tennessee and Green Party of Tennessee ballot access.

(For reasons unknown to me, even though the Libertarian Party of Tennessee was a plaintiff in the original lawsuit that challenged ballot access laws, it did not join the other two parties in the latest round of appeals, the ruling on which granted automatic ballot access to the two plaintiffs based on their prior organizing efforts.)

The state Green Party held its convention in Nashville in May of this year and nominated several candidates for state and federal office.

Since the party chose its candidates via convention, these names won’t be on the upcoming August primary ballot, but will appear in the general election along with other parties’ nominees and independent candidates in November.

I’ll be adding the names and related info to the respective voter guide pages (or awesome new capability that replaces them) soon.

*In the 2000 election, some minor president/vice president candidate tickets were given a party label, but this was not considered full statewide ballot access for those parties.

**According to Wikipedia, the last “third” party with fully recognized ballot access in Tennessee was the American Independent Party, later named the American Party, which ran George Wallace for president in 1968. Third party access therefore literally has not been seen in my lifetime, until now. (I was born just after the November 1968 election.)

Constitution and Green Parties gain ballot access

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There is big news in the ongoing battle for minor party ballot recognition in Tennessee. If you’ll recall, a federal judge struck down Tennessee’s ballot access laws as unconstitutional, after a lawsuit by the respective state entities of the Constitution Party, the Green Party, and the Libertarian Party.

As a result, the Tennessee General Assembly changed the law in 2011. However, the parties saw the change as nominal at best, and so two of them (Constitution and Green) sued again. The court agreed, and issued a ruling that covers multiple fronts. From the Tennesseean, which Richard Winger faintly praised as the only news outlet to report on the story:

[Judge William J.] Haynes declared that minor parties cannot be forced to conduct primaries, as required by state law. Plaintiffs’ Attorney Alan Woodruff says primaries are too expensive for smaller parties, and that nominating conventions would relieve that burden.

The judge enjoined the state from banning the words “independent” and “nonpartisan” in a party’s name as it appears on a ballot, stating the ban violates free speech rights.

He said the state’s requirement that major parties be listed highest on ballots followed by minor parties was unlawful. He ordered the state to hold a drawing to determine ballot order.

Winger also correctly notes that the Nashville paper left out a key element of the story, namely that, based on past petition performance, the Constitution and Green parties are automatically included on the 2012 ballot in this state:

The decision also puts the Constitution and Green Parties on the 2012 ballot, based on the evidence that in the recent past, both parties did collect several thousand signatures on petitions to get on the Tennessee ballot.

Of course, now they need to round up some candidates to run. Also, I wonder if the Tennessee Libertarian Party regrets its decision not to join in the latest lawsuit. (That said, Winger points out that they may not have been automatically ballot-qualified even if they had.)

Incidentally, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs in this suit is Alan Woodruff, who is running for Congress in the 1st District—as a “Blue Dog” Democrat.