Third parties try to break through

Steve Brawner

Voters in Arkansas will have a third-party choice in some races next year after the Libertarian Party qualified for the ballot last week.

Secretary of State John Thurston certified the party had collected more than the required 10,000 registered voters’ signatures.

Libertarians call themselves the “party of principle.” They favor very limited government but don’t fit into the left-right spectrum. A typical candidate might support very liberal drug laws while also seeking to cut or eliminate many or most government programs.

I’ve covered several of their nominating conventions and can say this: They’re trying. Last year, they fielded candidates for governor, lieutenant governor, U.S. Senate, three congressional races and 40 state legislative races. Twenty-six of the state legislative races would have been uncontested otherwise.

Their highest- profile candidate was their one for governor, Ricky Harrington. If he had reached 3 percent support, then the party would have automatically qualified for this year’s ballot without needing signatures. But he only managed 1.8 percent, so the Libertarians remained a “new” party under the law.

At least it was only 10,000 signatures required. The party had won a court case after lawmakers in 2019 passed a law requiring parties to collect the equivalent of 3 percent of the voters in the last gubernatorial election. If that law had stood, Libertarians would have had to collect 27,212 signatures. They actually collected 10,932 valid ones. A judge had granted a preliminary injunction in 2019 and declared it unconstitutional Iast year.

Lawmakers rescinded the law this year through legislation sponsored by Sen. Kim Hammer, R-Benton. The law even lets Libertarians nominate candidates when they have their convention in February. That’s actually a bit of an advantage. Republicans and Democrats will be filing for office this Nov. 6-14, so the Libertarians will know who is running for which offices, and who doesn’t have an opponent yet.

The Libertarians are not the only third-party effort in Arkansas. Others will field candidates in the presidential race. Parties must collect 5,000 signatures to do that. Previously it was 1,000. In 2020 with that lower threshold, 11 third party candidates were on the ballot, ranging from the very conservative Constitution Party to the Socialists. Together, they collected about 3 percent of the vote, either from true believers or from Arkansans who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Joe Biden or Donald Trump.

Two other efforts are worth watching.

One is the Forward Party, a new party nationally that is organizing in Arkansas. The Forwardists are a non-ideological centrist party that doesn’t have a national platform beyond a commitment to election reform and nonpartisan politics. It does not intend to run a presidential candidate next year or any other candidate in Arkansas, but 15 Forwardists are running in five states in this November’s elections.

The other effort, No Labels, is a national good-government group that has tried to create a coalition of centrist Democrats and Republicans in Congress called the Problem Solvers. While it’s not forming a party, it’s thinking very seriously this cycle of nominating an independent presidential candidate as an alternative if the choices are Biden and Trump.

Third parties face uphill battles. Republicans and Democrats have history, established party structures, the law and money on their side. They also benefit from negative partisanship, which is the feeling among many voters that they must vote for the Republican or Democrat in order to stop the Democrat or Republican. Furthermore, it can be argued that third parties get small percentages of the vote because their views appeal to small percentages of voters. There aren’t many socialists in Arkansas.

Still, they can play an important role in giving Arkansans a choice and a voice. It is likely no coincidence that the federal budget got balanced after Ross Perot won 19 percent of the presidential vote in 1992 after campaigning on balancing the budget.

I will disclose that I sometimes vote for them when I cannot vote for the Republican or Democrat. I don’t think we need 13 candidates running for president. But given the choices Republicans and Democrats sometimes give us in that race, there are many years when I appreciate having more than two.

••• Steve Brawner is a syndicated columnist published in 16 outlets in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com. Follow him on Twitter at @stevebrawner.