Election 2008

Friday, August 22nd
Charles Jay
The Boston Tea Party

The Boston Tea Party is a relatively recent addition to the American political landscape.  Newly formed in 2006, this is their first presidential election. Charles Jay, their nominee, has stated that, “the BTP is dedicated to reducing the size, scope, and power of government — at all levels, for all purposes.”  Their political agenda is strongly influenced by Libertarian ideology — and Jay regards his party both as an offshoot from and alternative to the traditional Libertarian Party.

One prominent characteristic setting the BTP apart fromsome of the more  traditional players in the third-party spectrum has been it’s reliance on the web as a primary medium for organizing.  To my knowledge, the BTP is the first political party ever to hold its’ nominating convention online.

“The internet has been a godsend …it draws people more closely into the process, and gives people an opportunity to interact with eachother and coalesce even though they come from different parts of the country,” Jay stated in a live interview on KHSU-FM. “Remember, if I have to travel across the country I’m going to spend a thousand or fifteen hundred dollars.  But if I took that kind of money and put it into marketing and search engine optimization, for example, I could probably reach a lot more people and go a lot farther with it.”

Third parties tend to work with a painfully small budget.  They typically run a whole campaign on the same kind of money that establishment party campaigns can afford to pay one single senior staffer – fifty or sixty thousand dollars in some cases (and even less in many others).   Most of their funding goes toward covering expenses associated with the arduous process of ballot access – and that doesn’t leave much room for payroll.  Or the all-important task of getting the word out.

“In the past, if you were running on behalf of one of the smaller parties – it was a very difficult process.”

Although the two establishment parties can safely rely on free air-time from major national media outlets, third party candidates have to pay dearly for that kind of exposure. The mainstream media (where most mainstream voters get their news) generally tends to ignore candidates deemed unlikely to take the White House come November.

When asked about his goals for the BTP, Jay said, “I think one of the goals was to get on [the ballot] in some states, and to be able to get some coverage in those states.  I think increasing the membership is certainly one thing we’ve set as an objective – and maybe to provide some kind of a springboard for us to go forward and move into some issue campaigns. We need to learn how to do this whole process so that we can get much more out of it in the next cycle two years from now.”

If you want to find out more about Jay’s campaign with the Boston Tea Party, you can find him online at www.cj08.com, or the BTP’s official site, www.bostontea.us.

Interview:
Charles Jay on KHSU-FM’s “Homepage,” (8-22-08)

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Friday, August 15th
Gene Amondson
The Prohibition Party



March 2008, Gene (left) making a documentary on prohibition.  Courtesy of GeneAmondson.com.

The Prohibition Party is is one of the oldest and smallest political parties still active in the electoral process. Unsurprisingly, the platform hasn’t changed much since the end America’s ban on alcohol brought an untimely end to the bootlegging industry in 1933.

It seems fair to argue that America eventually took up a new prohibition under the banner of a War on Drugs.

Organizations like NORML (the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws) refer to the illegal status of marijuana in terms of a prohibition, but the Prohibition Party’s nominee for President of the United States has advocated for legalization.

“If I could exchange marijuana for alcohol, I’d do it in a minute. Marijuana makes you go to sleep, makes you stupid, and makes you not go to work… If I could trade it for alcohol, I’d be glad to trade it, but alcohol and meth are the two things that make people violent.”

Gene argues that the Prohibition Era of the early 20th century were the best 13 years in American history. He believes that prisons, hospitals, and mental institutions all across the country will slowly empty out.

“Everything starts with alcohol. I don’t know as much about drinking as a little kid that wades through wine bottles and beer cans to get to school and hope nobody knows he came from a home where his folks drink… That’s the first drug that’s most available. You could get rid of all the other drugs and the crime scene would not change at all because they’d just to the one they could get.”

If you’d like to find out more about Amondson’s campaign, you can find him online at www.geneamondson.com.

Interview:
Gene Amondson on KHSU-FM’s Homepage

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Friday, August 8th
Gloria La Riva
Party for Socialism and Liberation

Socialism got a lot of attention in the 2008 election.  Not since 1920, when Eugene Debs ran a jail-house campaign for President (winning roughly 4% of the popular vote), have so many people been worried about the notion of a socialist president.  And while John McCain is throwing the word around as an insult, are some Americans are wearing it proudly.

The PSL is one of several Socialst parties fielding candidates this year. Socialist Party USA has nominated Brian Moore, of Florida. There’s also the Peace and Freedom Party (PFP) which has put independent candidate Ralph Nader on the ballot in California.

La Riva and Moore also competed for the PFP nomination, alongisde Cynthia McKinney from Green Party USA.

In an interview on August 8th, La Riva discussed the rigors of getting on the ballot.

“The elections are very much stacked against anyone who’s not a democrat or republican.  For example, democrats don’t have to get on the ballot in any state for the presidential elections.  They’re on permanently.”

“The whole structure of the U.S. election system perpetuates their presence.  Everybody identifies them as the only parties, and thinks that we have a multi-party democracy.    Other parties, like ourselves, have to go state to state.  Some are easy, some are very hard — California is near-impossible.”

“We’re going to be on in about 15 states.  It’s a monumental achievement and yet – we will not get the media access that used to be required.  It used to be if gained ballot access in ten states you could reasonably expect equal time.”

In the end, La Riva gained ballot access in 12 states — meaning that if she won all twelve of them she would still only have 137 electoral votes..  Needless to say, she was not invited to this year’s televised presidential debates. There’s a strong argument to be made that she should be excluded since it’s not possible for her to win the 270 electoral votes required to take the White House — but one does have to wonder how we stand to gain as a nation by ignoring her viewpoints. 

Interview:
Gloria La Riva on KHSU-FM’s Homepage

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Friday, August 1st
Frank McEnulty
The New American Independent Party



Frank McEnulty, of the NAIP, hails from Orange County, CA.  He identifies himself as a fiscal conservative.
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Interview:
Frank McEnulty on KHSU-FM’s Homepage

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Friday, July 25th
Chuck Baldwin
The Constitution Party

In the blogosphere, the Constitution Party is generally recognized as a right of center group which advocates the Goldwater-era doctrine of small government.  Their nominee, Chuck Baldwin,

Baldwin has stated that his first day in office will be the last day imprisonment for former border patrol agents Ramos and Campion.  Although I was unfamiliar with this subject at the time of our interview, it turns out that I was in for an education.  These two might arguably constitute “political prisoners,” but not of the typical variety.

Dr. Jared Ball, who ran unsuccessfully for the nomination of the Green Party, made a very similar statement when campaigning late last year.  Dr. Ball also said that his highest priority in the oval office would be to free political prisoners — but he was referring to more controversial figures like the former Black Panther Mumia Abu Jamal and various detainees in the “War on Terror.”

The Constitution Party argues that Baldwin argues that America is not, and never has been, a democracy. I think that by far the most interesting moment in the interview arises from a disagreement on the nature of r

Interview:
Chuck Baldwin on KHSU-FM’s Homepage Part 1
Chuck Baldwin on KHSU-FM’s Homepage Part 2

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Friday, July 18th
Brian Moore, Socialist Party USA

This afternoon on KHSU-FM’s “Homepage,” Brian Moore joined us to discuss his campaign, platform, and efforts to gain ballot access. He’s suggested some of the most interesting ideas to come out of this year’s election  cycle. Instead of a “windfall profit tax” he’s calling for the nationalization of the oil industry, among other pillars of the corporate state. He’s also arguing for the establishment of a “minimum income,” an idea that Dr. Martin Luther King advocated in his book, Chaos or Community: Where do we go from here?

Moore is not the first candidate to adopt this issue in the 2008 election. Dr. Jared Ball, of FreeMix Radio and VoxUnion.com, also called for a minimum income in his unsuccessful bid for the Green Party’s presidential nomination.

In earily August, Moore will be joining Gloria La Riva (Party for Socialism and Liberation, Cynthia McKinney (Green Party), and Ralph Nader (Independent) at the Peace and Freedom Party’s (PFP’s) convention in Sacramento. The PFP describes itself as California’s oldest Feminist\Socialist party, having been on the ballot here since 1968.

If you want to find out more about Moore’s campaign, you can find him online at www.votebrianmoore.com.

Interview:
Brian Moore on KHSU-FM’s Homepage