Third Party Watch

From the Green Party:

Green Party leaders called for national defeat of the $300 billion Farm Bill, calling it a capitulation to major agribusiness interests and a blow to small farmers.

“While the bill contains a funding for nutrition and some environmental reforms, the bill would provide huge subsidies for powerful agricultural corporations, giving them greater power [...]

Today is Mike Gravel’s birthday and he’s celebrating with this YouTube. He also (according to an e-mail I received from his campaign) just won a presidential straw poll in West Virginia. Here are the numbers they have provided TPW:

Below are the straw poll results from the West Virginia LP Convention, held yesterday.

Senator Mike [...]

From the Root for America campaign:

Libertarian Presidential candidate Wayne Allyn Root will be traveling to New York for a Libertarian Presidential debate on Fox Business Channel on Friday May 16th. Former United States Senator Mike Gravel has agreed to debate Root. Former Congressman Barr has also been invited by Fox. Root will appear on other [...]

From Townhall:

There’s scant prospect of any viable third party, however, when potential fringe contenders have an air of “round-up-the-usual suspects”—Ralph Nader, Cynthia McKinney, Mike Gravel, Bob Barr, and Chuck Baldwin. Soaring turnout in primaries shows no mass desertion from the two-party system, and the Gallup Poll of under-30 voters notes a scant 8%—unchanged from four [...]

The title was lifted to show how a Reason Facebook-promoted event is currently being billed. Here are the details provided:

A debate on the libertarian vote in 2008

Event Host: Reason magazine
Type: Music/Arts – Jam Session
Date: Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Time: 4:30pm – 8:00pm
Location: Reason
Street:1747 Connecticut Ave NW
City/Town: Washington, DC

Description: As the Republicans settled on John McCain [...]

For the record, I’m still in love with Liv aka Mona aka Ron Paul Girl. While Gravel is busy chasing after Obama Girl, I’m at least getting some internet play from Ron Paul Girl. Mona still provides some linky-love to one of my websites and hasn’t dropped me as a Facebook friend (yet).

Here’s Ron [...]

From the Libertarian Party blog:

Wayne Allyn Root
LD ‘08: $15,764.00
Individual: $29,988.00
Candidate: $4,421.90

Daniel Imperato
LD ‘08: $10,474.00
Individual: $0.00
Candidate: $0.00

Michael Jingozian
LD ‘08: $8,490.00
Individual: $13,090.79
Candidate: $0.00

Mike Gravel*^
LD ‘08: $895.00
Individual: $447,378.97
Candidate: $0.00

Steve Kubby**
LD ‘08: $1,280.00
Total: $2,951.22

Alden Link
LD ‘08: $885.00
Individual: $259.00
Candidate: $4,225.00

George Phillies
LD ‘08: n/a
Individual: $16,727.75
Candidate: $81,527.01

Mary Ruwart***
LD ‘08: $1,060.00
Individual: n/a
Candidate: n/a

Christine Smith**
LD ‘08: $2,460.00
Total: $16,244.00

Bob Barr (still in Presidential exploratory phase):
Total [...]

Ron Paul finished third in the Indiana and North Carolina primaries tonight, but it looks like those showings of 8% and 7% respectively will be enough to push him past the one million vote mark.

As of this moment, Paul has added 60,757 votes to his total… with 15% of the votes still to be counted [...]

Over the last few days, people have been commenting about various endorsements for Libertarian Party presidential candidates. While one can learn something about a candidate by these endorsements, one can also learn from who is criticizing the candidates.

Former Libertarian Party vice-presidential candidate Chris Bennett provides the latest published criticism of Wayne Allyn Root I’ve [...]

While he hadn’t joined the Libertarian Party at this time, here’s recent footage of Mike Gravel:

John McCaslin reports that Bob Barr will be a guest at the 2008 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. In a different article, McCaslin reports the following:

Former Republican congressman and rumored 2008 Libertarian Party candidate for president Bob Barr was seen huddling with pundits and leaders of various state-based center-right and libertarian think tanks and [...]

Dave Weigel just interviewed Mike Gravel. Having spent some time with Gravel a couple of weekends ago and knowing Weigel pretty well, I can certainly imagine the facial expressions and other nuances during this exchange:

GRAVEL: Who would I be a good vice presidential pick for? I don’t know if the Libertarian Party has had, [...]

From Gravel 2008:

Two days ago I attended an event to address both one of the most disturbing and overlooked consequences of the Iraq War. Attended by both scientists and Iraq veterans, I heard how depleted-uranium weapons and ammunition have turned Iraq into a nation littered with radioactive fallout. We [...]

We thought we’d provide some video of the key independent and third party contenders for the presidential race in 2008. Our goal was to provide footage of video which (for the most part) hasn’t ever been embedded at Third Party Watch before. When possible, we selected video from the candidate’s official YouTube channel [...]

Here are some recent news stories about Libertarian presidential hopefuls that weren’t generated by Third Party Watch. I’m mixing some news and some opinion in this article.

Bob Barr at Newsmax:

Best quote: “Former Republican Rep. Bob Barr is seen as the Libertarian Party’s most likely presidential candidate — and he could wind up torpedoing John [...]

While I don’t normally post inside information provided on the Libertarian Party State Chair’s list in a public forum, there are several reports there (plus a bit more additional information) pertaining to several LP State Conventions which would be of interest to our readers. I’m not aware of any reason for confidentially to be [...]

Over at American conservatism’s home on the web, Town hall, Paul Jacob has a look at the Libertarian Party:

[I] prefer to think of the persistence of the Libertarian Party as charming, not pathetic. Everything is stacked against them. The two parties in charge have made sure that it is very hard for “minor parties” to [...]

ConnieTalk provides a great wrap-up of where third party and independent presidential candidates will be this weekend:

Constitution Party: Former Republican Alan Keyes is now running his presidential campaign from the Constitution Party. The former UN Ambassador under Ronald Reagan discussed his recent break from the GOP at an April 15th rally in Hazleton, [...]

Last week, we covered Ken Rudin’s view over at NPR of the ongoing Libertarian presidential race. At the end of this week’s column, he highlights correspondence he’s received about last week’s column:

GIVE ME LIBERTY OR GIVE ME MONTICELLO: Lots of appreciative notes following last week’s column that focused on the surprising battle for [...]