July 25, 2024 12:10 PM UTC

Republican Effort to Promote Third Party Presidential Candidates Hits Snag in Colorado

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• by: Colorado Pols

The campaign of worm-brained Presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. continues to run into snags.

As Andy Kenney reports for Colorado Public Radio, Worm-F-K, Jr. isn’t likely to be on Colorado’s Presidential ballot as a Libertarian candidate after all:

A fight over which candidate will represent the Libertarian Party on Colorado’s presidential ballot may be ending. The party’s national nominee, Chase Oliver, is set to appear on the state’s ballots as the Libertarian candidate, his campaign announced.

An effort to replace Oliver with independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. appears to have failed. But Kennedy may still appear as an independent candidate in Colorado instead.

Libertarians have battled for weeks over which of two candidates would be their nominee in the state. State party leaders wanted to go with Kennedy. Others said the nominee should be Oliver since he won the party’s nomination at its national convention in May.

Despite Oliver securing a place on the ballot, Kennedy has a backup option: His campaign submitted thousands of signatures to guarantee him a spot on the ballot, no matter what happened with the effort to make him the Libertarian candidate. The state hasn’t yet confirmed if he submitted enough signatures.

As Kenney explains, Chase Oliver owes a thank you note to one sharp-witted Libertarian in Colorado:

When the state party announced their plan to nominate Kennedy instead of Oliver, Caryn Ann Harlos was infuriated. She believed state party leaders were breaking their agreements with the national party and disobeying the will of the national convention.

Harlos, a Castle Rock resident who is also the national party secretary for the Libertarian Party, rushed to file nominating paperwork for Oliver after she heard of the state party’s plan to choose RFK.

That appears to have set off a few weeks of legal maneuvering, including an attempt by someone in the party to withdraw Oliver’s nomination. But the Colorado Secretary of State’s office rejected those efforts, saying that only Oliver and ter Maat could withdraw themselves — which, of course, they didn’t want to do.

Whether or not RFK makes the ballot in Colorado probably won’t make much of a difference in the outcome; after all, Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by 14 points in Colorado in 2020 to solidify our “Blue State” status. But the presence of third-party candidates in key battleground states such as Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin is still a very relevant topic.

Before Republican political operatives had to start worrying about Vice President Kamala Harris as the presumptive Democratic nominee for President, they were spending a lot of time and effort on trying to get third party candidates on ballots across the country in an effort to peel away potential votes from President Biden. As The Associated Press reported on July 16:

Libertarians in Colorado want to put Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the ballot to create chaos.

Petition drives for Cornel West in Virginia and North Carolina are being run by groups with Republican ties.

And in Arizona, a convicted fraudster who’s been repeatedly investigated for using deceptive tactics to gather signatures for conservative groups is also working on West’s behalf…

…“We’ve known for years that Donald Trump can’t get 50% of the vote. His people know that. And they know they need to find ways to win. One way to do that is propping up third-party candidates,” said Josh Schwerin, a spokesman for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, which many Democrats believe she lost because the Green Party played spoiler.

West’s campaign did not respond to an email seeking comment. The Trump and Kennedy campaigns also did not respond to inquiries.

Democrats are paying close attention to these efforts, though the ultimate impact of third party candidates can be overstated. As Pew Research noted in June:

Not only did support for third-party and independent candidates tend to decline over the course of their campaigns, but their vote shares often came in lower than polls suggested they might.

There’s also a new question emerging: Whether or not RFK, Jr. is even still capable of being a viable Presidential candidate at all.

As POLITICO reports:

Former President Donald Trump has solidified Republican support in the wake of an assassination attempt and unity-building national convention, while Vice President Kamala Harris has seamlessly stepped into the Democratic nomination after President Joe Biden withdrew his candidacy.

But Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is nowhere to be seen.

Instead of campaigning, the independent challenger has canceled multiple campaign events and discussed dropping out of the race and backing Trump. Instead of raising serious donations, he’s continuing to rely on his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, and set up a joint fundraising committee with the Libertarian Party. Instead of moving up in the polls, where he’s been stagnant for months, Kennedy has called for himself to be picked as the Democratic nominee to replace Biden.

Kennedy is also trying, sort of, to dispute reports that he was talking with Trump about a job:

Kennedy had to issue a statement on social media during the Republican National Convention last week to deny he was leaving the race — after he took a private meeting in Milwaukee with Trump to discuss dropping out. Officially, his campaign continues to insist he’s “surging,” including in an email to supporters on Tuesday morning.

The campaign did not respond to a request for comment and list of questions for this story.

 

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We’ve discussed in this space that Kamala Harris’s candidacy seems to have changed everything in the race for President. The enthusiasm for her campaign may also be having the effect of weakening voter interest in a third option for President.

Polls have shown for more than a year that voters didn’t want a rematch of Biden and Trump; now that the rematch is out the window, perhaps worm-brained candidates are going with it.