One Man’s Opinion: No Name...No Way

By Bill Crane

A recent Quinnipiac University poll found that 47% of registered voters in America would consider voting for a third-party candidate for president. That gets quickly worse when you put a name on that third party or candidate.

In the fifty-seven presidential elections since President George Washington (who ran as an Independent, but became the figurehead of the Federalist Party), third-party candidates have garnered at least 5% of the vote on only twelve occasions. Only once has a third party supplanted either of the two primary parties at the time of an election. The 1912 election saw Bull Moose “Progressive Party” nominee, former President Teddy Roosevelt, win 88 Electoral College votes, surpassing his handpicked successor and the GOP nominee, but still losing to Democrat and soon-to-be President Woodrow Wilson.

In most presidential elections where third, fourth, or fifth parties have even been a factor, they have played the role of spoiler, drawing votes mainly from the party they dropped away from, typically handing victory to the opposition. Think H. Ross Perot’s knockdown of a second term for President George H.W. Bush against Bill Clinton, or Ralph Nader’s 2000 White House run as the Green Party nominee, peeling just enough votes off of then Vice President Al Gore in the state of Florida to give then Texas Governor George W. Bush the popular and electoral votes of

Florida, which along with a favorable US Supreme Court ruling, gave Bush the White House in January of 2001.

This brings me to West Virginia US Senator Joe Manchin, an independent-minded Democrat in an increasingly GOP-leaning state. When West Virginia’s Governor Jim Justice won his office in 2016 (while campaigning as a Democrat), he almost immediately switched parties to the GOP, subsequently winning re-election. Justice is term-limited and is now running as a Republican for Manchin’s seat in the US Senate in 2024.

Recently, Manchin traveled to New Hampshire to speak to a massive crowd about the possibility of him running for president, as the lead of a new party called “The No Names” – sort of a political equivalent of generics, with a platform more focused on finding solutions than party seniority or pork. It sounds like a great concept, except the premise is more fantasy than reality. Joining Manchin onstage were former Connecticut senator and Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Lieberman and Jon Huntsman, a former GOP governor of Utah.

Lieberman, a longtime centrist, is credited with a lousy debate performance, giving a much-needed “win” for GOP vice-presidential nominee Dick Cheney in 2000. Huntsman was an early casualty of the 2012 GOP White House field, won by fellow Utahan Mitt Romney. And though Manchin is incredibly popular with DC media and the Sunday shows for his occasional “Maverick” status – somewhat similar to Arizona Senator John McCain – recent polling for his Senate seat shows re-election there is far from certain.

The two parties control Congress and state legislatures, which write the laws that regulate ballot access. Even the Libertarian Party only finally secured ballot access in all 50 states during the 2020 election, and those ballot access procedures and thresholds vary between states and voter petitions, percentage of raw votes in the prior contests, etc. Third parties do not have critical financial or people infrastructure on the ground, or the primary process which focuses attention and media coverage on their candidates, nor the national conventions which appear every four years for nights of fawning attention, offering days of airtime and millions of eyeballs and associated credibility to the Democratic and GOP nominees and platforms.

In 2016, two former successful GOP governors of Blue States left their party and formed a strong ticket for the Libertarian Party. Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson was joined by former Massachusetts Governor William Weld to form a ticket with very impressive resumes. The Johnson/Weld Libertarian Party ticket received 4,489,221 votes (including mine) in the general election, 3.28 percent of the popular vote. Johnson had nearly tripled the vote he received as the Libertarian nominee in 2012, with 1,275,971 votes (almost 1 percent).

Granted, it appears the competition may be even weaker come the fall of 2024. However, the last third-party candidate who made a credible Continued on page 16

Getting to Know: Epie’s Electrical Services

By Our Town Staff

Who are Epie’s Electrical Services? We are glad you asked. There is Dan Doster, the owner, who is a Tucker native and has been in the construction industry for forty-three years. In addition, there is Philip Scarborough, who has been a master electrician since 2003. That’s much water under both of those dams, or said another way, a great deal of experience and wisdom.

Philip has extensive residential and commercial experience, which he shares with the team of electricians he leads. The team works out of Tucker and goes around ten to fifteen miles from that area. They are happy to head over to places like Lilburn, Stone Mountain, Snellville, Lawrenceville, or Decatur and change out breaker panels, light fixtures, or ceiling fans. The goal is to serve the client and check for safety items in the home. Things like outlets and switches have a finite lifetime.

Such items must be checked and changed when the outlets don’t hold

Continued on page 18

Mountain Park Masonic Lodge 729: 62 Years in the Making

By Jerry D. Moss and Drew Weaver

A very overdue hello from Mountain Park Masonic Lodge 729! We’ve been part of the Lilburn community for 62 years, but we’ve somehow gone without introducing ourselves and our community initiatives for far too long. Well, there’s no time like the present.

Now, plenty of people have heard of the Freemasons, and just as many have questions about who we are and our intentions in a community –

Continued on page 19