Candidate turns in petitions for second ballot slot

Reprinted from Charleston City Paper
by Greg Hambrick

James Island voters didn’t see Eugene Platt’s name on the 2008 ballot, but he’s making up for it this year.

The Statehouse candidate for District 115, who had already been endorsed by the Green Party, will also have his name on the ballot as a petition candidate.

Platt delivered more than 2,000 signatures to the South Carolina Election Commission last week, likely securing a second spot on the ballot.

The candidate is a strong supporter of fusion voting — where a name can appear two or three times for a particular office, with the votes added together. It backfired on him in 2008 when he failed to win the Democratic nomination. Due to a state law preventing a losing primary candidate’s name from appearing on the general election ballot, he was kept out of the November race.

This November, Platt will face off against Democrat incumbent Anne Petterson Hutto and Republican Peter McCoy.

By Richard Winger
Reprinted from Ballot Access News

On July 20, the U.S. Court of Appeals, 4th circuit, upheld a South Carolina law that limits the usefulness of fusion. South Carolina permits fusion (the practice of letting two parties jointly nominate the same candidate). However, South Carolina law also says that if a candidate tries for two nominations, and loses one nomination but gains another party’s nomination, the fact that the candidate lost the battle for one party’s nomination also cancels out the other nomination. The Court upheld that law. The decision, South Carolina Green Party v State Election Commission, 09-1915, is 14 pages.

The case had been filed by the South Carolina Green Party, which had nominated a candidate for the legislature early in 2008. When that candidate, Eugene Platt, then also tried to get the Democratic nomination, he lost the Democratic primary and then he couldn’t even run as the Green Party nominee in November. The Court said this was not a severe burden on the Green Party because the Green Party was free at that point to substitute some other candidate.

The opinion makes no reference to the recent events in the South Carolina U.S. Senate election, in which the leadership of the Democratic Party had supported a former state legislator, Vic Rawls, who had won the Working Families Party nomination, but then lost the Democratic primary in a surprise upset. If the Green Party had won this case, then the Democratic Party’s preferred candidate this year would have been able to appear on the November ballot as the Working Families Party nominee.

In South Carolina, any qualified party is free to nominate either by convention or by primary, but the practice is that the major parties always choose to nominate by primary, and the other parties always choose to nominate by convention. One might imagine that a minor party convention might consider nominating a particular major party person at its convention, but then reject that person and thereby cause that major party member to be ineligible for the major party nomination. This scenario never happens, because no candidate may be considered for a minor party nomination if that candidate doesn’t file a declaration of candidacy. So a major party member simply refrains from filing a declaration of candidacy in time to be considered at a minor party convention.

One of the leading ways that minor party members ever get elected to state legislatures is through fusion, in which a minor party member gets his or her own party’s nomination, and then is also able to win a major party nomination. Most of the Libertarians who have been elected to state legislatures in the party’s history have won this way. The opinion does not acknowledge this point.

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Clements hopes dissatisfaction will have voters going green

Reprinted from Charleston City Paper
by Greg Hambrick

This week’s column:

Third-party candidates are often left to quietly suffer a sound defeat. The money and manpower aren’t there for a high-profile statewide race, and the grassroots support is, well, too deep in the roots. Never mind the fact that there typically aren’t enough nonpartisan, unaffiliated voters to best two big-party candidates.

But, if we’ve already learned one thing from the U.S. Senate race to represent South Carolina, it’s that this is not your traditional election season. And with enough animosity going around for the two major party candidates, it may just mean a competitive race for Green Party candidate Tom Clements.

Alvin Greene’s surprise win in the Democratic Primary last month shocked political observers, but it also disappointed disaffected Republicans and moderates hoping for a spirited challenge against arch-conservative Jim DeMint. Greene certainly offers a working-man appeal in the race, but he’s had a tough time getting beyond stumbling interviews and his noticeable absence on the primary campaign trail.

Two potential independent candidates, businesswoman Linda Ketner and Charleston School of Law professor Constance Anastopoulo, dashed the hopes of supporters last week when they each turned away calls to run.

The subject of a statewide petition campaign, Ketner asked that organizers shelve the effort. She cited the difficult task of getting off the ground with a little more than 100 days before the election.

“At this late date, it’s just not possible to assemble the team and resources we need to mount the effective campaign we all want,” she said in a statement. “Bottom line: yes, we deserve — and desperately need — better government, but a last minute campaign without essential resources won’t get us that outcome.”

That void makes for a strategic opportunity for the Green Party near the top of the statewide ticket, says Eugene Platt, a candidate for S.C. House District 115 representing James Island and a state organizer for the Green Party.

“At the very least, what happened in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate has given the Green Party a statewide visibility we did not enjoy previously,” Platt says.

A longtime environmentalist and regional nuclear campaign coordinator for the Friends of the Earth, Clements notes his name will appear on the top of the ballot (a hypothetical factor in Greene’s unexpected victory).

He’ll need more than ballot positioning to defeat an incumbent popular with his far-right base and a Democrat likely to secure what we’ll playfully refer to as the “Jesse Ventura” vote. That said, polling suggests a distinct window of opportunity that isn’t often available to Green Party candidates.

In a Rasmussen poll a week after the June primaries, DeMint held a 58 percent majority, but Greene only had 21 percent support, suggesting Democrats and moderates aren’t automatically getting in line behind their candidate. Black voters, expected to flock to an African American senator, were split in their support for Greene.

There’s also a recognizable portion of the GOP that isn’t thrilled with a second DeMint term. In a primary race that wasn’t on anyone’s radar, unknown Susan Gaddy found 70,000 votes against the incumbent.

Clements certainly recognizes the opportunity to find a mix of support from disinterested moderates in the middle and dissatisfied party members on either side of the political spectrum. He sent out a release following Ketner’s announcement that highlighted his big-tent approach.

“This gives the green light to disaffected Democrats, Republicans, and independents to unify behind my campaign,” he said. “I will listen to all South Carolinians of all views and beliefs and pay close attention to the rightful anger and mistrust about the mess in Washington.”

Clements will need more than anger at Washington insiders; he’s going to need to find anger among South Carolina’s two-party establishment.