They’re on a roll, say New York Libertarians.
The party tripled its number of votes for governor in the November 2010 election. But its mission to secure a ballot line isn’t over yet.
“We don’t know what the final count’s going to be. It’s going to be close,” said Warren Redlich, the party’s candidate for governor. He got 48,386 votes, according to the New York State Board of Elections.
Military and absentee ballots were still being counted in early December. And Redlich and party leaders are hoping to edge over the 50,000-vote threshold to secure a spot on the ballot for the next four years.
They’ve earned it, they say, with much higher support from voters than in previous election seasons.
Here are some key numbers from the New York State Board of Elections’ website that highlight the party’s record 2010 success:
- The Libertarian party’s 2006 gubernatorial candidate received 14,736 votes, and the 2002 candidate received 5,013 votes, compared to Redlich’s 48,386 and counting.
- Redlich, a lawyer and town board member in Guilderland, raised $20,782 in campaign fundraising — five times what the party’s gubernatorial candidate raised in 2006, and almost three times more than in 2002.
- Carl Person, the party’s candidate for attorney eneral, received 35,034 votes — that’s 5,000 more than the party’s 2006 candidate.
- Randy Credico, who challenged Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer for his seat, received 25,450 votes — also 5,000 more than the party’s 2006 candidate.
The spike in votes is a result of many factors, experts say. Those factors include greater candidate visibility and a simpler message; frustration with the two major parties; and an overall shift in voter preferences toward limited government.
“We focused on a very simple campaign — stop wasting money,” said Redlich.
It’s important to put out a message that resonates with voters, rather than having an ideological discussion, Redlich said. His campaign focused on limiting spending, something very much in line with libertarian theory and also easy for voters to understand.
“The reality of politics is you’ve got to dumb it down to a soundbite,” he said.
Participating in the gubernatorial debate also helped increase Redlich’s visibility. He spent six hours preparing answers, he said.
Bruce Shefrin is a professor of political science at LeMoyne College. Another cause of the Libertarian Party’s success could be a poor overall performance by Republican Carl Paladino throughout the campaign season, he said. The Libertarian party sometimes identifies with the Republican Party, he said, and sometimes the party endorses Republican candidates.
Of Paladino, he said, “There is a Libertarian wing of the Republican Party, except the candidate who was supposed to be flying that plane went down in flames fairly early in the campaign.”
Paladino was entangled with several controversies, starting with forwarding e-mail jokes that many saw as offensive and getting into a scuffle with a reporter.
But Mark Axinn, chairman of the New York Libertarian Party, said the spike in votes is a result of New York voters saying two options isn’t enough anymore. “New Yorkers want independent candidates because the Democrats and Republicans are two sides of the same coin,” he said.
In terms of what’s next for the party, Axinn said he wants to focus on forming more local chapters of the party, especially in Onondaga County. The triple in votes in this election shows that more people are interested in the party’s message, he said, and he’d like to build off that success.
He wants, said Axinn, to make “more people aware of the fact that there have to be alternatives.”
(Kathleen Ronayne is a junior majoring in newspaper journalism.)
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