Ever since the Democrats and Republicans cemented their status as the two major parties 150 years ago, minor parties have come and gone but not one of their presidential candidates has ever won an election. To be sure, they can have an impact on the outcome, but only as spoilers.
In 1912, former president Teddy Roosevelt came out of retirement, running as a Progressive. He took enough votes away from Republican William Taft to hand the election to Democrat Woodrow Wilson. More recently, in 1992, Ross Perot created the Reform Party, finishing a distant third with less than 20 percent of the vote but taking enough votes away from George H.W. Bush to win it for Bill Clinton.
At the state and local level, there is the rare minor-party victory, like pro wrestler Jesse Ventura’s election as governor of Minnesota in 1998, but he gave way after one term to a conventional Republican. Americans certainly have the right to run for office with whichever party they choose. Some are motivated by unshakable principles, others by ego or delusions of victory. But practical voters should seriously consider the consequences of casting a symbolic vote for someone who has no chance of winning. After all the votes are counted, they’ll generally be governed by either a Republican or a Democrat.
The Colorado governor’s race is a bizarre anomaly. A minor party candidate, Tom Tancredo, is in a close race with John Hickenlooper and far ahead of Dan Maes, the discredited Republican nominee. But Tancredo is actually a longtime Republican, a late entry using a minor party only as a convenient vehicle when the Maes campaign imploded.
A better example is the at-large (statewide) race for University of Colorado regent. Incumbent Republican Steve Bosley, a CU alumnus, has been the board’s chairman. He is the former president of the Bank of Boulder and creator of the Bolder Boulder race. He’s a solid conservative who’s worked tirelessly to improve the financial condition and academic performance of the school. He’s also committed to more philosophical diversity within the faculty in areas that lend themselves to political spin and brainwashing, like political science, history and sociology. Notoriously dominated by leftists, the rare conservative in these disciplines has been among an endangered species for years.
Bosley’s opponent, Democrat Melissa Hart, is a liberal, Harvard Law graduate who clerked for ultra-liberal Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. She defends the status quo with its under-representation of conservative professors. (If conservatives dominated the faculty, liberals would be screaming bloody murder.) As a CU faculty member, Hart can be expected to favor the interests of her colleagues over students and taxpayers on matters of tenure, compensation and teaching loads.
And here’s the minor-party conundrum: In 2004, Republican Bosley barely won election by a margin of one-half of 1 percent because a Libertarian candidate with no chance of winning drew away 3.3 percent. In 2006, liberal Democrat Stephen Ludwig won the other at-large regent seat, beating a conservative Republican by four-tenths of 1 percent because a Libertarian and a right-wing minor party candidate combined to siphon off 7.4 percent between them. This year, votes cast for the Libertarian candidate with no chance to win could tip the race from Bosley to Hart.
There’s currently an embattled 5-4 majority of Republicans on the Board of Regents. The left-wing Boulder Weekly, in its endorsement of Hart, declared, “It’s time to put an end to the right-wing agendas that have silently plagued CU for years.” One has to be pretty far left to imagine there’s too much conservative influence at CU. Just ask a conservative CU student.
A vote for Bosley will keep the flickering flame of intellectual diversity alive. A vote for anyone else will fortify the existing liberal death grip.
Mike Rosen’s radio show airs weekdays from 9 a.m. to noon on 850-KOA.
