Third Party, Independent Candidates Getting More Press

I’ve previously bemoaned the “rock star” treatment that independent candidates Carole Keeton Strayhorn and Kinky Friedman have received from the state’s major daily newspapers.

Evidently, the editorial staffs of these papers have realized that they’re giving those two camps more coverage than Perry and Bell as well, as at least one of the state’s major dailies is now giving more press than usual to third-party candidates.

This weekend, the Dallas Morning News profiled the fifth  candidate in the race for Texas Governor, James Werner, the Libertarian candidate.

In a perfect world, the MainStreamMedia would give fairly equal coverage to all five candidates: Bell, Perry, Strayhorn, Friedman and Werner. However, Friedman and Strayhorn have been getting the most coverage lately.

In the profile of Werner, the DMN seemed to acknowledge the fact that they both don’t pay much attention to third-party candidates and that it has an inherant bias toward Friedman, noting him as “highly quotable,” here:

In an unusual governor’s race featuring three attention-getting politicians and a highly quotable entertainer, Mr. Werner is indeed the regular guy – hardly known and barely mentioned.

But he says that’s an advantage.

“I always thought that I could just do it better than the people who do it for a living,” the candidate said by phone from his office in Austin.

Werner also had this to say:

“Not every Libertarian position is going to be approved of by every voter,” Mr. Werner said. “But the fact that we are willing to take a dramatic stand against the status quo is something people respect.”

Predictably, one of the MSM “talking head” political science professors had this to say about third-party candidates in general:

The party consistently draws enough votes to win an automatic spot on the ballot in the next campaign. And this year, there will be 170 Libertarian candidates across the state, the most in the party’s history, said Wes Benedict, executive director of the Libertarian Party of Texas.

“Big deal,” said Harvey Tucker, professor of political science at Texas A&M University.

“Minor-party candidates are minor-party candidates because they can’t win. They will not win. They don’t win,” Mr. Tucker said. “The definition of minor for most people is loser.”

I guess Belo’s normal talking head, Cal Jillson, was on vacation or something, because I’ve not seen too many quotes by Professor Tucker in the DMN.

I do disagree with the “[m]inor-party candidates are minor-party candidates because they can’t win,” argument, though.

I think minor-party candidates are minor-party candidates because they strongly believe in the values of their party platform.

I think independent candidates are independent candidates because they can’t win. After all, if Strayhorn had stuck with her party in name instead of just in word and deed, she’d have been knocked out in a primary. Same with Friedman, who has previously run a losing campaign for office in Texas—as a Republican.

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