On Election Day, Third-Party Candidates Could Make a Difference
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Chase Oliver knows his candidacy for U.S. Senate is a long shot. The Georgia Libertarian has raised about $15,000 as he competes with Democrat incumbent Raphael Warnock and Republican nominee Herschel Walker, each of whom has raised millions. He hasn’t quit his day job.
But Oliver believes he might produce an effect nationally. “In Georgia, we do have runoffs,” he told The Epoch Times.
The 37-year-old financial broker and corporate human relations executive— he actually works two jobs—may well throw Georgia’s Senate race into a runoff. And with the Senate currently divided 50-50, Georgia’s is one of the close races that could determine it.
It’s conceivable that neither Warnock, pastor of the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, nor Walker, who once led the Georgia Bulldogs to a national championship and won the Heisman Trophy, will get 50 percent of the popular vote. That would send Georgia to a runoff election. In the last one, on Jan. 5, 2021, the nation’s eyes were on the state when Warnock bested then-incumbent Kelly Loeffler, and Jon Ossoff deposed incumbent David Perdue.
Oliver says he’s not a spoiler. “I can’t spoil it for either candidate. If either is over 50 percent on election day, it’s done. If not, we vote again.”
“Voters deserve to have choices outside the two-party system. A republic functions better when there are more choices and more voices. Philosophically I align with the Libertarians, and that’s why I’m running as a Libertarian.”
His is one of several races where third-party candidates or independents may make a difference on Nov. 8.
Libertarian Shane Hazel is running for Georgia governor. Incumbent Republican Brian Kemp has held a steady lead but may not reach 50 percent in his rematch against Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams, whom he defeated in 2018.
Evan McMullin, an independent, is running a close race against incumbent Republican Mike Lee in the Utah Senate race. The Democrats didn’t field a candidate in the heavily red state. Lee, who won by more than 40 points in 2016, has led all polls conducted by the Deseret News, most recently by 5 points, beyond the 3.5 percent margin of error. But McMullin’s running that well is a significant achievement for an independent.
In Oregon, Betsy Johnson, a conservative Democrat when she was a state legislator, is running as an independent in the race for governor. She trails Democrat nominee Tina Kotek and Republican Christine Drazan.
Some think her support, in the double digits, will drain enough Democratic votes from Kotek to make Drazan the first Republican governor in the state in more than 30 years. An Emerson College poll in October found Drazan leading Kotek 36 to 34, with Johnson polling 19 percent.
And in the close Pennsylvania Senate race between John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz, Erik Gerhardt, a Libertarian, was getting 3.4 percent of the vote. Real Clear Politics rates the race as a toss-up, its average of polls giving Fetterman a 1.5 percent lead, within the margin of error. The stroke victim Fetterman’s halting performance during his recent debate with Oz may have thrown the results further into doubt.
Most states don’t require runoffs, thus magnifying the impact of a third-party candidate, Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia, told The Epoch Times. A candidate can win in those states with a plurality, he said, but Georgia, by contrast, requires 50 percent of the vote for a victory.
Democrats in Utah stood aside, declining to nominate a candidate in tacit support of McMullin rather than split the anti-Lee vote, Bullock said.
Bullock said that Republicans and Democrats, during their turns in control of Georgia, have both fiddled with its rules regarding runoffs and third-party candidacies. A while back, Republicans were so inconsequential in Georgia that third-party candidacies didn’t matter.
In 1992, Democrat Wyche Fowler Jr., in his Senate reelection bid, had a narrow lead over Republican Paul Coverdell but was forced to a runoff as a Libertarian got 40,000 votes, Bullock said. Coverdell won the runoff.
Democrats then watered down the 50 percent requirement to 45 percent. Democrat Max Cleland won with less than 50 percent of the vote in 1996.
Republicans, took control of the legislature in 2004, with Republican Sonny Perdue already governor, and reinstated the 50 percent rule, Bullock said.
“But for that, [Sonny Perdue’s] cousin David Perdue would not have been in a runoff in 2021. What advantages you in the short run, may not in the long run.”
States like Georgia and New York have made it harder for third-party candidates to get on the ballot by raising the required number of votes in the previous election to guarantee a line in the next one, Shawn Donahue, a political science professor at the University at Buffalo, told The Epoch Times.
New York traditionally has been a state with a proliferation of minor parties. But the laws raising the required number of votes from 50,000 to 200,000 prodded the major third parties, like the Libertarians and the Greens, to cross-endorse Republican or Democratic candidates rather than run their own, Donahue said.
In the New York governor’s race, Democratic incumbent Kathy Hochul and Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin are the only two candidates appearing on four ballot lines, Donahue said.
In Georgia, Oliver said third-party candidates like himself face numerous barriers: The primary system generates enormous publicity for the two major parties, which have primaries, while the Libertarians and most small parties don’t. The media tend to ignore third-party candidates, and they often lag in name recognition and fundraising.
“I’m polling around 5 percent,” he said. “That’s one in 20 votes. If I got even one in 20 news stories written about me, that would be a huge boost.”
Oliver wasn’t invited to the only debate between Walker and Warnock in Savannah on Oct. 14. He debated Warnock in Atlanta on Oct. 16, but Walker declined to participate. Warnock shrewdly used it less to debate Oliver than to attack Walker, who wasn’t there to respond.
Oliver, for his part, acquitted himself well, crediting “a good debate prep team” as he laid out his positions in a factual manner and avoided the temptation to lecture too emphatically on libertarianism. The gay candidate said he supported gun rights and was a member of a gun owners’ group called the Pink Pistols.
“We need to speak the language of the voter,” he said. “That’s the only way they’ll come over to libertarianism, finding commonality and finding a common language. You don’t need to be a Libertarian to know we should balance the budget, or that if you’re not hurting anyone, the government shouldn’t mess with you.”
“I try to talk to a common sense point of view. That resonates well with voters. It’s something Bill Clinton was good at in the ’90s. I don’t agree with him much, of course, but he was good at breaking down his political philosophy in a way the voters really resonated with.”
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