The Peace & Freedom Party of California has been holding a presidential primary ever since 1972. It didn’t hold a presidential primary in 1968, the first year it was on the ballot. It will be holding one again on February 5, 2008. California election practices (for minor party presidential primaries) involve the party’s state chair telling the Secretary of State which presidential candidates to list.
The Peace & Freedom Party State Executive Committee met on September 16, and set its list of presidential candidates. Six candidates are also seeking the nomination of the Socialist Party, which holds its presidential convention in St. Louis October 19-21, 2007. Most or all of these six will withdraw from the PFP primary if they don’t get the Socialist Party nomination. These six are: Stewart Alexander of Murrieta, California; Eric Thomas Chester of Montague, Massachusetts; Mary Alice Herbert of Putney, Vermont; Stanley Hetz of Smithfield, Pennsylvania; Brian Moore of Spring Hill, Florida; and Dwight Welch of Carbondale, Illinois. Candidates may withdraw until early November 2007.
The other three presidential candidates who will appear on the PFP primary, unless they withdraw, are John Crockford of Fresno, California; Gloria LaRiva of San Francisco; and Ralph Nader.
Candidates need not formally declare their candidacy to appear on the California presidential primary. The legal criteria is that they have been mentioned in media as potential candidates for the party. Since the media don’t cover minor parties very well, the custom for the California Secretary of State has been to simply let the party leadership tell her which candidates to list.
Any convicted death row felons in the mix?
I mean ‘tradition’, right?
—–Citizens For A Better Veteran Home, an organization that approached them in 1998 with [neglected/ rejected] ‘turn key’ one-stop-shopping on veterans issues.
—–Donald Raymond Lake, PFP 1992-2003, with out ever voting for a PFP presidential candidate……
Under the U.S. Constitution, felons may run for president if they are age 35 and natural-born citizens and U.S. residents. However, none of the candidates on the list are felons. Eugene Debs polled 900,000 votes in 1920 while he was a felon.
My point exactly: the oft reused ‘federal felon’ as PFP candidate is nothing more than flimsy shadows of the 1920 bench mark. Debs did it first and did it better. The chance to give the corrupt national green establishment and their Democratic Party corporate style masters the one finger salute by the Green Party of California with the state nominating Nader – Camejo has come and gone.
A hundred folks on a typical side walk: how many could name the 2004 forgettable drones of the GP and or the PFP?
Why would you not accept the PFP nomination if you won the Socialist Party nod? Wouldn’t you want both?
The California ballot isn’t an easy one to get on and the Socialists don’t have a ballot line there.
California’s Peace and Freedom Party has been holding primaries ever since 1968, the year it first gained ballot status – not 1972 as mentioned in the article above.
In 1968, P&F’s presidential candidate, Eldridge Cleaver, was kept off the ballot by the California Secretary of State because Cleaver was not old enough to run. Cleaver’s Vice Presidential running mate, Peggy Terry, did have her name appear on the ballot.
“The chance to give the corrupt national green establishment and their Democratic Party corporate style masters the one finger salute by the Green Party of California with the state nominating Nader – Camejo has come and gone.”
Our “masters” fought very hard to keep us off the ballot in Illinois last year. They lost.
If you dismiss an entire political party based on one candidate’s campaign strategy in one year, you’ll never find a party that suits you.
The truth, the truth, the truth!
The original post is correct. There was no PFP presidential primary in 1968. The original post has now been amended to say that explicitly.
Just because a party doesn’t hold a presidential primary, doesn’t mean it can’t run for president in the general election, and PFP did run in the November 1968 general election in California, albeit with only a vice-presidential candidate printed on the November ballot.
Here is one little quibble to begin with: PFP-CA did not hold a presidential primary election in 2000 because it had previously lost its ballot status. However, by 2004 (mainly due to the fantastic leadership provided by my good friend and comrade, C.T. Weber, the Party had regained its place back on the ballot).
Mr. Don Lake, my good friend and comrade, did you miss the two major decisions fairly recently by the Green Party of the United States to run candidates all out for president and vice president in 2008?
Furthermore, Don, it is time to leave animosities of the past in the past. Would you and your people please rejoin the Peace and Freedom Party of California? You can still keep your card-carrying memberships with the national Green Party, like I am doing. It is time to “find your way back home” as a registered voters with PFP-CA! “United we stand, divided we fall”!
Respectfully, Sacramento Phil:
You are currently ‘talking to other socialist groups’?
You know [personally!] that much of what I gripe about [targeted on Dems, GOP, Greens, PFP, ctweber, janice jordan, jan tucker] IS THE ABSOLUTE TRUTH!
You, I, Tish Firmiss, John Coffey [JD], Richard Winger and other Californians are locked into a system where every four years we have but two choices: pad the million vote lead of the Democratic candidate, even a schill like John F. Kerry [questionable SEA service, Yale Skull and Bones, born into comfort, evolving into mega wealth] OR send a non Democratic Party message with a non Democratic Party vote —-any non Democratic Party vote!
You are proud of your 2004 efforts. Many folks whom speak well of you in other years and other efforts declare that your 2004 slant was, well, umm……
John Coffey and I have been following your lead to GREENER pastures, via the do-nothing American Reform Party [we were still listed as Reform Party USA —but not on purpose].
John is spinning to all points of the compass, much of it due to personal matters. I registered “Unity08” [listed as “MIS” by the San Diego County Registrar] in early summer and have participated in numerious face to face, telephonic, and electronic endeavors since.
One thing about Perot, Ventura, Nader, and Unity08, they cause the two headed establishment monster to reach for the Pepto Bismol.
Well. I think that polotics are stupid and they ruin our earth. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer try being poor you bad bad people.