In P2004, independently and separately, BAN’s Richard Winger, third party gadfly Philip Sawyer, and my self suggested that the Reform Party of California [and then to the Nader/ Camejo bungled ballot effort] initiate a friendly take over of the still warm body of California NLP.

Reform Party of California is still not ballot accessed and John Blare is skill fully keeping the up dated officer slate off of the Secretary of State web site.

Nader got 24,035 last time.

The NLP’s candidate — Walt Brown — got just 1,431!

But Kathleen Dern for one of the education offices racked up 87,000 votes. All four of the NLP’s candidate for those offices got at least 57,000 votes.

In other words, if it is a guaranteed shoo-in to stay on the ballot once you get ballot access in Michigan. Guaranteed. If the moribund NLP can get four times as many votes as necessary, then ANY party could do it.

But that’s with running those ed. offices. There is certainly a chance Nader could poll fewer than 20,899.

I still say its possible Nader can get that in Michigan.

Outside of Nader, Dern is the only candidate they are running.

This could be the last year they’re on the ballot, then.

They need about 0.5% of the vote to stay on (a little less — 1% of the votes cast for the winning candidate for secretary of state the previous election).

If not, it is a shame that parties in Michigan can’t change their names. I’m sure Nader’s liberal lawyer constituency will be confused when his ballot line invokes the principle of “natural law.”

This year, it looks like they are running only 2 candidates…Nader & Doug Dern for US Senate. Given the fact that Nader got over 24,000 votes in 2004, my best guess is, the NLP will retain ballot access after this election cycle as well.

There are plans for a “re-birth” of the party in Michigan and I expect you will see more candidates running in 2010 than the past 2 election cycles combined.