Posted at Ballot Access News
Thomas J. Kelly, founder of the British Reformed Sectarian Party of Florida, ran for Florida State House earlier this month, and polled 33.0% of the vote in a two-person race. His only opponent was Republican Dean Cannon. The unofficial vote totals are: Cannon 38,454; Kelly 18,957. The district is centered in Winter Park, near Orlando. See this article (scroll down a bit). According to the article, Cannon spent $500,000 on his re-election campaign.
When this same seat was up in 2004, Cannon had polled 57.1% of the vote against his only opponent, a Democrat.
The British Reformed Sectarian Party was formed to protest a court decision issued in 2003, that upheld the ability of the Florida major parties to require loyalty oaths to run in their primaries. The 11th circuit panel that upheld the oaths consisted of Judges Susan Black, Paul Roney, and Walter Stapleton. Kelly, who had lost the lawsuit, was so irritated with these three judges, he resolved to form a political party and call it the Black, Roney, Stapleton Party. However, he thought better of it, and called it by three words whose first letters match the first initials of the surnames of each of these three judges.
The only other minor party candidate in a 2008 Florida 2-way state legislative race was Constitution Party nominee Louis Tart. Running for the State Senate, 1st district, against a Democrat, Tart polled 18.8%.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Catholic Trotskyist // Nov 21, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Great party name. They should keep going, and actually develop a real platform. On the other hand, maybe they are better off the way they are now, since they can attract any protest votes, no matter what their issues are. I wonder if he ran an active campaign?
2 Catholic Trotskyist // Nov 21, 2008 at 7:14 pm
The Catholic Trotskyist Party is also a reform sectarian party, but it is anti-British.
3 JimDavidson // Nov 22, 2008 at 4:38 am
I know exactly what these high vote totals represent.
In Kelly’s race against Cannon, he found 33% of the vote because those were “yellow dog Democrats.” They would vote for a yellow dog if it were running as a Democrat. Indeed, they were so determined not to vote for a Republican, that they found, to their surprise, that they were willing to push for the “British Reformed Sectarian” candidate, without the least clue what that meant, nor who he was. You can perform extensive exit polling if you like, but that’s what happened.
In the race of Tart against unknown Democrat, Tart found 18.8% of the vote. These were yellow dog Republicans. They were surprised to find that they could bring themselves to vote for a Constitution Party candidate, even one they’d never heard of, rather than vote for a Democrat.
Given that it was Florida, my guess would be that these are fairly typical results, with one or two counties more extreme or possibly trending the other way. There are about a third of voters who cannot bring themselves to vote Republican and a bit less than a fifth who can’t bring themselves to vote Democrat.
You know what they say about Florida voters…if you have four Florida voters, there’s a fifth around somewhere.
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