Third parties and independent candidates since 2008


Reform Party Nominates Andre Barnett for President

August 13th, 2012 · written by · 19 Comments

This is already being discussed in the Reform Party thread below, but deserves it’s own post. The Reform Party held their Convention this past weekend in Philadelphia and nominated Andre Barnett for President.

Filed Under: Non-left/right parties

19 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Dale // Aug 13, 2012 at 3:52 pm

    And the vote was conducted via approval voting, with approximately 70% of ballots approving multiple candidates.

  • 2 Nick // Aug 13, 2012 at 4:27 pm

    I think his charisma will help him out, and bring members to the Reform Party.

  • 3 Some Third Party News | Conservative Heritage Times // Aug 13, 2012 at 5:25 pm

    [...] Reform Party held their convention this weekend and nominated Andre Barnett. (My IPR post here.) Barnett doesn’t sound like a bad guy, but my how the Reform Party has fallen. They will be [...]

  • 4 Jimmy // Aug 13, 2012 at 5:46 pm

    The Modern Whig Party nominated Barnett as well. In my opinion, he’s a right-winged nut job. The Reform Party should have nominated Blake Ashby.

  • 5 Dennis // Aug 13, 2012 at 9:05 pm

    http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/ReformPartyN

  • 6 Kyle Kneale // Aug 13, 2012 at 10:13 pm

    @4 the MWP hasn’t officially nominated Barnett yet. The delegates have until Wednesday to vote.

  • 7 William Saturn // Aug 14, 2012 at 12:59 am

    I fixed the spelling of ‘Philadelphia’

  • 8 Austin Cassidy // Aug 14, 2012 at 1:16 am

    I wish someone would put this “party” out of its misery. Gotta wonder what Ross would think about all this.

    http://daviddust.blogspot.com/2007/12/daddy-of-day-andre.html

  • 9 Trent Hill // Aug 14, 2012 at 5:50 am

    Austin–agreed.

  • 10 Paulie // Aug 14, 2012 at 7:57 am

    @ 8-9

  • 11 Deran // Aug 14, 2012 at 4:19 pm

    I bet he won the nomination because he showed up with his trousers coyly unzipped a bit, or perhaps in just his briefs. I hope he campaigns in his briefs. Oh, and he could paint those frightening abs as red, white and blue stripes.

  • 12 AC // Aug 14, 2012 at 6:48 pm

    What kind of ballot access is he likely to get? Haven’t some of the poor, pitiful, dying Reform Party state affiliates splintered off?

  • 13 William Saturn // Aug 15, 2012 at 10:21 pm

    I wrote an article about this on Wikinews, and an IP from near Poughkeepsie, NY (Barnett’s hometown) left this comment.

  • 14 Fellow Traveler // Aug 17, 2012 at 7:55 am

    It is interesting to see all this bitterness towards the Reform Party. I could understand if the Reform Party was currently one of the major alternative political parties in terms of ballot access. One could then view it as a serious competition to the Libertarian, Green, and the Constitution Parties at a national level. That is however, as of now, is not the case. However, if Austin Cassidy really wants the Reform Party to die because of ballot access, to be consistent, he should also call for the demise of the Socialist Party, the Socialist Workers Party, and the Peace and Freedom Party.

  • 15 Austin Cassidy // Aug 17, 2012 at 5:50 pm

    The Reform Party is a handful of loosely connected people, many of them at war with each other for the last decade.

    But the Reform Party died around 2002. These remaining few are fighting over a ghost, there’s nothing left.

    Hell, their nominee in 2008 got 481 votes.

  • 16 NewFederalist // Aug 17, 2012 at 6:11 pm

    Sort of like the Prohibition Party without all the history.

  • 17 Aaron Hamlin // Aug 17, 2012 at 10:50 pm

    This may be the first time that a US party has used Approval Voting for their presidential nomination. This is quite exciting.

  • 18 Fellow Traveler // Aug 18, 2012 at 8:37 am

    There is a national Reform Party USA organization (http://reformparty.org/). It is certainly not at war with itself. It is not a group of “loosely connected people”. There are national party officers. There are state chapters. These chapters may be small in number, but this is not unique to political parties that are not in the major 3 group (the Libertarian, Green, or the Constitution Parties). The Reform Party is not dead. It did hold a national convention. It does run candidates for Congress. Despite what Cassidy wrote in another post, it is in the process of putting the presidential nominee on the ballot in Florida. The state chapters of the Reform Party may be small, but the same can be said of Socialist Workers Party, the Socialist Party, and other minor parties.

  • 19 Nick // Aug 18, 2012 at 9:13 am

    Just like all parties, the things the public sees and the things that go on behind the scenes are different. The Reform Party has refounded it’s New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Arkansas affiliates. It also has organizers in several other states, some which are close to calling state conventions. They may not have ballot access but having affiliates is a good step towards gaining ballot access in the next election.

    We don’t fight nearly as much. The fighting ended when the Collison faction won the court case. The Reform Party began rebuilding after. Rome was not built in a day, and it will take time to get back to were we were in 1998 and 2000. If we can find people willing to put in the work, it is possible.

    We’ve reformed our National Committee and added several new subcommittees. We’ve put in a lot of work on our internet infastructure since January. With a lot of these reforms we’ve put together a modern website and increased our social networking following by over 150 percent by doubling our Facebook and Twitter followings and building a following on our Tumblr account.

    We’re talking now about improving our platform and looking at suggestions. That’s a big peice of the puzzle and hopefully we can gain some momentium by having a solid platform.

    I’m about to bring up Press Release issues and how we aren’t issuing enough of them. Hopefully that will help us out with PR.

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