Veterans Party Candidate Chris Keniston: We’re Going After the Major Parties

From Eric Robinson at the Independent Voter Network:

On August 17, Air Force veteran Chris Keniston was formally declared the first official presidential candidate of the Veterans Party of America. However, few people have likely heard of Keniston or the Veterans Party, founded in 2013, since not a single major news outlet covered the event.

Yet for Keniston, this wasn’t unexpected.

“I don’t expect any assistance from the mainstream media at all,” Keniston said in an interview for IVN. “I truly expect that if I’m ever mentioned on a mainstream media source, it’s going to be negative or dismissive, because I understand how invested mainstream media is in the two-party system.”

Along with his running mate, Deacon Taylor, an Army veteran and businessman, Keniston has yet to appear on a single national poll, yet he acknowledges that the campaign is more of a means of providing support for other party candidates to contest state and local elections.

“The Veterans Party was never established to take the presidency,” Keniston remarked. “I am the bright and shining tip of an enormous iceberg that no one has even seen yet. We have hundreds of candidates ready. We are going after the major parties at the state level, at the local level, and at the federal level. We are going to confront them everywhere.”

Keniston’s campaign has mostly struck a centrist tone aimed at highlighting the problems with the current two-party system. Keniston advocates for electoral reform in order to open the door for third party candidates to win elections at all levels of government.

Read the full article here.