Medill Reports covers Boston Tea, Prohibition parties

“Wait, other people are running for president?” a headline from an article in last Thursday’s Medill Reports sarcastically asks. “You wouldn’t know it, but yes, more than a dozen candidates are hoping to be the longshot winner who will upset the favorites.”

The article makes passing reference to the Green and Libertarian parties (no talk of Chuck Baldwin), but chooses to focus on the lesser-known Charles Jay and Gene Amondson:

But third parties come in a variety of flavors, including Earl Gray. A political organization called The Boston Tea Party, whose Web site cheers, “Time to party like it’s 1773,” split from the Libertarian Party in 2006. The party pushes to reduce the size and power of the federal government. Its members have nominated for president Charles Jay, a man who in 2004 ran for office with a female adult film star as his VP choice.

The Prohibition Party (an implausible combination of words to some) advocates for the return of 1920s anti-liquor laws. Their candidate, the affable minister Gene Amondson, says teaching people to drink responsibly is “like teaching a pig to eat with a spoon” and wishes the “liver-lilied lip-lickers” in Washington would stand up against gambling, alcohol and tobacco. He has been known to hang around the Anheuser-Busch factory in St. Louis dressed as the Grim Reaper.

The article also shares some third-party history:

According to founding father George Washington, we shouldn’t have political parties at all. Washington said they divide voters into factions and subvert the will of the people to the whims of party leaders. But Washington was the only unaffiliated American president; the two-party system sprang up directly after his term in office with the Federalists and Anti-federalists, who disagreed over the ratification of the Constitution.

Third-party candidates have had little success at the polls since then, with the exception of Theodore Roosevelt, who in 1912 ran as a former president and captured 88 votes from the Electoral College as the candidate for the Progressive Party, aka the Bull Moose Party.

Read the full article here.