Third Party Reality

George F. Will regularly produces newspaper political opinion pieces and in his October 16th article has a wonderful closing statement. Discussing the potential of Republican House and particularly Republican Senate election gains, he expresses that these anticipated GOP wins "helps explain why Obama is in such a hurry to remake the nation and save the planet. His window of opportunity could be closing."



The two governor elections - Virginia and New Jersey - scheduled for this November truly can be viewed not only as a verification of this George F. Will sentiment of the closing of the Obama opportunity window but also clearly defines an unique obstacle that the anti-Obama, Republican office seekers face. This potentially defeating aspect of pending elections is the emergence of third party candidates.



In Virginia, the Republican candidate for Governor is Robert McDonnell and he is opposed by an Obama backing Democrat named R Creigh Deeds. The most recent pre-election survey shows that McDonnell enjoys an 8.8% point margin in that he leads R. Creigh 51.3% to 42.5%. The race is much closer and much different in New Jersey. The incumbent Democratic governor, Jon Corzine, is seeking reelection and his current voter draw is listed at 40.8%. Corzine trails Chris Christie, the Republican candidate, by 1 percentage point. The real difference is that 14 percent of the anticipated voters are siding with Christopher Daggot who is an independent, third party candidate. It is difficult to characterize these Daggot supporters as anything other than anti-establishment which means anti-Obama and which means anti-Corzine. Therefore the Daggot advocates are primarily a drain against the voter-backing that Republican Christie should be enjoying.



Obama's staff is by no means naive and will view this New Jersey situation as a possible remedy for effectively dividing and rendering moot the candidacy of anti-Obama office seekers in 2010 and 2012 by the creation of "strong" third party candidates. There could even be one for President.



This situation is not unknown in American history. Lets not forget the national elections of 1992. Bush, Clinton and Ross Perot faced off and Clinton won the Presidency by 6% of the vote. The electoral college margin was much higher. However, if the third party candidate, Perot, had not run then his 19% of the popular vote would have gone overwhelmingly to G. H. W. Bush and Clinton would never have won the popular vote, the Electoral College or the White House.



We have to be conscience of not letting this type of third party election history repeat itself in any of the 2010 or 2012 local, State and Federal contests.