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Rubel: Giving Up Hope For A Practical Third Party Candidate

Commentary: Giving up the dream of a viable third party in the US Aubrey Dunn has now pulled out of two different races, representing two different parties, this election cycle. That is potentially bad news for both the Republicans and the Libertarians, depending on what former Governor Gary Johnson does.

Dunn, who won election as land commissioner in 2014, beating incumbent Ray Powell, is one of just three Republicans to win a statewide election in the last two cycles. The others were Gov. Susana Martinez, who has won twice, and Dianna Duran, who was re-elected as secretary of state in 2014, but had to step down after pleading guilty to using campaign donations to pay off gambling debts.

State Auditor Wayne Johnson is also a Republican, but he was appointed to the seat after Tim Keller vacated to win election as mayor of Albuquerque.

Dunn was thought to be the frontrunner early in the process to find a Republican nominee to run for the seat the Steve Pearce is vacating in Congress. But in January he switched parties, leaving the Republicans with only one candidate in this year’s election who has won in a statewide vote – Patrick Lyons, who won elections in both 2002 and 2006 for land commissioner, and is running again this year.

In February, Dunn announced that he would run for the U.S. Senate as a Libertarian. He dropped out of that race last month, saying he hoped that Johnson would run in his place. The former governor is still reportedly weighing his options.

The Libertarians have a once-in-a-lifetime chance this election cycle, thanks to Johnson’s showing in the 2016 presidential race, which gave them major party status. But, that will go away after this election unless an unknown write-in candidate for governor can somehow replicate the numbers posted by Johnson.

There was once a time when that would have disappointed me. For more of my life, I have harbored hopes of a successful third party, or, perhaps, a multi-party system like they have in parliamentary governments. But, now I wonder if we didn’t have it right all along.

In Tuesday’s special election for a House seat in Ohio, Republican Troy Balderson finished with 101,772 votes to beat Democrat Danny O’Connor, who had 100,208 votes. But they weren’t the only two candidates in the race. Green Party candidate Joe Manchik siphoned off 1,129 votes.

Even if all of Manchik’s votes would have gone to O’Connor, Balderson still would have won the election. But, as the two candidates eye a rematch in November, it’s obvious that the only role for the Green Party will be to help the party that they are most opposed to win.

That’s the problem with third-party candidates, as Ralph Nader proved so disastrously in 2000. After eight years of Bill Clinton, Nader declared that our democracy was in crisis. And so, he handed the presidency to George W. Bush. That fixed it.

I always envision my ideal third party as being common-sense centrist, but what we get is just the opposite, Greens who think Democrats are too conservative and Libertarians who think Republicans aren’t aggressive enough in cutting the size of government.

The sad truth is, there probably isn’t enough passion in the middle to start a third party. Anything that emerges is going to be on the fringe and relegated to spoiler.

Walter Rubel is editorial page editor of the Las Cruces Sun-News. He can be reached at wrubel@lcsun-news.com or follow @WalterRubel on Twitter.