June 11 – Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will campaign in Albuquerque on Saturday. Can you feel the excitement and intoxication of a 70-year-old newcomer on the rise? I can’t either.
Not since Ross Perot in 1992 has a third-party candidate helped determine the outcome of a presidential election. That trend will continue this year.
Perot, a grumpy, fast-talking Texan, became a spoiler who helped the blue team. For example, Perot received 26% of the vote in Nevada, 26% in Montana, 23% in Colorado, 22% in Missouri and 21% in Ohio.
Republican President George HW Bush won these five states in 1988. Perot’s presence in 1992 meant Bush lost all five, plus 27 others. Democrat Bill Clinton easily dethroned Bush, thanks to Perot’s help.
Revisionists might argue that Green Party candidate Ralph Nader botched the 2000 election of Democrat Al Gore. Nader received 1.6% of the vote in Florida, where Gore lost to George W. Bush by a narrow margin. But Florida and all its hanging chads wouldn’t have mattered if Gore had been a good enough candidate to win his home state of Tennessee and its eleven electoral votes.
Unlike Perot, Nader failed to impress in most states. Even with Perot’s remarkable achievements, he didn’t have any state.
No third party candidate has won a state since segregationist George Wallace in 1968. Wallace had five southern states, including Alabama, where as governor he had stood in the door of a schoolhouse in Tuscaloosa to show his distaste for the federal government allowing black students to enroll in a state university .
Wallace knew he couldn’t win the presidency, but he hoped to become a kingmaker in 1968. If he had had eight Southern states instead of five, neither Republican Richard Nixon nor Democrat Hubert Humphrey would have had enough electoral votes to win. The presidential election would have ended up in the House of Representatives, and an Alabamian who once said “segregation forever” would have exerted his influence on the good ol’ boys.
An assassin paralyzed Wallace during his campaign for president in 1972. Wallace had become a Democrat again by then, after federal legislation removed several barriers to black people’s freedom to vote.
Third-party candidates continued to emerge, though few made much noise at the ballot box.
Illinois Congressman John Anderson received extensive media attention during his 1980 presidential campaign as an independent. Anderson received 5.7 million votes, but he played no role in the outcome. Republican Ronald Reagan held 44 states when he deposed Democratic President Jimmy Carter.
New Mexico had its own third-party candidate in 2012 and 2016. Gary Johnsona Republican during his two terms as governor of New Mexico, fled to the Libertarian Party for a chance to be heard as a presidential candidate.
Johnson didn’t come close to winning any state, but he got 9% of the vote in New Mexico in 2016. That was enough to qualify Dying Libertarians as one of the state’s major parties.
If Kennedy votes in New Mexico, he will not approach Johnson’s level of support. A challenge for Kennedy is collecting at least 3,562 valid signatures before New Mexico’s June 27 filing deadline for independents. He faces similar requirements to qualify for the ballot in many other states.
Third-party candidates typically have decent polling in the months before the general election, but fade as November approaches. Voters who liked what Wallace, Perot or Johnson had to say in the summer decided to support someone who could win in the fall.
Although Kennedy comes from a famous political family, his prospects are no better than those of his predecessors as third-party candidates. And they are a lot worse than Perot’s, who received 19% of the vote nationally in 1992. Can anyone outside Kennedy’s inner circle imagine him doing half as well?
Anti-vaccine zealots will rally behind Kennedy, who has been their hero. Voters who loved his late father and uncles may want to help him.
But the Democrats know it President Joe Biden is the only one who can stop Republican Donald Trump from returning to power. Even if Biden had not sought re-election, Kennedy would have been buried among an all-comer candidate seeking the Democratic nomination.
Kennedy’s path to the presidential election was easier as an independent. It’s still all uphill.
If he runs the race of his life, he could spoil a state or two for Trump or Biden. He’s a Kennedy, but not a Ross Perot.
Ringside Seat is an opinion column about people, politics and news. Contact Milan Simonich at msimonich@sfnewmexican.com or 505-986-3080.
