With a nationwide slate of independent candidates, $2 million ready to be deployed, and campaign staff with real experience, Bob Chew’s in a better position than many to force a conversation he believes is necessary.
Duggan's campaign showed that independent politics will continue to struggle as long as it keeps swinging for the fences instead of figuring out how to get on base.
The goal is to deny either party a working majority, then set terms before helping anyone organize the chamber. Pinkins offered a particularly specific account of what those terms would look like.
Last Tuesday, June 2, voters in New Jersey, Iowa, South Dakota, Montana, New Mexico, and California showed up to the polls to vote in primaries. Well, voters who were allowed to do so, with several of those states closing independents out of the process.
Veterans carry a credibility that no party label can manufacture, and at a moment when nearly every institution has shed public trust, it is the one identity that still commands broad, cross-partisan respect.
This isn't a candidate who left one party for the other. It's a candidate who spent time in both, looked around, and decided that the incentives that govern both are the fundamental problem.
If she advances past the Top Two primary, it would be more than a local upset. It would be evidence that something structural has shifted in American politics. It’ll also say something important about California’s nonpartisan primary system.
Duggan’s story is not a new one. Independent candidates across the country have run into the same wall, with many never even making it to Election Day.
Independent candidates surge in several states, while 30% of independent voters are so unhappy with their choices that they plan to sit out the midterm election entirely.
How first-past-the-post voting turned a primary election into accusations of planted candidates, strategic surrenders, and a Democrat who ran to withdraw.
Matt Shinners
Dennis Darnoi
