Andrew Cuomo Democrat 1,951,247 votes 52.49 %
Rob Asterino Republican 1,470,642 votes 39.56 %
Howie Hawkins Green 176,269 votes 4.74 %
Mike Mc Dermott Libertarian 15,215 votes 0.41 %
We cannot blame Mike McDermott. He tried his best. However, the so-called
Libertarian Party spent more time and effort trying to stop me from running
so as to kick me off the ballot than it did to help Mike Mc Dermott to run.
The Libertarian Party claims to be the number three political party in the
USA and much stronger than the Green Party. Then why did the Green Party
candidate get almost 12 times more votes than the Libertarian Party
Candidate? Nobody can know the answer to this question but one possible
answer is that Mike McDermott did not run a Libertarian Campaign and
therefore the general public saw no reason to vote for him.
The data you have below is not the final data. You just have the incomplete totals from election night. McDermott got 16,967.
Richard Winger
415-922-9779
PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147
Preliminary vs. final McDermott votes: 0.99 % difference in relation to what the Green got. Sounds like the Green got more team work behind him regardless of which figure one uses.
While appreciative of teamwork, the Greens are the protest vote party of choice for socialist environmentalists. There are more of them than there are of us Liberty-minded folks. They'd out-poll us now even with an out of date website and no boots on the ground.
If only i could send a picture of the New York Nov. 2014 ballot, we would all have greater insight. The New York ballot is a party column ballot. There were ten parties on the ballot, seven of whom nominated either the Dem or the Rep for Governor. Even though New York no longer uses mechanical voting machines, the people who design the ballots still keep the old format. The old format only had room for nine party columns because the mechanical voting machines only had space for nine columns.
So even though now New York uses paper ballots, they organize it into nine columns. Since there were ten parties, they squeezed the Libertarians into the same column headed by the "Stop Common Core Party". So most voters probably didn't even see our candidates when they voted. It is unbelievably bad.
Richard Winger
415-922-9779
PO Box 470296, San Francisco Ca 94147
Yes, with the Greens pulling votes from the less-liberty party, the more-liberty party needed to have votes pulled from it, to make things fair. The LP can give itself a pat on the back for fairness.
Indeed. The essential Libertarian shot in the foot.
But seriously, while minor parties suffer uphill battles, as Richard points out regarding the ballot location of the Libertarian candidate, I feel that lack of teamwork at the grassroots level (we pride ourselves in not being "heardable") is more of the cause for our poor record than the resulting numbers of voters belonging to one or the other party. In other words, the resulting number of voters voting for one or the other candidate is related to the lack of teamwork. (Huuummm.... clear as mud.)
Mike's run for Mayor might serve as a good example. The Green's formed a veritable, well-disciplined army behind Matt Gonzalez. Not so with Mike's supporters. Therefore, it does not appear surprising that there are more people who vote for the Green rather than the Libertarian.
Sort of....but it was a non-partisan race. And Matt basically outflanked (Left) the traditional lefty Democrats (Alioto, Ammiano etc...) who were moving to the center in their bid to be appear moderate. He let them all commit themselves to the middle, then at the last moment, he came out, called them out and then nailed them claiming the "True Progressive" title for himself. He split the Democrats and it was the Democrats who took over from there. Guys like Joe O'Donahue of the Residential Builders Association, traditional Democrats, came out for him. It wasn't the Greens who built the power in his campaign.
And it didn't hurt that he was young, hip, smart and good looking. Smile
I say the Libertarian Party *IS* the "more-liberty party", and the Democrats and Republicans pull votes from the alternative parties by maintaining unfair and anti-democratic ballot access laws, engaging in exclusionary debates, and otherwise abusing their power.