Candidate Hysteria

I have always loved this photo of Wendell Wilkie campaigning for President in 1940. It shows just how much fun participating in the Democratic process can be. That is probably why I have done it so much.

I have been in the position as a candidate sweating out the gathering of signature petitions in my races for State Land Commissioner, Congress, Governor and Mayor. It is one part of a campaign that is no picnic and the process is totally ridiculous and obsolete. I first ran for Statewide office in 1981 for the position of State Land Commissioner. I was fortunate to have a lot of environmentalists supporting me and they gathered all of my signatures. In those days you had to have petitions from at least ten counties and you needed about 15,000 to be safe. It was a gut wrenching process. Now fast forward to 2005 where signatures are still required , but it is almost impossible to find enough volunteers to do it. So, you pay people to gather them, and as the old saying goes, "You get what you pay for." So, how did we get here?

Flashback to 1972. New Mexico was in the midst of a typical political season with the Primary election coming up in just a few months. At that time if you wanted to be a candidate for state or federal office you had to ante up a filing fee. It would cost you about $2,500 to become a U.S. Senate Candidate. This was certainly an unfair requirement since many people didn't have that kind of money, but it did keep the number of candidates to a mercifully low number.

A lawsuit was filed and the filing fee was declared unconstitutional. The floodgates opened and before it was overmore than forty people had filed to run for the U.S. Senate. The candidates included philosophers, wrestling promoters, university professors, airline mechanics and others who wanted a shot at the big time!

One of the more interesting candidates to run for a Congressional seat that year was a former New York Playboy Bunny who had changed her name to "Sparkle Plenty". Her campaign slogans were, "Put a little Sparkle in Congress" and "We all need Plenty". She was working as a cocktail waitress at the famous Bull Ring in Santa Fe when some lobbyists jokingly suggested she go file her candidacy. She did and she got most of the publicity during that campaign and finished somewhere in the head of the pack on election day.(I couldn't find Sparkle's picture anywhere.)

I was a reporter then and the ability to cover the political season evaporated before our eyes. How do you cover a race with 40 candidates? The legislature struggled with that question too and in an effort to keep out frivolous candidates they enacted legislation in 1973 requiring nominating petitions for potential candidates. At that time it was a good compromise, but now we have come full circle. This process costs literally thousands of dollars, so we really have returned to a system of filing fees. Since there are so few volunteers out there candidates pay up to $2.00 per signature. Supposedly, pay is only received if the signature is valid. There are very few gatherers who are that good, although some professional consultants do it right. When dealing with others it is problematical. The idea is to fill up as many signature sheets as possible and hope there are enough good ones to get through the signature checks performed by the Secretary of State's Office or in the case of local elections, the City Clerk. I would estimate that less than 60% of signatures are really valid, maybe less. Sometimes there is outright fraud by petition gatherers as evidenced in numerous challenges throughout elections over the last 30 years.

The validation process is pretty much open to interpretation too. What one validator might let pass, another one might not. If a middle initial is missing off a signature roster, should that invalidate the signature?

The news media right now is crucifying the living wage petition gathering process in Albuquerque's minimum wage fight. I don't know why this group is being singled out, because these same problems arise in every single petition drive. Maybe the thought of a higher minimum wage means that a living wage will need to be paid by the media! (Joke, most everyone around here pays higher than the minimum wage anyway.)

Maybe we should go to a hybrid system in which candidates could choose to pay a moderately high filing fee or go the petition route. This really makes a lot more sense and lessens the chances of signature fraud for at least some of the candidates. The candidates don't want their paid folks getting signatures in a dishonest way. It does nothing for their candidacy and it is a waste of money.

Beyond all of this is the additional work for getting on the ballot at state pre-primary conventions. That is a whole story in itself which I will talk about in a later blog.