A few hours ago, I was made aware that an letter I wrote to a CNN reporter was leaked to Independent Political Report. I have shown the letter to several politicos across the political spectrum, and that letter was not classified. Though I prefer my letters to not be leaked without permission, I do not mind this letter being leaked. The text of this letter is here:
Aaron Pellish,
What do you intend to cover?
If you’re looking to cover the Reform Party’s meetings with other organizations, I was in the meeting with Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s campaign staff on January 29th, 2024. We had a good back and forth conversation about a variety of topics. This however is not unique. I have spoken with many candidates and organizations over the past few months.
It is common for candidates, political parties, and other organizations to talk before an election. We share information. We coordinate when we can. An organization or candidate might fold and another organization will swoop up volunteers and resources. There are a thousand and one potential reasons for organizations and candidates to talk.
I’ve made a fabulous offer to any future prospective No Labels candidate. Since No Labels is a 501(c)4, it cannot coordinate with a candidate once its ballot lines are established. The Reform Party has the Advisory Opinion from the FEC and is one of only six political parties that has expanded contribution and expenditure limits. The Reform Party can step in as part of a fundraising apparatus and conduct itself as the party organization backing the No Labels candidate.
I recently sat down in a public meeting with Nick Nunlee of the Forward Party. I traded emails with the Alliance Party to discuss working together again. The Prohibition Party’s candidate, Michael Wood, has asked for our support. We’ve talked to lesser known independent candidates like Robby Wells and Phillip Drake. Write-in presidential candidate Thomas Knapp has been on my Facebook friends list for many years, and we have discussed his campaign.
We will have many more conversations. Even after we choose a candidate for President (if we do), we will continue to have conversations.
We can take the speculative gossip that might arise from these meetings, fry it up like cheap chuck steak, smother it in gravy, and serve it with fried okra and mashed taters. It will feed the appetite of the masses. It’s cheap, easy to produce, and god damn it, it is delicious!
Right now the 1990s are all the rage, and 90s nostalgia can be packaged and sold like cereal. There is a great nostalgic story about how Ross Perot and the The Reform Party Movement changed the course of American politics by forcing Bill Clinton to balance the federal budget, and the Republican Party to adopt the Reform Party’s platform by creating the Contract with America. This could be extended to show hypothetically how an independent like Robert F. Kennedy can win or fail in his presidential bid but still affect modern politics.
These things however are not the largest political story of 2024.
The real story of 2024, is how The People have a president many don’t wish to re-elect, but the only other option is to re-elect a failed president that was voted out of office. In a recent Gallup poll, 41 percent of adults found President Biden favorable, but only 42 percent found former President Trump favorable. Despite both Democratic and Republican candidates being deeply underwater in the polls, no other viable options exist.
That is because the Democratic and Republican Parties have colluded to keep independents and other parties off the ballot. This includes Robert F. Kennedy Jr and any other opposition to Joseph Biden and Donald Trump. These issues are ubiquitous to any and all opposition to President Donald J. Trump and President Joseph R. Biden.
In other ways, this is also affecting, to a much lesser degree, less known major party primary candidates like Nikki Haley and Dean Phillips.
In a recent Supreme Court case, the Honorable Justice Elena Kagan argued: “The question that you have to confront is why a single state should decide who gets to be president of the United States?”
This is a fine question.
While the Democrats and Republicans have near universal ballot access in all 50 states, all independent and minor party candidates are restricted from the ballot. Each state creates its own set of laws to regulate who can run for office.
There are states where gaining ballot access is easy. In Mississippi for instance, any political party can put forth a candidate for any office without much restriction.
There are however states where gaining ballot access is incredibly hard. New York State is the primary example of a difficult scenario. To gain ballot access in New York, a candidate has to gather petitions equal to a percent of some number that is always up for debate. As of the 2020 translation, that would equal about 135,000 signatures. The time frame to gather these signatures is “between the tenth Monday and ninth Tuesday prior to the primary election”, which makes collecting these signatures nearly impossible.
The governing election body of the state will go through all of the collected petitions to verify valid signatures. A political party or candidate has to gather 25 to 30 percent more signatures than required to cover for signatures that are unverifiable. This means that in New York, we are required to gather a minimum of about 168,750 petitions.
Many professional petition gatherers charge between 8 to 10 dollars per signature. That does not include other costs.
In order to gain ballot access in all fifty states, it will cost over 20 million dollars according to conservative estimates. These are costs that the Democratic and Republican parties do not have to bear.
If a minor party or independent candidate gains ballot access in a state, one of the major parties can file a lawsuit in an attempt to have the candidate thrown off the ballot. In addition, someone can file an FEC complaint in order to launch an investigation that can get a candidate thrown off the ballot. In other cases, the state body that governs elections will find a reason to throw a candidate off the ballot without an outside complaint.
When all else fails, the state legislature can change ballot access laws to stop minor parties and independents. A great example of this was New York in 2020. All the New York State political parties not allied with either the Democratic or Republican Party were administratively terminated through legislation. Prior to 2020, New York had a healthy number of political parties with a fusion ballot system, and a number of minor party members held office. The Reform Party has several officeholders that were affected by the loss of our ballot line.
Raising the money for petition drives is incredibly difficult. When a person talks to a political party, the first question they ask is “Who is your candidate?” and that is followed by “Do you have ballot access in all fifty states?”. At the time of writing this, only the Libertarian Party is on track to have fifty state ballot access with the Democrats and Republicans. When people learn that you do not have 50 state ballot access, most walk away and tell you to contact them when you do.
Outside of the enthusiasm gap, smaller parties do not have the same ability to raise money as the Democratic and Republican Parties.
With ballot access, the Democratic and Republican parties can partake in state sponsored primaries which amounts to the equivalent of a 300 hundred million dollar state sponsored advertising campaign. These primaries allow the Republican and Democratic Parties’ candidates media exposure that can be leveraged for donations and volunteers. Minor parties secure their candidates through convention procedures and hand shake agreements without such exposure or excitement.
In order to raise and spend money competitively against the DNC and RNC, a political party has to have an Advisory Opinion from the Federal Election Commission. This “AO” allows the political party to have expanded contribution and spending limits compared to other parties. As of 2024, only four other parties have gained the AO to my knowledge. To my knowledge, none of the parties with the AO gained it in the last ten years.
In order to fund their parties, the Democrats and Republicans have raided the federal treasury.
The federal government will match up to 250 dollars of a small contribution through matching funds. The only minor party candidates to gain matching funds were the Reform Party’s Pat Buchanon in 2020 and the Libertarian Party’s Gary Johnson in 2012. The Reform Party’s Ross Perot also had matching funds in 1996 stimming from his results in 1992 as an independent.
These matching funds guarantee that a major party’s presidential campaign cannot be outspent by a minor party or independent candidate.
The most controversial subsidy the Democrats and Republicans gain is in the form of a three million dollar federal grant to fund their conventions every four years. The Democrats and Republicans can take their three million dollars, use the convention to fundraise, and turn it into ten or twenty million dollars.
Prior to the inclusion of Ross Perot in the 1992 presidential debates, the presidential debates were organized by nonpartisan groups. Now these debates are organized by the federally funded Commission of Presidential debates. No independent candidate has been invited to debate in over 20 years.
Even if the ballots were opened to independent and minor party candidates, and the system of financial kickbacks to the Democratic and Republican Parties were ended, the Democratic and Republican machines are massive. They were able to sustain themselves because of help from state finances.
Both the Democratic and Republican parties have a National Committee, 50 state parties, a county party in almost all 3,143 American counties and over 100,000 precinct level organizations. These organizations do not include candidate committees, congressional district organizations, associated political action committees, 501c3 organizations, 501c4 organizations, political clubs and other groups that have a purpose to raise money for candidates and supporting platform issues.
These stand alone organizations within the parties allow the Democratic and Republican machines to raise money in mass, move money around like a shell game, organize volunteers, gather petitions and conduct political activity on a major scale. These apparatuses put the minor parties and independents at a disadvantage for volunteers, organization levels and fundraising abilities.
This also does not include the vast number of political vendors and bundlers that work only for the Republican or Democratic Parties, and keep the minor parties from benefiting from the most highly skilled professional services. This means that minor parties have to produce services and products in house rather than outsource them to professional firms.
On top of this, arguably, without proportional allocation of electoral votes based on voting percentages, the winner-takes-all system favors two parties. There are arguments here for the winner-take-all Electoral college allocations vs proportional electoral college allocations vs abolishing the electoral college for popular vote – Those arguments are for another time.
These issues I mention are only a few of the issues we face. The establishment has has fucked us in many other ways. This includes that when an independent wins a federal legislative seat, they have to caucus with the Democrats or Republicans to serve on a committee in Congress.
I reiterate. Due to my arguments above, the biggest news story of 2024 is that President Joseph Biden and Former President Donald Trump are deeply unpopular. Few Americans want a rematch of the 2020 Presidential election, but due to unfair ballot restrictions and the raid on the federal treasury that funds large political machines, there is currently no viable alternative to these bad candidates.
Sincerely,
Nicholas Hensley
Chairman
Reform Party National Committee
PS. Would you like to meet with my team to discuss these issues?
