From: 76330.3412@CompuServe.COM ("John M. Sulak")
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Illinois LP candidates and people to reach full potential
Date: 29 Aug 92 19:44:26 GMT

VIS000
   SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (UPI) -- To the Socialist Workers' Party, what your 
   presidential ticket says philosophically is more important than worrying 
   about little things like complying with election laws. 
   
   After all, with only 1,000 party members in the United States, everyone 
   knows your candidate doesn't have a chance. 
   
   That's why party spokesman John Votava of Berwyn wasn't concerned 
   Monday when reporters reminded him that his party's vice-presidential 
   candidate, who is in her twenties, was too young to legally serve in 
   the office. 
   
   Thinking ahead, the party had simply sidestepped the problem by putting 
   someone else's name on that portion of the nominating petitions it filed 
   with the State Board of Elections. 
   
   "We don't expect to win and the emphasis isn't on winning," said Votava, 
   who explained the party has run immigrant workers and high school 
   students for national office in the past. "The goal is to put the 
   emphasis on the populist social struggle." 
   
   Votava, a Socialist Workers' candidate for University of Illinois 
   trustee, was one of the 74 longer-than-long-shot would-be politicians 
   who filed petitions for the Nov. 3 election contest. 
   
   
   Monday was the filing deadline for third-party candidates, as groups 
   like the Natural Law Party, the God, Family and Country Party and the 
   We the People Party all began campaigns to win offices they say 
   traditional Republicans and Democrats don't deserve. 
   
   Seven alternative parties or independent candidates filed slates 
   for president and vice president, including Ross Perot, who many 
   people thought had at shot at winning the nation's highest office if 
   he'd stayed at it long enough. 
   
   Other presidential contenders included former Green Beret Bo Gritz of 
   the Populist Party and Leonora Fulani, a perennial presence on the New 
   Alliance Party slate.
   
   Eight fringe candidates will challenge Republican Rich Williamson 
   and Democrat Carol Moseley Braun for the U.S. Senate. One of them, 
   airline pilot Chad Koppie, founded the Conservative Party of Illinois 
   in part because of Williamson's flip-flop in favor of abortion rights. 
   
   "Rich Williamson cannot win this election, even if I and every other 
   (independent) party were to drop out," Koppie said. "Carol Moseley Braun 
   will win this election if myself or someone else like me doesn't stop 
   her." 
   
   Some candidates may be familiar names to Illinois election-watchers, 
   although their party affiliations are different.    No true Illinois 
   Democrat will ever forget Sheila Jones, the Lyndon LaRouche follower 
   who along with fellow LaRouchite Mark Fairchild won Democratic 
   nominations for secretary of state and lieutenant governor in 1984 and 
   stalled Adlai Stevenson's march to the governor's mansion. 
   
   Stevenson quit the Democratic ticket to avoid running with Fairchild 
   and himself created a new party, the Illinois Solidarity Party. 
   
   For the first time in years, Solidarity is not represented on the 
   general election ballot. Sheila Jones is still there, running for 
   Congress under the banner of the Economic Recovery Party. 
   
   Several congressional and legislative candidates filed as members of 
   the Harold Washington Party. It's obvious who's running for Congress in 
   the Louanner Peters Party, the Barbara J. Norman Party and the Henry L. 
   Anderson Party. 
   
   The oldest and most viable of the fringe campaigners is the 
   Libertarian Party, which has won a handful of races nationwide in its 
   20-year history. 
   
   Its Senate candidate, tax attorney Andrew Spiegel of Glen Ellyn, sounds 
   a bit like Ross Perot as he explains how the mainstream parties' meddling 
   in our private and public lives have hurt America. 
   
   "Between the two of them, they've taken this country from the most 
   powerful nation to the largest debtor nation on earth," he said.  
   "There's been too much governmental interference in the rights we have 
   as individuals to develop to our full potential." 
   
   But these little-known candidates who will never bask in the glow of the 
   media spotlight or reap the benefits of a $1,000-a-plate fund-raiser 
   are more likely to go against than grain than echo the prevailing 
   sentiment.
   
   Mike Rosing, a Libertarian candidate for state Senate, said he's 
   running solely to gain publicity for his campaign to legalize marijuana 
   in Illinois. 
   
   Some can't even agree with their own candidates -- and like the 
   Socialist Workers, don't particularly care if the dispute destroys their 
   narrow chance of gaining votes. 
   
   Libertarian Bill Mitchell of Benton dutifully circulated petitions for 
   the party's presidential slate -- with one small change. 
   
   Elections officials invalidated every petition he submitted because 
   he had scratched out the name of the party's vice-presidential nominee 
   and added his own. 
    
    Copyright 1992 The United Press International  



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