Third-Party Candidates Offer Alternatives
BOSTON -- On a recent day, Christy Mihos reclined in a comfortable leather office chair at his Park Street campaign office overlooking the Statehouse's majestic, golden dome and suggested it might be time to put an independent in the governor's corner office.
"If you like the way the state is run, if you like the fact that you can't afford to live here, or find reasonable housing here, or find a job here, vote for these two parties because you know what you're going to get," he said. "If you want something different, a change, give an independent a chance."
Independent candidates for Massachusetts governor are not a new phenomenon. Past elections saw gubernatorial bids by members of the Libertarian, Green and Independent parties. All were hindered by limited funding and a lack of name recognition. None received more than 5 percent of the vote.
Early post-primary polls put Mihos in the same arena -- 5 percent. Green-Rainbow Party candidate Grace Ross lingers at around 1 percent. But political experts said Mihos may have more going for him than the usual independent candidate.
The multimillionaire businessman is banking on his personal fortune to make him financially competitive with his high-spending Democrat and Republican opponents. He also made a name for himself as a gadfly when he served on the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority board.
Mihos tried to burnish that image on Monday night in a debate among the four gubernatorial hopefuls, taking center stage with unrelenting attacks on Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey, the Republican candidate.
Mihos' strategy fits the criteria that Thomas Patterson, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, said is crucial for independent candidates. For independents to succeed, said Patterson, they need "money, notoriety or name" before the campaign begins.
"Unless they thrust themselves up in the polls they tend to not get too much attention in the media," he said. "A lot of times it's as if they don't exist."
But sometimes third party candidates win. Ex-wrestler Jesse Ventura, elected governor of Minnesota in 1998, ran under the banner of the Reform party. Connecticut and Maine have also recently had independent governors.
The analysts said the key to their victories was discontent with the major parties.
Patterson said the biggest hope for independents is that voters "will look at them and say, 'Here's somebody who's in-between.'"
Mihos, a longtime Republican running now as an independent, is aiming for that response.
"There's not a dime's worth of difference between the two parties," he said. "We certainly will win because people just have had it with this 'same old' all the time."
Some analysts speculate that Mihos could take Republican voters from Healey. Healey's spokesman did not respond to calls for comment. Democrat Deval Patrick's spokesman, Richard Chacòn, said Patrick is concerning himself with his own campaign rather than worrying about whether other candidates will take votes from him.
Mihos said he is counting on "undeclared" registered voters to lean his way. "I represent 50 percent of the registered voters here in the Commonwealth," he said. "And I highly recommend running for governor under those circumstances."
That assumption is flawed, Patterson said. "In general it's nonsense. Most of the undeclared have a party loyalty," he said.
Still, R. Shep Melnick, a professor of American politics at Boston College, said that "outsider" rhetoric can appeal to voters of different stripes.
"This is part of a very long American tradition of 'I'm not part of the government. I'm representing you,'" he said.
Melnick said the "outsider" tradition is tied to American individualism and distrust of government but that language has resonance even among the major parties.
"For a Democrat to win [in Massachusetts], he has to show that he's not a part of the Democratic machine," Melnick said.
Melnick said, even when they are not competitive, third-party candidates can seize an issue and demonstrate its importance, forcing the other candidates to give it thought.
"When the major parties get stale and when they get closed off to new ideas, third parties can be an important way of waking them up," Melnick said.
The 1992 presidential election was one such example, where Texas businessman Ross Perot's position on budget deficit influenced Democratic nominee Bill Clinton's stance on the issue.
"Without Perot in the race in 1992 I think that Clinton would have bitten off healthcare first, rather than budget deficit," Patterson said.
Ross, the Green-Rainbow candidate sees her role in the same light. The longtime political activist said one of her goals is "a much more aware, much more engaged electorate" about issues, such as economic justice-including minimum wage-and global warming.
Ross also sees herself representing a wider constituency, noting the wealth of her opponents. "I'm running for everybody else, I guess," she said, sitting in a downtown coffee shop late last week.
Ross is the first to admit that she cannot compete financially. Her campaign will focus on reaching people at the local level and through local media, she said.
Still, Ross thinks she could win.
"The biggest challenge is a psychological hurdle," Ross said. "People think you can't win."
Heather Schultz is a graduate student with the Boston Statehouse Program at the Boston University College of Communications.
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