NPR (“A postcard from the Lesser-Known Candidate Forum, a New Hampshire primary tradition“):
Richard Rist is a business owner from Maryland, frustrated with how divided the nation has become. His solution: run for president. Because… why not?
On Thursday, Rist was part of what’s called the Lesser-Known Candidate Forum, held by Saint Anselm College in Manchester every four years, a tradition that dates back to 1972 in the first-in-the-nation primary state.
It only costs $1,000 to get your name on the presidential primary ballot in New Hampshire, a far lower barrier to entry than in other states. So, there’s no shortage of lesser-known candidates.
Rist is one of 45 people who will be on that ballot next month. Does he see a clear path to victory? “No. No I’d be lying if I said that. Do I hold out the possibility that I could grab some traction? Yeah, I do,” he told NPR.
Dressed conservatively in a navy sport coat and a floral tie, Rist made his way to the stage, where he found himself sandwiched between a man wearing a big black rubber boot on his head, and a candidate named Paperboy Love Prince whose outfit evoked a wish-granting genie.
Twenty of the lesser-known presidential candidates came out to share their ideas, including Donald Picard of Cambridge, Mass.
“When I began this rather quixotic journey a few months ago, I had as a stretch goal that I would be participating in a presidential debate, and here I am. Wow!” he said.
Republican Peter Jedick, a retired firefighter from Cleveland, said he wanted to try to get attention for his ideas, like moving the government out of Washington, D.C., and dealing with the debt.
But he also has the kind of optimism even some better known candidates are fueled by. “Well, I’m not going beat Trump. But I think I can move up there with, like, Nikki Haley and those guys,” he said.
And then there was perennial candidate Vermin Supreme, known for the boot he wears on his head. “Vermin Supreme will take away your guns … and give you better ones. And these better guns will shoot marshmallows, but they will still be lethal,” he said to laughter in the room.
His stated platform had something to do with space alien ponies, though it was a bit hard to decipher.
These quadrennial reports are, rightly, played for laughs given the absurdity of some of the candidates. None of these people are remotely qualified to run for President and, of course, won’t be given serious consideration.
At the same time, the major party primary debates routinely feature candidates like Vivek Ramaswamy, Herman Cain, Tulsi Gabbard, Tom Steyer, and Andrew Yang. Some of whom gain traction for at least a while before the parties settle on more traditional candidates. (Of course, there’s the example of Donald Trump, who was arguably no more qualified than some of the other business candidates but started with far greater celebrity and won the whole damn thing.)
Moreover, while it seems obvious to me that we need to winnow the ballot to a reasonable number of candidates, that fact of the matter is that our system essentially gives us a choice between two and only two viable candidates—the Democratic and Republican Party nominees—every four years. To reiterate Steven’s point in his post on Kevin McCarthy’s departure, a more representative system would give us more choices than that. Alas, doing so would require a complete rethinking of our entire governing structure.
