Four names to pick from for president

BOISE – It’s official: When Idahoans go to the polls in November, there will be four names on the ballot for president: Bush, Kerry, Badnarik and Peroutka.

Though most attention has been focused on President George W. Bush and Democratic challenger John Kerry, Idaho’s ballot also will include Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik and Constitution Party candidate Michael A. Peroutka.

“It gives people a choice,” said Boise State University political scientist Jim Weatherby. “Third parties should be welcome. They played a significant role in our history in promoting ideas that later become co-opted by one or more of the major parties.”

The two third-party candidates, who were included on the ballot as officially certified by the Idaho Secretary of State’s office Tuesday, agree on some issues and starkly disagree on others. Both favor pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, withdrawing from the United Nations and ending gun control, according to their campaign Web sites. But Badnarik favors pardoning all nonviolent drug offenders, eliminating minimum wage laws and ending government regulation of abortion and marriage, while Peroutka wants to ban all stem-cell research, abortion and gay marriage, and “return to a Republic of self-governing states whose laws are rooted in Biblical principles.”

Missing from Idaho’s ballot will be Ralph Nader, whose supporters fell short in their signature-gathering effort to put the longtime consumer crusader on the ballot as an independent. They turned in 4,388 signatures on the Aug. 24 deadline, but needed 5,016.

Nader still could run as a write-in, which he did rather successfully in the last presidential election in Idaho. In 2000, Nader drew 12,292 write-in votes – 2.5 percent of the vote.

That was nearly three times the vote total of the Libertarian Party candidate that year, Harry Browne, who got 0.7 percent of the vote, and more than eight times as many votes as that year’s Constitution Party candidate, Howard Phillips, who got 0.3 percent of the vote.

In the 1996 election, Libertarian Browne garnered the same percentage of Idaho’s vote as in 2000, 0.7 percent, and Phillips, whose party then was called the U.S. Taxpayers Party, got 0.5 percent.

“It’s not significant, of course – George Bush will carry Idaho as every Republican has since 1964,” Weatherby said. “But it does give the voter a range of choices.”

Idaho’s Libertarian party has been active on and off over the years, Weatherby noted, and Idaho’s electorate traditionally has had a “small-L libertarian strain in our politics.”

In addition, Weatherby noted, “We’ve even had a crossover candidate – a Constitution Party candidate became a Republican.”

Phil Hart won the Republican primary for a state House seat in Kootenai County this year, defeating GOP incumbent Wayne Meyer. Hart had previously run unsuccessfully against Meyer as a Constitution Party candidate. Hart is unopposed in the general election, and virtually guaranteed to take office in January.

The Constitution Party won ballot status in Idaho in 1996, when it turned in 10,641 signatures. The Libertarian Party has had ballot status since 1988. A party can maintain its ballot status after the initial qualification by running at least three candidates in state or federal elections each cycle, according to Idaho election laws.

The Natural Law Party, whose presidential candidate John Hagelin collected 0.2 percent of Idaho’s vote in 2000, still has ballot status in Idaho, but that party informed the Secretary of State’s office this year that it has no presidential candidate to list this time around.

Badnarik, 50, the Libertarian candidate, is a software consultant from Austin, Texas, who has run twice for the Texas House of Representatives. His vice presidential running mate is Richard Campagna, a consultant, attorney and college instructor from Coralville, Iowa.

Peroutka, 51, the Constitution Party candidate, is an attorney from Pasadena, Md. His running mate is Chuck Baldwin, a commentator who also is the founder and pastor of Crossroad Baptist Church in Pensacola, Fla.