Salon.com > Constitution Party

Third-party candidates debate

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 04:09:00 +0000

It was the first presidential debate in which the moderator was more famous than any of the candidates. Larry King, who in his post-basic cable life hosts a talk show on Ora.tv, had just flown into Chicago from Montreal, and was strapping himself into his red suspenders in the green room above the Hilton Hotel’s Continental Room. In a few minutes, he’d be feeding questions to the standard bearers of America’s third, fourth, fifth and sixth parties. Not even the event’s organizers seemed certain who they were.

“Is that Rocky Anderson?” asked a publicist for Free & Equal, the debate sponsor, pointing at a white-haired man in a baggy blue suit who looked sort of like the senator from The Godfather, Part II.

What makes Virgil Goode run?

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 12:00:00 +0000

Constitution Party presidential nominee Virgil Goode may not have the name recognition, money or organizational strength of Mitt Romney or Barack Obama, but there's an outside chance he could swing the presidential election. The Virginian served six terms in Congress, first as Democrat and later as aRepublican, and still has fans in the battleground state, where Republicans are concerned he'll siphon off enough conservative votes from Romney to hand Obama Virginia, and potentially, depending on how the rest of the map works out, the presidency. He's polling at only about 2 percent, but the state GOP is concerned enough that it's suing to try to remove him from the ballot.

Goode, who was recently profiled by the Washington Post, doesn't fit neatly into any political box. He holds some conservative ideas that progressives will consider kooky -- like his plan to put a moratorium on immigration until the unemployment rate falls -- but he has a populist streak: He's firmly against special interest PAC money and has no time for Paul Ryan's plan to voucherize Medicare. He spoke to Salon for the first installment of our Better Know a Lesser-Known Candidate series. Our conversation has been lightly edited for brevity.

Constitution Partyer reaches Va. presidential ballot

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 18:37:00 +0000

Former Republican Rep. Virgil Goode has obtained enough signatures to qualify as the Constitution Party candidate for the presidential ballot in Virginia.

Goode, previously seen fretting about "infiltration" by Muslim immigrants and attacking Muslim Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., doesn't have much chance of winning the state. But he could steal some votes from Mitt Romney in the key battleground, which is probably why the state GOP is challenging his eligibility.

The Constitution Party was founded in 1992 in order "to restore American jurisprudence to its Biblical foundations and to limit the federal government to its Constitutional boundaries," according to the national platform.