Third party candidates: Little heard or even seen in debate roar
HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. — For weeks, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein had invited her supporters to join her in handcuffs. There would be “civil disobedience” before the presidential debate at Hofstra University and, as in 2012, when she first ran as the Green’s nominee, she would get arrested.
“We may decide to have supporters attempt to escort our candidates into the debates,” her campaign said, in an advisory note to protesters, which advertised a protest bus. “This situation may lead to arrest — it is possible but not definite.”
There is a reason that campaigns do not usually make these kind of announcements before major media events surrounded by the Secret Service. Stein, who has edged down to the low single digits in polls, was repeatedly stymied in her effort to create a moment outside of the debate center. A perimeter much larger than anything in 2012, when the college last hosted a debate, kept political activity far from the area where more than 1,000 reporters were working. The Commission on Presidential Debates was also screening debate attendees to catch anyone who might be planning an outburst.
All of the highest-profile, third-party candidates spent Monday in New York, riding along with the media herd. Stein’s only media exposure came when she arrived for an MSNBC interview, walked away and was stopped by security guards who told her she lacked proper identification.
By pure coincidence, independent #NeverTrump candidate Evan McMullin was watching from across the street as Stein and her staff packed into a van and sped off. Alongside a trio of strategists, he was waiting for credentials that would let him roam around Hofstra for interviews.
Gary Johnson, the Libertarian presidential candidate from New Mexico, did not bother making a public appearance at Hofstra. “I don’t think it’s my style,” he said in an interview. Instead, Johnson and running mate Bill Weld stayed in Manhattan for interviews, including a Facebook Live chat moderated by Reason magazine’s Matt Welch and a forum at Twitter’s offices that would run through the debate.
Johnson, like Trump, had jumped into politics after a career in business.