Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
THIRD PARTIES WIELD INFLUENCE
Disgust at Trump, Clinton give outsiders weight in election result
Election after election, David Wiseberg of Davie voted for the Republican presidential candidate. George W. Bush got his vote in 2000 and 2004. John McCain was his choice in 2008.
For decades, Karen Froniewski of Plantation voted for the Democrat in almost every presidential election. Barack Obama got her vote in 2008 and 2012.
Not in 2016. Distrusting of Democrat Hillary Clinton and repelled by Republican Donald Trump, Wiseberg and Froniewski are voting for Libertarian Gary Johnson, one of four minor-party candidates whose names also are on the Florida presidential ballot this year.
They see both major party candidates as equally bad. “Voting for these two people, either one of them, is a betrayal of American values,” Wiseberg said. “I get up in the morning and I read the paper and I swear that Clinton’s worse than Trump. Next day it could be Trump’s worse than Clinton. It doesn’t matter.”
Froniewski, asked if it matters whether Clinton or Trump becomes president, responds with a question: “You’re going to ask a vegetarian what steakhouse they want to eat in?” she said. “They are both corrupt. It’s a matter of whether corrupt A or corrupt B is running the country.”
Neither Johnson nor Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate who also has some buzz among voters turned off by the major party nominees, has the slightest chance of becoming president. Their presence on the ballot could tip the balance between Clinton and Trump in Florida if the contest is as close as recent presidential races.
The prospect that their votes for minor party candidates could alter the outcome — it’s happened before — doesn’t bother Wiseberg, Froniewski and other South Florida citizens who are spreading the word on behalf of Johnson and Stein.
They don’t have the big TV budgets of Clinton and Trump, they don’t have the sophisticated get-out-the vote operations, and they don’t command the media attention of the candidates who are certain to win Florida’s 29 electoral votes.
Longtime Libertarian Karl Dickey, of Delray Beach, said he knows Johnson, the former governor of New Mexico, won’t perform well in Florida and won’t be the next president. “His numbers in Florida are lower than national numbers,” Dickey said. “It’s a big challenge. He has not been here enough and he’s concentrated on other states. And he hasn’t gotten the media coverage” that would help him become better known.
The most recent poll of likely Florida voters, released Monday by Quinnipiac University, shows Clinton with 48 percent, Trump with 44 percent, Johnson with 4 percent and Stein with 1 percent. Also on the ballot are Constitution Party candidate Darrell Castle and Reform candidate Roque “Rocky” De La Fuente.
Still, as the Libertarian Party regional representative for Broward, Palm Beach and Hendry counties, Dickey wants to get the word out about what he sees as an alternative to the sameness of the Democratic and Republican nominees. He’s a regular among the five to 10 people who wave Johnson signs every Friday afternoon at the intersection of Atlantic and Swinton avenues in downtown Delray Beach.
Dickey emphatically rejects the notion that one major-party candidate might be so bad that people should vote for the other — as does Silvie Suri-Perez, of Miramar, the Broward co-chairwoman for Stein, the Green Party nominee.
“We Greens firmly stand on the ground that there is no difference between the Democrat and the Republican parties and they work in tandem,” Suri-Perez said. “Every presidential election, they pull the same lesser of two evils. This year there is a difference ... what they’re presenting us with is pure evil. Trump is despicable, but you can’t say that Trump is any worse than Hillary Clinton.”
Omar Recuero, of Hollywood, who is active in the state and county Libertarian parties and the Johnson campaign, is among the halfdozen supporters who gather Wednesday afternoons to show support for Johnson on University Drive in Davie, just south of State Road 84.
He’s not persuaded that there’s a real difference between the two major-party candidates. “In every way that you would say that Trump is bad you could find something equally or just as bad for Hillary Clinton. Scandal follows her everywhere. And with Trump, every week it’s a new headline that would disqualify anybody anywhere running for office.”
When Barry Dockswell hears Democrats suggest they might vote for a thirdparty candidate, he offers the same counter-argument that many Republicans offer to wavering voters: The next president may be able to nominate several Supreme Court justices.
“You should vote for who you think should be president,” Dockswell said, suggesting that if “you think about the impacts on the Supreme Court, it may give you cause for thought.”
Though their percentages in polls are low, votes for Johnson and Stein could make a difference in a close race.
In 2000, there were multiple reasons Republican George W. Bush ended up winning Florida, and the presidency, by 537 votes over Democrat Al Gore, including rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court and the Republican-controlled state election system.
But two third-party candidates had a big impact:
■ The so-called butterfly ballot design in Palm Beach County led some people to mistakenly cast ballots for Reform Party Candidate Pat Buchanan when they thought they were voting for Gore.
Buchanan, who said it looked like people there voted for him by mistake, got 3,411 votes in Palm Beach County — an improbable 20 percent of his statewide total. ■ Green Party candidate Ralph Nader received 97,488 votes. Like many independent analysts, Broward Democratic Chairman Mitch Ceasar said Gore would have been elected if Nader hadn’t been on the ballot because more of the people who voted Green would have voted Democratic than Republican. “I have no doubt that these were liberal Democrats, overwhelmingly, and the Nader group, despite his protestations, in effect triggered a victory for Bush.”
Dickey disagrees. “Most likely a large percentage of those people would have stayed home or they would have skipped the presidential race,” Dickey said.
Usually, the share of people who say they plan to vote for a minor-party candidate declines as Election Day approaches “because of a perception among voters that they could be wasting their vote,” said Kevin Wagner, a political scientist at Florida Atlantic University.
And combined support for Johnson and Stein has been inching down to 5 percent in Monday’s Quinnipiac Poll from 7 percent on Oct. 3 and 10 percent on Sept. 8.
Still, Wagner said, support for Johnson and Stein might stay higher than traditional history would indicate. “This is an odd year, because the favorability ratings of both major candidates are so low,” he said. “If there were a year where a third-party candidate could make some progress, this would appear to be the year.”
If that happens, it’s unclear whether Clinton or Trump would be helped or hurt the most.
Joe Budd, a Trump supporter who was elected by Republican primary voters in August as the Palm Beach County Republican state committeeman, said his analysis of Johnson’s performance in polls “tells us he’s hurting Clinton as much as Trump.”
When Craig T. Smith, a senior adviser to the Clinton campaign who served as White House political director for President Bill Clinton, spoke to a group of South Florida Democrats last month, he said Johnson’s impact varies depending on the group of voters. “In some demographics he takes more from us. In some demographics he takes more from [Trump].”