OKLAHOMA CITY – With approximately six weeks to go until the Nov. 3 presidential election, the top of the ballot here in Oklahoma will have some additional choices on it beyond the Republican ticket of Donald J. Trump and Michael R. Pence and the Democratic ticket of Joseph R. Biden and Kamala D. Harris.
Yes, here in Oklahoma voters will also have a chance to vote for three independent candidates and one Libertarian Party candidate, although the chances of any of the four actually winning is quite slim, even if one of them is hip-hop superstar, Grammy winner and international celebrity Kanye West.
LIBERTARIAN PARTY CANDIDATE
Starting with the Libertarian Party presidential ticket, Dr. Jo Jorgensen, 63, is running with vice presidential candidate Jeremy “Spike” Cohen, a ticket that will appear on the ballot in all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia.
In a press release this week from the Jorgensen-Cohen campaign, based in Greenville, S.C., the candidates noted, “The year 2020 marks the fifth time the Libertarian Party has succeeded in placing its presidential ticket on the ballot in all 50 states, having done so previously in 1980, 1992, 1996, and 2016. No other alternative party in over 20 years has achieved universal ballot access in a presidential election.
The Jorgensen-Cohen ticket has a lot to make up for in 2020, considering that former Republicans Gary Johnson (former New Mexico governor) and William Weld (former Massachusetts governor) ran a tight, professional campaign in 2016, earning their ticket more than 4 million votes, which translated into more than 3 percent of the national popular vote. That outcome tripled the party’s prior best performance, as noted in a recent New York magazine profile on the party’s current presidential and vice-presidential candidates.
As Jorgensen noted: “We’ve got two big-government candidates, and they both want to increase spending, they both want to take away your decision-making power, and neither one wants to bring the troops home. The only way to give every American another choice is for Libertarians to be on the ballot in all fifty states.”
Jorgensen was the vice-presidential candidate on the Libertarian Party ticket in 1996, with Harry Browne.
As for Jorgensen’s running mate, Jeremy “Spike” Cohen, he is the first Jewish vice-presidential candidate to appear on a national ballot since Joe Lieberman ran with Al Gore back in 2000.
The Maryland native reportedly was not Jorgensen’s first choice, or second, for that matter. But due to the rules at the Libertarian Party convention this past May, Cohen bested two other possible candidates to become Jorgensen’s running mate.
The New York piece noted that Cohen’s presence brings a less-than-serious quality to the campaign.
Whereas Jorgensen is a psychology professor at Clemson University and has been a Libertarian since the early 1980s, Cohen’s joking persona – promising Waffle Houses and cheesy bread for one and all may result in voters taking the candidacy, and the party, less seriously.
Writes New York’s Ed Kilgore: “Cohen, an online media entrepreneur, is best known as the designated running mate of political performance artist Vermin Supreme, the perennial candidate known for wearing a boot on his head and promising all voters free ponies. Supreme, who was a bizarre minor presence in the 2012 and 2016 Democratic presidential contests, took his act to the Libertarians this year, and though he finished third in last weekend’s online presidential vote, his side- kick Cohen won the separate vice-presidential balloting.”
Jorgensen did swing through Oklahoma on her “Real Change for Real People” summer campaign bus tour, speaking at the Oklahoma City Farmers Market in mid-August.
THE INDEPENDENTS
Misha Mohr, spokesperson for the Oklahoma Election Board, explained that those individuals who qualified to appear on the Nov. 3rd ballot either did so by being a candidate for a recognized political party – either Democrat, Republican, or Libertarian – while the others qualifying as independent candidates, Brock Pierce, Jade Simmons and Kanye West, had to do so by filling out the required paperwork and by also paying a $35,000 filing fee by July 15, 2020.
For those who do not pay the expensive filing fee, they are allowed to file a petition containing signatures equaling at least three percent of the total votes cast in the last general election for president. Write-in candidates, however, are not permitted on Oklahoma’s ballots.
“We actually have six (presidential) candidates on the ballot this year in Oklahoma, which is unusual,” Mohr said.
Southwest Ledger reached out to Simmons, West and Pierce, only receiving a reply from Pierce.
BROCK PIERCE
Pierce, 39, made his millions (possibly even upwards of $1 billion) in the crypto-currency game, getting involved with Bitcoin and others over the years, after leaving acting in the late 1990s and being involved in a string of children’s films, most famously two of The Mighty Ducks Disney films, which were set in his native Minnesota.
“The reason I am running is that I’m deeply concerned about the state of our nation and our collective future,” Pierce said in a phone interview. He continued, noting that 20 years into the 21st century it was high time to “upgrade the operating systems of America.”
The way he put it, the United States is simply repeating the same mistakes over and over.
Meanwhile, technology’s impact on our lives grows exponentially and we don’t seem prepared for it. Pierce wants to use his longshot presidential candidacy as an ever-expanding platform to find innovative ideas and methods to improve the lives of all Americans.
“I definitely think the time is right,” Pierce said of launching a political movement geared at bettering the nation. “If not now, when?”
Pierce, whose running mate is Karla Ballard, says he is independent, and that the term “party” smacks of control, something that is a throwback. Pierce says he is always thinking ahead and always noting how “technology is not good or bad. It’s a tool.”
And like any tool, he said, you have to use it properly and correctly to get the many benefits it offers.
Noting the Trump administration’s recent interest in returning America to space in a big way, including the U.S. Space Force, Pierce said he is “definitely pro-space” and with that, the innovations that develop alongside that return to the cosmos.
“Space is the next race,” he said.
Pierce splits his time living in homes Los Angeles and the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico. Asked if a future President Pierce would support Puerto Rican statehood, he responded, “If that’s what Puerto Ricans wanted.”
Pierce often brought the conversation back to innovation, implying that the U.S. had gotten a bit stale in recent decades when it came to innovation. Asked about the problems facing the U.S. and the planet, Pierce said, “I believe I am a steward, a custodian of all that I have, the wealth I have. We need to take good care of Mother Earth.”
And with America’s strong innovative history, Pierce believes we can get there again, by taking an optimistic approach about our future and our place in the world going forward.
“We can create a green, clean, better world,” he said.
Asked if he plans to campaign in Oklahoma, now that he is on the ballot here, he said he was planning a coast- to-coast bus tour this fall and believes that he will make stops in the Sooner State.
KANYE WEST
As for Kanye West, who splits time between homes in California and Wyoming with his reality star wife Kim Kardashian West and their young children, he actually has ties to the Sooner State.
His mother, Donda West, was born and raised in Oklahome City.
It was here in the state’s capital city that West’s grandfather, Portwood Williams Sr., was a civil rights activist. After his mother’s death in 2007, a family friend told The Oklahoman that Kanye West got his outspoken nature and “frankness” from his activist grandfather who participated in sitins at the Katz Drug Store lunch counter in downtown Oklahoma City in the late 1950s.
Political observers have said West, 43, is unlikely to have a strong showing in Oklahoma, despite his aforementioned family ties.
The state showed off its deepred views by giving Trump a victory in every county in the state, along with two- thirds of Oklahoma voters choosing the New York real estate mogul and reality TV star – the same man West purported to support, he’s often seen sporting one of Trump’s signature red ballcaps which reads “Make America Great Again.”
In addition to Oklahoma, West (as a candidate for the “Birthday Party”) qualified to appear on the ballot in 12 states.
Besides Oklahoma, they include: Minnesota, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Utah, Colorado and Vermont.
West’s vice presidential running mate is Wyoming-based Christian preacher Michelle Tidball. Among those celebrities who have endorsed West’s candidacy include rapper 2 Chainz and Space X/Tesla tycoon Elon Musk.
JADE SIMMONS
Classical concert pianist, beauty pageant winner and South Carolina native Jade Simmons, 42, has a political candidacy that is a little harder to nail down. Other than her website notes that her “Operation Restoration 2020” campaign is “non-partisan” and that she is “(a) vibrant voice confidently speaking truth to power on both sides of the aisle.”
The site also notes that Simmons “represents those who feel their faith, their gender, and their race have been held hostage by political parties hellbent on the opposition at all costs.”