Has Biden, Trump skepticism opened Wisconsin to third party push?

WAUWATOSA — Chris Nass isn’t a donkey or an elephant. He’s a porcupine.

Republicans have pachyderms in their branding, while Democrats have been connected to donkeys since cartoons from the 1870s. Libertarians like Nass wanted an animal that is armed but only in self defense. Enter the porcupine.

His political affiliation made Nass’ recent presence among a group of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. supporters all the more remarkable. As Kennedy backers noshed on potato skins at an Irish pub outside Milwaukee, Nass stood off to the side, sporting a porcupine branded T-shirt as president of the Libertarian Party of Dane County.

Kennedy is running for office as an independent candidate, not a Libertarian. And while there are elements of his platform that overlap with Nass’ personal beliefs, many policy viewpoints underpinning Kennedy's campaign seem antithetical to Libertarian values, ranging from government-backed mortgage bonds to address housing shortages to a dramatic expansion of AmeriCorps.

Nass said he is thinking about Kennedy’s candidacy as part of a bigger picture.

“He is a serious candidate,” Nass said. “Do I agree with most of his positions? No, most of them I don’t. But I’m here to make sure people like him do have a voice.”

“(Kennedy’s candidacy) is not just for libertarians,” Phil Anderson, the Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate in 2024, chimed in. “It’s for Greens, and Socialists and People’s Party (members) — everybody is shut out by the current system. So we need to work together. If we’re all on the outside trying to break into the uni-party, rather than trying to throw our stones separately, we need to join together.”

Five times in the last 100 years has a third-party candidate received more than 5% of the vote in Wisconsin. The closest anyone came to carrying the state was independent candidate Ross Perot in 1992, but even then he was well off the pace of Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush.

Kennedy will not be the only third party candidate on the ballot in Wisconsin. Libertarians will have a candidate as well and the Green Party has secured ballot access for their presidential candidate, likely Jill Stein, whose campaign in Wisconsin drew national attention in 2016. A potential run from the bipartisan group No Labels waits in the wings.

“Inevitably, as major candidates get put in place and money is spent behind them on media, then people that were interested in voting independent or supporting third parties fall back into line with the two parties eventually,” Anderson said. “But (Kennedy’s) candidacy is a chance to break through all that.”

The circumstances in this election might also create an opening. Voters appear to be wary of a rematch between Democratic President Joe Biden and Donald Trump, who is now set to be his Republican challenger. Concerns range from the age of both candidates, to the stockpile of criminal indictments against Trump, to the growing number of liberals opposed to the Biden administration’s handling of the ongoing war in Gaza.

Typically, the fight for third parties centers on relevance — getting on the ballot, building support and trying to push voters to think beyond elephants and donkeys.

But some fear in 2024 that the presence of these third party candidates could swing the election to one side or another. That fear is particularly high among Democrats, who have already signaled they plan to confront the candidacies of Stein and Kennedy head on.

“You know, the Democrats have really thrown their base under the bus,” Stein said in an interview with the Cap Times. “That is what is spoiling their elections. And there are candidates like myself that emerge to actually address these issues and provide an alternative, which the Democrats are terrified of.”

Will Kennedy's Wisconsin support last?

Kennedy has long faced stiff criticism — or renown in some circles — for his work with Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group. Kennedy personally has promoted false theories linking childhood vaccinations with autism and, without basis, told Louisiana lawmakers in 2021 that the COVID-19 vaccine was the “deadliest vaccine ever made.”

But while some of Kennedy’s supporters say they were attracted by his anti-vaccine viewpoints, others say they are simply tired of the current political order and are looking for an independent voice.

Amy Heffernan is a chiropractor in Waukesha. She has voted for both Democrats and Trump in the past, but she said she’s become increasingly frustrated with both parties. 

January polling from Marquette University Law School shows Kennedy pulling in 16% of the vote in Wisconsin. Of all the presidential candidates, he is the only one who elicited a generally favorable opinion from voters who responded to the poll.

“I really feel like he speaks the truth about many issues,” Heffernan said.

Teddy McIntyre is one of many voters who first got interested in Kennedy because of the candidate's family ties — John F. Kennedy was an uncle and Robert F. Kennedy Sr. was his father. 

McIntyre’s own father, a loyal Democrat and supporter of Robert F. Kennedy Sr. during his 1968 presidential bid, was one of those who crowded the train tracks to glimpse the transportation of the elder Kennedy’s coffin to Arlington National Cemetery after his assassination.

“It feels like, with him running, his father is still living and, in a way, my father is still living,” McIntyre, a copywriter from Pleasant Prairie, said.

“But as I learned more about Kennedy, and the more I heard him talk, the name is less and less important,” he continued. “And the importance of getting him on the ballot and elected was so vital.”

To get on the ballot for Wisconsin’s November election, Kennedy’s supporters must collect 2,000 signatures between July 1 and the state’s Aug. 6 partisan primary.

Achieving that goal shouldn’t be hard, said Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

But Burden said he is skeptical that Kennedy will ultimately receive a share of the vote in Wisconsin that is anywhere near the 16% mark at which he's polling now. The power of his name might be attracting voters who will ultimately choose another candidate.

“It's relatively costless for someone in a survey to say, ‘Yeah, I would be interested in that person, maybe I would choose them,’” Burden said. “But the calculus usually changes as we get closer to Election Day. People who are affiliated with the parties often come home to their parties. People who dislike one of the major party candidates and really don't want to see that person elected will kind of go to the safer place and want to support the other major party candidate.”

Could third party candidates swing the election?

The third party landscape, both in Wisconsin and nationally, is far from settled.

Progressive activist Cornel West has launched a bid as an independent and has said he is intending to get on the ballot in all 50 states. The No Labels Party, a group that promotes centrism and bipartisanship, has long flirted with mounting a ticket in 2024. 

The Wisconsin Elections Commission, meanwhile, certified that the Green Party will appear on the ballot in November.

This will inject a new wrinkle that Biden’s campaign did not have to confront in Wisconsin in 2020, when the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled the Green Party candidate, Howie Hawkins, must stay off the ballot because of paperwork concerns.

Burden said the two-party system will continue to win out, despite this menu of options and despite Biden and Trump’s relative unpopularity. Debates, the campaign finance system and other core aspects of the American political system rely on the supremacy of the Democratic and Republican parties, he noted.

But there are fears among some voters that the third party candidates’ presence on the ballot will conspire to chip away at support for either Biden or Trump and thus swing the race to the other candidate.

Such a fear is most acute among Democrats, who have a long memory dating to 2016 and Hillary Clinton’s decisive defeat in Wisconsin. Stein, the Green Party candidate, received around 31,000 votes that year, roughly Trump’s margin of victory in the state.

Stein is the likely Green Party nominee in 2024, as well, and is making an explicit appeal to younger voters and those frustrated by the Biden administration’s support for Israel and inability to broker a ceasefire amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

Dave Schwab, the secretary for the Wisconsin Green Party who is also active in the Madison-area party chapter, said there has been a noticeable uptick in interest and attendance at party events in recent months.

“I think it's the biggest factor right now behind people rejecting the two-party system and looking for something better,” he said of Gaza.

Judith Laitman said she voted for Biden in 2020 but was adamant she will not do so again in 2024, largely over Gaza. The Madison retiree said she used to consider herself a Democrat but now says the party “doesn’t support my values.”

“I thought ‘Well, he can beat Trump,” Laitman said of voting for Biden in 2020. “I thought (Vermont Sen.) Bernie (Sanders) would have some influence on his policies. Who could have anticipated he would green light a genocide?”

Such a sentiment has become common among Biden’s critics, and Burden said the issue could especially hurt with younger voters, whom the president crucially needs to turn out in his favor in November.

“It's going to be work, I think, for the Biden campaign to get those young people back on board,” he said. “But there's a real risk with all these non-major party independent candidates lurking out there — there are just so many alternatives that young people might go to. It's going to be, I think, a real challenge for the Democrats.”

National Democrats have already tipped their hand that they will be more aggressive in instructing voters that casting a ballot for a third-party candidate, especially in a key swing state, is akin to voting for Trump.

Liberal outside groups are already preparing ad buys, including some targeting younger voters, urging them away from third party candidates. The Democratic National Committee has also begun hiring staff specifically to target campaigns, notably Kennedy’s.

Jill Stein's message: 'There is another option'

Third parties have long pushed back against the narrative that their sole purpose is to disrupt the race for either of the two major party candidates. Stein, who appeared in Wisconsin last week for a trio of events with voters, was sharply critical of those in the party who “are trying to intimidate people” not to vote for her.

“We think it's really important for the people of Wisconsin to know that there is another option that is not bought and paid for, that is not serving big money interests, that's not part of these parties of Wall Street and the war machine that are squandering our tax dollars and throwing the American people under the bus,” Stein said. “So we're here really to fill people in that we can demand another way forward. And in fact, people are already demanding.”

But the reality of a third-party candidate playing spoiler is much less straightforward.

Even in 2016, there is no guarantee that all of the Green Party voters in that election would have supported Hillary Clinton or even turned out to vote at all without Stein on the ballot.

And Burden noted that, with candidates like Kennedy, the calculus is even murkier. While some Democrats might be attracted to Kennedy because of his family’s history, his anti-establishment rhetoric could appeal to the same type of person who might otherwise be inclined to vote for Trump.

“At the moment, it seems to me like it cuts both ways,” Burden said.

This hasn’t dampened the enthusiasm of the supporters of those candidates, however, who believe the ambivalence around Trump and Biden presents a new opportunity.

Heffernan, the chiropractor and Kennedy supporter, said she has had conversations with family, many of whom are similarly put out by their choices on the ballot in November. All have expressed interest in Kennedy as another option.

“This time, it feels like my vote might actually do something,” she said.