Rather Be Free
columnist: DigitalBob

Topic: Presidential Campaign 2008
Virginia Settles on Presidential Candidates, Several Missing

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Although Viginia's Primary isn't until one week after Super Tuesday, it's interesting which candidates did not file. In a close race, States like Virginia may be more important

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by DigitalBob
(Libertarian)
Monday, December 17, 2007

Friday Dec. 14 was the deadline for Republican and Democratic Party candidates to file for the State's February 12th primary. Six from each party filed.

The race for each party's presidential candidate could be decided before Virginia's primary. Over half the delegates for each party will be selected by Super Tuesday, February 5th. However, the polls have changed who the statistical front runners are in Iowa and New Hampshire, and may do so again. Polls, such as a recent one by Diageo/The Hotline, shows Clinton and Obama tied at the top, with Edwards just a few points behind. Huckabee's recent rise in Iowa broke the myth of a few months ago of a three-way race by Romney, Giuliani and McCain. Ron Paul's rise in Internet support and fundraising shouldn't be counted out either. States like Virginia become more relevant with a tighter race.

Virginia law requires a candidate to have 10,000 signatures in order to file for a primary. Barack Obama was the first candidate to file on November 27, with 18,900 signatures. Mitt Romney filed next on November 29 with over 15,000 signatures. Ron Paul filed last Wednesday Dec. 12 with over 20,000. The rest of the Republicans who filed on Friday were Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Mike Huckabee.

The Democratic party can help their candidates get the required minimum number of signatures. A petition was circulated that included eight candidate names. The petition got over 7,000 signatures. The petition helped six of the candidates get at least 10,000 signatures. Obama, Clinton, Biden, Edwards, Kucinich and Richardson will now appear on the ballot.

Missing Democrats are notables Chris Dodd and Mike Gravel. Even with the help of their party, they weren't able to raise the remaining signatures and file the necessary paperwork.

On the Republican side, Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo are missing. These two have built their run for president on the immigration issue. Representative Hunter is known as the man who built the fence between the US and Mexico along his district near San Diego. Representative Tancredo wanted to put a moratorium on all immigration, legal and illegal, until the government can get its policy in order.

Depending on your choice of polls, immigration isn't the hottest burning issue. The top issues are the War in Iraq, the Economy/Jobs, and Health Care.

In addition to low polling, money could be a problem for some of the missing candidates. From OpenSecrets.org, at the end of third quarter, Hunter had $132,742 cash on hand, but $50,000 in debt; Tancredo $110,079 cash, $295,603 in debt; and Gravel $31,141 cash, $64,716 debt.

With over $3 million cash on hand and no debt, it must have been something else for Dodd not to have filed. Compared to the top three polling Democratic candidates, Dodd has more time in the Congress (elected to the House in 1974, Senate 1980), than all three of them combined.

Besides polling and money, what else could you measure a candidate's viability? How about Internet interest?

I did some digging and found a correlation between website hits and candidates staying in the race, at least for Virginia. This table is from Hitwise.com, week ending 12/8/07:

In this case the break point is between 1.02% and 1.12%. As time goes on, I suspect that this Maginot Line for remaining candidates will go up the chart. We'll see.

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2007 DigitalBob, all rights reserved.
Published: Monday, December 17, 2007
Last modified: Monday, December 17, 2007

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