Independents Shut Out of Pennsylvania Primaries

INDEPENDENT VOTERS

• Independents shut out of primaries (Stephen Hambric, Centre Daily Times - State College PA) It’s time for an independent category in our political system. The two reigning parties have not been serving us well and do not deserve to continue their monopoly on public service.
• Contact Independent Pennsylvanians to join the fight for open primaries. "Independent Pennsylvanians is an association of independent and independent-minded voters. We support issues and campaigns at the local, state and national level designed to increase the visibility and power of independent voters in Pennsylvania—now the fastest growing political force in America."
• Obama can't win without Pa. (Tom Bevan, Philadelphia Inquirer) G. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College, says Obama's demeanor and perceived lack of empathy might also be creating a disconnect with the state's independent voters. "Like Obama or not," says Madonna, "he just doesn't relate very well. He hasn't been very good or very sensitive on matters of the recession." Obama's trouble with independents in Pennsylvania is no small matter, because most experts believe he can't win the state without them.The bulk of Pennsylvania's independent voters are clustered in the four counties surrounding Philadelphia and two counties in the Lehigh Valley (Berks and Lehigh).

INDEPENDENT CANDIDATES
Independent plans to mount serious campaign for mayor (Niki Kelly and Benjamin Lanka, Journal Gazette - Fort Wayne IN) Haley Ahrendt on Friday filed the required 1,213 voter signatures to be an independent candidate for Fort Wayne mayor – in fact, he filed more than 2,000.

2012
A Requiem for Huckabee (By ROSS DOUTHAT, NY Times) He’ll be missed because he embodied a political persuasion that’s common in American life but rare in America’s political class. This worldview mixes cultural conservatism with economic populism: it’s tax-sensitive without being stridently antigovernment, skeptical of Wall Street as well as Washington, and as concerned about immigration, family breakdown and public morals as it is about the debt ceiling… You can find it among independent voters, particularly in what a recent Pew report calls the “disaffected” demographic, whose hostility to big government coexists with anxieties about corporate power and support for redistribution of wealth.