The October 4th special election to determine who the new governor of West Virginia will be is drawing national attention. While American Third Position Party candidate Harry Bertram is getting only anecdotal support in the West Virginia gubernatorial race as reflected in professional polling, he is getting a steady trickle of media publicity. The stories are basically fair, even if they leave out some essential facts on occasion.
The most prominent story during the past two weeks is about a new campaign ad being aired throughout the state. In the ad, which can be viewed at WTOV Channel 9, Bertram focuses on discrimination against White Americans, calling himself the "voice for White American issues". When WTOV followed up, Bertram explained that "We're against affirmative action and against illegal aliens coming into this country and they're displacing white workers and eventually the white population", but then noted that he wanted to do right by all American people.
WTOV cited negative reaction by a couple of people; one person said that he saw Bertram putting Whites first, while another didn't think illegal immigration was a high priority in West Virginia. But as the American Third Position Party itself pointed out, WTOV failed to report that 95 percent of Blacks voted for Obama because of his skin color. A3P also wrote, "We have the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC), Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI), but heaven forbid a party or 'Caucus' advocating for those interests and issues that affect White Americans!"
West Virginia Public Broadcasting also published excerpts of an interview with Bertram in which he directly compares himself with the Republican candidate, Bill Maloney. Bertram states, “Bill Maloney is not the only conservative on the ballot. I am, but you get a bonus with me because I go beyond what the normal conservative would talk about”. He defines A3P as a a conservative America First nationalist political party, and rebuts accusations that A3P is white supremacist, explaining that the white supremacist tag is always used by left-wing liberal media types who tend to paint a broad brush on people and try to demonize them. Harry Bertram also holds forth on a number of other bread-and-butter issues during the interview, the audio of which is embedded below:
And finally, Public Policy Polling (PPP) has just released the results of their survey of 932 likely voters taken from September 30th through October 2nd, not commissioned by any partisan source. However, their poll focused only on the two major party candidates, garnering the following results:
-- Earl Ray Tomblin (D): 47 percent
-- Bill Maloney (R): 46 percent
-- Not Sure: 7 percent
Unfortunately, PPP does not define Not Sure, so this category could include those who are genuinely undecided and/or those who prefer one of the three alternative candidates. This means that despite his best efforts, Harry Bertram will end up a "single-digit midget". But does that mean the effort to put the A3P on the ballot as an officially-recognized political party was redundant? Not hardly:
(1). While officially-recognized third party candidates aren't considered as credible as candidates from the two major parties, they are considered more credible than write-in candidates.
(2). Officially-recognized third party candidates are much more likely to be invited to candidate forums than write-in candidates.
(3). Officially-recognized third party candidates are guaranteed to have their votes individually counted and reported. In contrast, votes for individual write-in candidates may not necessarily be individually counted unless the write-in candidate has a chance to win the election, as was the case with Lisa Murkowski in Alaska. Because Billy Roper was only a write-in candidate in Arkansas, the state did not necessarily count all of his votes, so the reported vote total of 49 is in question to this day.
(4). The experience by A3P activists of waging a petition campaign to get the A3P officially recognized in West Virginia will be invaluable in future campaigns. A3P activists got a chance to interact directly with the public, promote the A3P's cause, and rebut the filtered stereotypes.
In the final analysis, if Harry Bertram can at least finish third, ahead of the two other alternative candidates, it will be considered an important milestone in the A3P's success.
