Third party candidates

The Tea Party group FreedomWorks, like many GOP organizations, will be taking some of its 2014 cues from President Obama’s successful reelection campaign.

“Internally, we certainly studied with admiration what the Obama campaign did in 2008 and in 2012. They took their messages to the next level in terms of mass customization,” President and CEO of FreedomWorks Matt Kibbe told The Hill last week.

The Obama campaign has trumpeted the success of its vast digital messaging and fundraising effort, with emails alone bringing in most of the $690 million the president raised online during the cycle, according to Businessweek.

Television star Roseanne Barr is officially running as a Green Party candidate for the presidency, she announced Friday via Twitter.

Barr has filed papers with the Federal Election Commission. She tweeted that while she expects Jill Stein, the Green Party front-runner, to win the nomination and plans to support her, she wants to "bring press attention" to the party's platform "and speak at its convention. I want young people to know there is a new way for us to go."

Barr is best known for her hit 1990s show "Roseanne." She said in August on Jay Leno's "Tonight Show" that she would run for the "Green Tea Party" nomination and has since appeared at Occupy Wall Street protests.

The ruling was cheered by conservatives who called the group and its nominations a ploy by Democrats to take Republican votes.

After being forced from the Illinois lieutenant governor's race amidst revelations of domestic abuse, Scott Lee Cohen is out for some revenge.

Cohen will be running for governor as an independent, he announced Monday. He will be pitted against Gov. Pat Quinn (D) and state Sen. Bill Brady (R).

Cohen won the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor in February but was forced from the race shortly thereafter, when attention was drawn to his 2005 arrest. His girlfriend, a convicted prostitute, said Cohen held a knife to her throat. Cohen has denied it and said he didn't know she was a prostitute.

"Illinois needs honesty more than perfection," Cohen said in a release.

It's hard to see Cohen getting much traction as a third-party candidate, but whatever votes he can muster will likely be at Quinn's expese.

Former Rep. James Traficant filed paperwork Monday to run as an independent against Rep. Tim Ryan (D) in Ohio's 17th congressional district.

Traficant, who represented the district until 2002, when he was expelled from the House following a conviction on corruption charges, had been deciding between challenging Ryan, or Rep. Charlie Wilson (D-Ohio) in a neighboring district.

The flamboyant former congressman was released from a federal prison last September, and had been flirting with the prospect of a comeback in his native Youngstown area, where he remains somewhat personally popular.

Ryan has won reelection fairly comfortably over Republican opponents in the past few election cycles, though Traficant ate into his margin of victory when he was first elected in 2002, and Traficant ran again for Congress from his jail cell.

Ryan is a former staffer for Traficant, whose decision to challenge Ryan was first reported Monday by the Youngstown Vindicator.

Cross-posted to the Briefing Room.

Polk County Commissioner Randy Wilkinson is in the race for retiring Rep. Adam Putnam's (R-Fla.) seat.

Crist is unlikely to continue to run as a Republican; will say whether he'll campaign as an Independent.

In what some see as a prelude to an independent campaign for Senate, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R) on Thursday vetoed an education bill favored by his current party.

According to the St. Petersburg Times:

After weeks of protest and a deluge of messages, Gov. Charlie Crist on Thursday vetoed a bill that would link teacher pay to student test scores and wipe out tenure for new teachers.

His decision, announced in a noon news conference at the Capitol, came as little surprise. Although Crist initially voiced support for Senate Bill 6, he had distanced himself over the past week as protests mounted.

"We must start over," Crist said.

Crist explained that the content of the bill and "manner of its adoption" was "significantly flawed."

"To make such changes, we must have the patience and the wisdom to communicate effectively with the people," he said.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) has endorsed Crist, but as signs of a potential independent candidacy have emerged, NRSC Chairman John Cornyn (R-Texas) publicly urged Crist to sign the bill.

A Quinnipiac poll out today shows Crist leading Marco Rubio 32-30 if he runs as an independent, while he trails Rubio 56-33 in a GOP primary.

Republican efforts to take down Rep. Tim Bishop (D-N.Y.) could be hitting a snag.

Suffolk County Legislator Jay Schneiderman is reportedly looking to seek the Independence Party line -- and not a major-party line -- for the race.

Because of New York's balloting rules, a candidacy like Schneiderman's could steal serious votes from Republicans. Those seeking evidence should look no further than Doug Hoffman's effort in November's upstate special election while running on the Conservative line.

Schneiderman is a former Republican who defected to the Independence Party last year and won reelection without opposition.

"My intention is not to seek a major party backing,” he told Newsday. "l'm floating the idea to see the kind of response I get from voters. This is a race an Independent can win. You could see the first member of the Independence Party in Congress."

Businessman Randy Altschuler, attorney George Demos and Chris Cox, the grandson of former President Richard Nixon, are all seeking the GOP nomination to face Bishop.

Either Charlie Crist realizes he can’t escape the stimulus, or he’s leaning toward an independent run for Senate.

Crist is saying some curious things for a man in the midst of a conservative primary challenge.

Here’s a few, just from the last couple days:

From an appearance on Fox and Friends: “(Obama has) done some things that are good for our state; he’s done some things that are not good for our state. But what I have to do is make sure that I’m working with anybody who will do things that are good for our state and not just cast them aside because they have a different letter behind their name.”

On supporting the stimulus: “I don't apologize for it at all. It was the right thing to do. We needed the money. It saved 87,000 jobs for our state.”

More: “I understand that different people view (the stimulus) in a different way. In the shoes that I stand in right now, I've got to look out for the people, and that's what I'm doing."

Crist met with Obama in Washington this week after (not-so-smoothly) ignoring him late last year. He has also parted ways with some key campaign staff, including political director Pablo Diaz and new media consultant Sean Doughtie, who said simply, “The campaign was going in a different direction.”

The campaign is definitely headed in a different direction, which is to be understood, what with its declining poll numbers. The question is what kind of direction.

Crist’s camp has steadfastly denied it will go the independent route, but Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) was saying the same thing mere days before he made the switch.

An independent run is easily the most tempting scenario for political junkies, and polls show Crist would stand a better chance of winning in a three-way race with Marco Rubio and Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-Fla.) than he would of winning the GOP primary. He’s got to know that he will probably never win the presidency as a Republican, so now is as good a time as any to reevaluate.

If he does want to go down that road, he must decide by April 30. He can still take the $7.6 million he has banked and use it on an independent bid, so he would have a fighting chance without a party infrastructure behind him.