By William Lewis
The political primary season has begun with Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders emerging as the big winners in the New Hampshire presidential primary.
When we look at these various campaigns of the presidential candidates, we see ground operations consisting of door-to-door campaigning and television commercials. There are mailings sent out and a huge amount of telephone calls.
Regarding the two candidates who came in first, there’s a lot of enthusiasm and dedication in their ranks, in addition to a well-organized and well-led campaign organization.
Both winning candidates spoke strongly about the issues that interested them. If it turns out that Trump and Sanders win their party nominations, it will be a race in which the two candidates will have extremely different views on every conceivable subject. The voters will have a choice to make.
In New Hampshire the independents who are not registered with either the Republican or Democratic parties can vote in either party primary by changing their party registration from independent to Republican or Democrat when they go to vote. After voting, if they choose, they can change their registration back to independent. Here in New York State such a precedent is not permitted by law. Only registered members of a political party are allowed to vote in these primaries. That has always been the case. By maintaining party organization in this way it encourages voters to join a political party and become more active in politics.
The large turnout in New Hampshire voting is a prelude to massive turnouts in other primary states. This is the year of intense political interest. It has been said many times recently that the American people are angry. They are directing their anger at our government. The people are challenging our government’s domestic and foreign policies. With either Trump or Sanders they would hope to change that.
There is speculation that the former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will run as a third-party candidate this fall. There was talk of his running four years ago. His decision at the last moment was not to run.
This time he seems more serious. He will have to get on the ballot in 50 states. In Texas 79,939 valid signatures are required by May 9 from people who have not voted in the March 1 primary. In California 178,039 signatures are required. These numbers are difficult to obtain, even if Bloomberg spends a billion dollars on this project.
Bloomberg has worked in both political parties, especially the Republican Party when he was mayor. The Conservative Party has strongly opposed him.
His candidacy would seem to help the Republican candidate since Bloomberg favored liberal Democratic programs in the past. However, a situation with two major candidates and a third party candidate running for president can lead to many political developments. With the money available to Bloomberg he has to be taken seriously.
New Hampshire and Iowa have set the tone for the 2016 presidential campaign. This year there will be tremendous interest and participation.
One of our readers, Abe Fuchs, recently wrote that our young people “need more of a sense of purpose and direction in their personal lives and too often lack the training to have the good principles to guide them to make moral and positive choices.” He believes that public schools should have a strong character-development program. Fuchs thinks this type of education in our schools will help to improve student performance in academic studies and personal discipline.
It is going to be an active year in our national elections. We can only hope that when the election is over, our citizens will accept the results and move on to improving our great nation.
