Recently, the Star Tribune Editorial Board wrote a tribute to the late Dick Franson ("Franson finally stops running," June 7). Franson, who died in May, had been a perennial candidate. He would run sometimes year after year, simply paying the filing fee to put his name on the ballot. Typically, he would place his name on the DFL ballot, pitting himself against the endorsed candidate like Amy Klobuchar in 2012 for the U.S. Senate or Steve Simon for secretary of state in 2014.
However, the Star Tribune also has been frustrated with people like Dick. Like many perennials and perennial fringe candidates, he ran for the 2013 mayoral race in Minneapolis that ballooned to more than 30 names. At the time, the Star Tribune called for an increase to the filing fee to discourage frivolous candidates.
And the Strib is not alone. The major political parties get nervous, too. You see, candidates like Dick use major political parties as a loophole. Minor-party candidates and independent candidates have to collect a certain amount of signatures from eligible Minnesota voters to get on the ballot for partisan races for the Legislature, statewide office, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House. Major parties do not, so perennials will place their names on a major-party ballot, because the chance they could collect those signatures is minimal.
Typically, the perennial or perennial fringe candidate gets shot down in the primary (Minneapolis got rid of its primary system when it chose to go with ranked-choice voting). But there have been times when that candidate made it past the endorsed candidate. In 1994, Sharon Anderson (a St. Paul fringe perennial who runs every year, literally) made it past endorsed candidate and state Sen. Tom Neuville in the GOP primary. She lost to Skip Humphrey in that year's general election. In 2014, Steve Carlson (a right-wing fringe candidate) defeated Independence Party-endorsed candidate Kevin Terrell in the IP primary. The IP has since blamed Carlson for its losing major-party status. (The party was reduced to minor-party status after the 2014 elections.)
Other typical perennial and perennial fringe names you might see include Ole Savior, Leslie Davis and Jack Shepard.
Perennials also have used smaller major parties — like the Independence Party more recently and the Green Party in the early 2000s — to get on the general-election ballots (again because they do not have to collect those signatures) in races where these parties would not endorse a candidate, such as for legislative or congressional races.
Still, the presence of perennial candidates raises an interesting question. How does one keep the integrity of the democracy by keeping them on the ballots without them throwing a monkey wrench in it? One could insist on many options, which are all debatable, including open-blanket primaries, a runoff primary, insisting on signatures for major-party candidates, upping the registration fee, and getting voters to be more informed and energetic in the voting process (my personal favorite).
I do know of situations where fringe and perennials get into office. In 2010, Tea Party candidates got into nonpartisan offices and frustrated a lot of city officials and city members with their actions and rhetoric. One was forced to resign, while others lost re-election. There's also an example of a candidate who won in 2005, lost re-election in 2009, and has since became a perennial candidate and has not won office since.
