Military veteran AJ Kessel, who's running a long shot independent bid for US Senate, has collected about 2,000 signatures since he started gathering them in April. He has 16,000 to go by next month if he wants his name on the general election ballot.
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"I've got until the end of June to get an inordinate amount of signatures," he tells SFR. "It's extremely hard."
It's three times as many total signatures Republican US Senate candidate Greg Sowards needed to gather in order to get on the GOP primary ballot after failing to receive 20 percent of the vote at the party's preprimary convention in March. And even that was tough.
"It's such a huge undertaking," Karen Sowards, Greg's wife, tells SFR.
Greg is challenging establishment-favorite Heather Wilson in the GOP primary in June. He had to gather signatures from door-knocking and parking lots because public areas don't allow it, Karen says.
"Everybody wants to be neutral on everything," she tells SFR. "When we're out and about at a Sam's Club, if one of the managers sees you doing something about politics they ask you to leave."
Greg Sowards did meet the signature requirement and got about 1,000 more than needed in case any were to be contested. Karen says Kessel will probably have to get 25,000 signatures total in order to be safe.
"I feel sorry for him," she says.
If Kessel has any advantage, it's that he doesn't have to limit his signatures to registered Democrats or Republicans. Still, he has a long way to go before his June 26 deadline. He dubs his campaign "a serious attempt to break into the system."
Kessel, who spent 30 years in the military including stints in the Gulf War and the War in Iraq, has similar libertarian leanings to Jon Barrie, another longshot independent running for the same seat. Both, for instance, support withdrawing all troops from Afghanistan and Iraq.
Kessel's positions on the issues mainly revolve around reducing the national debt by "cutting from programs that aren't in the constitution." In many ways, Kessel's budget-cutting proposals mirror that of Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., by preserving Medicare, Social Security and military spending but cutting nearly everything else. He cites the Environmental Protection Agency and the US Housing and Urban Development department as examples of unconstitutional federal programs.
Perhaps because of his political disadvantage, Kessel also supports public campaign financing.
"Anybody should be able to run for public office," he says. "But it's not that way—you've got to belong to the club."
Photo courtesy kessel4senate.com
