Abstract

California's Third-Party Donnybrook

In the last few weeks a new political party, the Independent Progressive Party (IPP) had made its appearance in California politics. Contrary to the predictions of most political commentators, the IPP managed to obtain 483,000 signatures on its petition to qualify as a political party. Of this total, 295,000 were found to be valid, which gave a small but comfortable margin over the minimum of 275,000 signatures required by law. Those who seek to minimize the IPP's success had put forward several explanations for it, of which the one most often heard was that Republican voters signed the petition in a Machiavellian plot to embarrass and weaken the Democrats. Probably some Republicans did sign for this reason, but a study of editorials in the Republican press and of statements by leading Republican's reveals no organized strategy.