Should you wonder whether fringe candidates really have an impact, look no further than Keith Russell Judd. From the confines of the federal prison in Texarkana, Texas, Judd’s 2008 presidential candidacy resulted in Idaho’s changing its election laws.
Judd grew up in New Mexico, where his father was a nationally recognized mathematician at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and where his grandfather, a nuclear physicist, was chosen to oversee the nation’s research into a space-based antimissile defense system.1 Judd’s passion was music, in which he was majoring at the University of New Mexico in 1992 when his life went awry.
As Judd tells it, he took an unloaded gun to the campus to promote his band, Double Shot. A misunderstanding ensued with the campus police, which, according to Judd, was made worse by the student newspaper.2 According to a federal court in Texas, however, what went on in New Mexico was beside the point—its point being that Judd sent a former girlfriend threatening letters seeking to extort money. Judd then exacerbated the situation by sending letters to the jurors in that 1999 trial in Texas following their verdict of guilty. From the judge’s point of view, Judd had earned himself seventeen and a half years in prison.3
Judd’s letters from prison (now monitored) suggest that he was contemplating making a change in his life. “Judd for President of the USA” frequently adorned his correspondence.4 He wasn’t just embellishing his calligraphy. In the 2000 election “Keith Russell Judd of Odessa, Texas, Independent candidate,” appeared on Indiana’s certified list of write-in contenders for the presidency.5
Actually it wasn’t that much of a change for Judd. In 1993 and 1997 he had run for mayor of Albuquerque. In between he ran for governor of New Mexico.6 Not until 2008, however, did he receive national attention. For that year’s presidential election he launched a full-scale effort from prison to get on the Democratic Party’s primary ballots in multiple states—particularly targeting New Hampshire, where the primary season commences. In letters to the press he claimed that New Hampshire and other states were violating his civil rights by prohibiting a prisoner from appearing on their primary ballots. His story was sufficiently interesting that a few reports appeared in the press.7 But they were nothing compared to the avalanche of coverage that followed Judd’s success in getting on the ballot in Idaho.
“Texas prison candidate cons way onto Idaho primary ballot,” folks in Walla Walla, Washington, read, while Tulsa, Oklahomans likewise learned, “if elected, presidential candidate can’t serve,” and those New Mexicans who recollected Judd’s runs for office likely chuckled over the headline “Inmate Makes ‘Mockery’ of Idaho Ballot.”8
Judd’s ability to get on the primary ballot in Idaho demonstrated both the benefits and risks of the post-1968 primary rule changes that made candidacy more accessible. Idaho was one of a handful of states that had dragged its feet in implementing such changes. Not until shortly before the 2008 election did it alter a requirement under which he would have had to collect more than three thousand signatures from state residents. The new law allowed a fee to be paid in lieu of the signatures.9 Absent the hurdle of gathering signatures of residents, Judd could hop from the prison yard in Texas to the primary ballot in Idaho.
Prison bars also did not bar Judd from the internet. Once on the Idaho ballot, he promptly entered the details of his candidacy on the website VoteSmart.org, providing a window to the world from which (at the behest of his letters to the press) amused newspapers could take flight with his tale.10
Idaho, however, still hadn’t finished dragging its feet on increasing accessibility for presidential candidates. While it was now easier to get on its primary ballot, the state’s Democratic and Republican choices were still ultimately determined in party caucuses. Put simply, which is indeed how Idaho’s secretary of state, Ben Ysursa, put it, “The good news is, the Democratic presidential primary has absolutely no legal significance.”11
Which raises a question: Is that good news?
For Idaho’s legislature the answer was yes. Consequently there was no folderol about democracy when the legislature voted to prevent prisoners from getting onto the primary ballots. It enacted a measure amending the law requiring signatures or a fee to requiring signatures and a fee.12
Agree or not, it did the trick.
Though Judd was now effectively barred from the ballot in Idaho, he popped up in West Virginia during its 2012 presidential primary. Despite odds akin to lightning striking the same place twice, Judd hit the attention-getting jackpot again. “Jailbird Shocker in W.VA. Vote” the New York Post hollered in that tabloid’s full-throated headline style. The article itself settled into a concise recitation of the facts, though they were indeed eye-popping: “A virtually unknown convict doing time in a federal pen, took 43 percent of the vote in West Virginia’s Democratic primary Tuesday, dealing an embarrassing blow to President Obama’s re-election bid.” By comparison, the article noted, when Judd had appeared on the 2008 primary ballot in Idaho, he came away with only 1.7 percent.13
Needless to say, Judd’s achievement in West Virginia was reported throughout the news media, as it combined a stunning rebuff of President Obama with a highly entertaining story—a truly ideal mix for the news media to report on voter views. “No one voted for Keith Judd,” one columnist wrote. “They voted against a president.”14 A letter to the editor in North Carolina said, “The people spoke loud and clear. We may not know who we’re voting for but we certainly know who we’re voting against.”15 Some number of West Virginians did know Judd was a prisoner. On the day of the primary the front page of that state’s Charleston Gazette ran an article under the headline “Presidential Candidate Is Inmate at Federal Prison.”
Judd’s feat triggered other perspectives as well. Some echoed those in Idaho, as when one West Virginia columnist wrote, “About that embarrassing vote for a felon, should it be harder to qualify for the ballot here?”16 A very different angle was raised by Investor’s Business Daily in an editorial that remarked, “Conservative pundit and IBD contributor Ann Coulter once said she, like many Americans, would rather vote for Jeffrey Dahmer, known for his unusual culinary choices, over President Obama. Federal prisoner Keith Russell Judd, 49, is not quite in Dahmer’s league, but for a substantial portion of West Virginia’s Democrats, he is also preferable to our campaigner-in-chief.”17
Dahmer was a convicted serial killer who engaged in necrophilia and cannibalism, and Coulter did indeed say she would vote for him over Obama.18 But it is through Judd’s fringe candidacy that we see, not in Coulter’s cold-blooded remark in Investor’s Business Daily, despite its pinstripe prose, the much wider extent in which rage was flowing.
We can see a fringe candidacy’s particular ability to resonate with and amplify political views frequently not well perceived by stepping back after that year’s Election Day and looking at the numbers. Primaries, after all, rarely attract as many voters as general elections. Was Judd’s 43 percent an accurate reflection of attitudes in West Virginia?
Judd received upwards of 72,500 votes (43 percent) in the primary; Obama received slightly more than 96,100 votes (57 percent). Judd was not on the ballot in the November general election. This time Obama was opposed by the Republican nominee Mitt Romney, along with Gary Johnson from the Libertarian Party, Jill Stein of the Mountain (Green) Party, and several independent candidates. In this instance Obama received upwards of 238,000 votes in West Virginia. That’s much more than twice as many votes, but nevertheless only 35.5 percent of the total West Virginia votes in the general election. Very clearly the percentage of votes Judd received in West Virginia’s primary did not accurately reflect attitudes in the state; it amplified them. Which is the value of fringe candidates.