Adrian Wyllie Willing to Risk Arrest for Forum Inclusion

Libertarian candidate Adrian Wyllie is steamed that he has been excluded from a gubernatorial forum being held later this week in Coral Gables. Wyllie sent a letter to the Florida Press Association (FPA) and the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors (FSNE) over the weekend demanding to be included in the forum, adding he would attend the event on Thursday.

You may either allow me to participate in the forum, or you may have me arrested, Wyllie wrote.

The letter is as follows:

As the only third-party candidate for Florida's governor, I am extremely disappointed in your failure to include me in your upcoming gubernatorial candidate forum at the 2014 FPA/FSNE Convention. Your exclusion of a viable third-party candidate is unacceptable, and exposes an entrenched bias in the FPA/FSNE approach to political coverage.

You will likely respond by saying that you have created "criteria" for inclusion in the forum, and you will then claim that I have failed to meet said criteria.

Please, allow me to pre-empt your likely rebuttal.

The criteria you have created make it absolutely impossible for any minor party candidate to participate, by its very definition. According to your stated rules, in order to be included, a candidate must belong to a party that has at least 5 percent of the registered voters in Florida.

The legal definition of a minor party in Florida is one that has less than 5 percent of the registered voters in the state. Therefore, your criteria guarantee that only Republican and Democrat candidates can participate.

Regardless of whether I have met your other, arbitrary criteria for polling and fundraising, the simple fact that I am not a Republican or Democrat would prohibit me from participating.

I have little doubt that this was entirely by design.

We will no longer allow you to stifle the voices of viable candidates, nor limit the informed choices of Florida voters.

Therefore, I refuse to accept your rules, and I present you with the following ultimatum: I will attend the FPA/FSNE Gubernatorial Forum on July 10th in Coral Gables. You may either allow me to participate in the forum, or you may have me arrested.

You have no third option ... As you have denied the people of Florida a third option, govern yourselves accordingly.