Bill Young Faced Little Opposition from Third-Party Candidates

U.S. Rep. Bill Young, R-Fla., who passed away on Friday, was first elected to Congress in 1970 but faced only two minor-party candidates in the more than 20 times he ran for his Tampa Bay seat. Richard Winger over at Ballot Access News, one of the nations leading experts on third parties and independent candidates, noted this over the weekend.

Winger wrote of Young, In his 42 years of being elected to Congress, no independent or minor-party candidate ever ran against him, except in 2000, when the Natural Law Party ran Josette Green and an independent, Randy Heime, ran. The vote was: Young, 146,799; Green, 26,908; Heine, 20,296.

Despite the splash Ralph Nader made in the Sunshine State in the 2000 presidential election and Sidney Catts winning the 1916 gubernatorial contest as the Prohibition Partys candidate, its interesting that Young, who had one of the longest political careers in Florida history, faced little opposition from minor parties during his decades in Congress.