Karen Kwiatkowski for Congress | Virginia, 6th District

With but one exception, Ron Paul has been running as a Republican for 30 years. He often references his discussion with Congressman Larry McDonald before he ran for Congress the very first time, when McDonald advised him to run in whichever party he could WIN in. The rest is history.

You were saying?

I'm saying people run in third parties all the time, for whatever reason suits them at the time, and Ron Paul has not only dabbled in third parties but has endorsed them as recently as 2008. So when FrankRep says: "Third party. LOL. When will people learn?" he is mocking Ron's 2008 presidential endorsement and his 1988 history. Did Ron think he would really win in 1988? Did he think any of the four third party folks he endorsed would win in 2008? I doubt it. Yet he did it anyway. So tell me, what is Ron Paul supposed to learn about third parties that you think he doesn't already know?
 
Excellent! I used to live in that district. We actually had a forum member (stbain) run as a Libertarian in this district in 2010 and he drew nearly 10% of the vote - a strong showing against a 9-term incumbent!

Yeah but there was no Democrat running in the race.
 
Yeah but there was no Democrat running in the race.

There was an independent/center party candidate, so it was a three-way race.

EDIT: vote totals from 2010:

Robert W. "Bob" Goodlatte 127,487 76.26%
Jeffrey W. Vanke 21,649 12.95%
Stuart M. Bain 15,309 9.15%
Write In 2,709 1.62%

The 1.62% write-ins are pretty substantial with other districts only getting 0.1% on average and the second highest was 0.25%
 
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I'm saying people run in third parties all the time, for whatever reason suits them at the time, and Ron Paul has not only dabbled in third parties but has endorsed them as recently as 2008. So when FrankRep says: "Third party. LOL. When will people learn?" he is mocking Ron's 2008 presidential endorsement and his 1988 history.

Ron Paul is smart, he's running as a Republican.
 
Ron Paul is smart, he's running as a Republican.

So is the person who this thread is about....so why are you hijacking the thread? I posted relevant, topical, recent election history as evidence that she might garner enough support in a Republican primary to take out the incumbent....and you turned the thread into a third-party versus Republican argument.
 
So is the person who this thread is about....so why are you hijacking the thread? I posted relevant, topical, recent election history as evidence that she might garner enough support in a Republican primary to take out the incumbent....and you turned the thread into a third-party versus Republican argument.
My mistake.

I'm just happy that Karen Kwiatkowski is running as a Republican like Ron Paul. I just want her to actually have a chance of winning.
 
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I'm just happy that Karen Kwiatkowski is running as a Republican like Ron Paul. I just want her to actually have a chance of winning.

I agree. If Karen wanted to run as a member of the LP for whatever reasons, I'd support her, but if winning in 2012 is the reason for running, she needs to be a Republican in Virginia's 6th district.
 
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Bump - I'd like to stay up with this campaign as well. I'll put out some feelers to friends of mine who still live in the area, and see what they know. :)
 
In one of her videos, it sounded to me like Karen was waiting to see how the redistricting falls before making any serious moves. Again, that's just how it sounded to me, I'm not trying to put words into her mouth.

The Virginia legislature is split with Democrats controlling the State Senate and the Republicans controlling the House of Delegates. As one might imagine, their plans for redistricting didn't align 100%. The two plans did not agree on what to do with the City of Roanoke. Roanoke is the tenth largest city in the state, and the largest city west of Richmond. The Senate wanted to put Roanoke in the 9th district, the House wanted to keep it in the 6th.

Bob Goodlatte, incumbent in the 6th, lives in the Roanoke area, but I'm not sure exactly where. There are no regulations that require him to be a resident of the 6th district in order to represent it, but lack of residency within the district might be a campaign issue for some folks and it might also have an effect on fund raising.

If you want to read up on the history:

http://www.roanoke.com/politics/wb/280034
http://blogs.roanoke.com/dancasey/2...ting-should-roanoke-be-in-the-6th-or-the-9th/

In the second link above, Dan Casey says "Both Goodlatte and Griffith favor the House plan. So does Del. Onzlee Ware, D-Roanoke, who I believe is the only black state lawmaker from western Virginia." This is incorrect. Delegate Ware supported the Senate plan according to his site: http://www.delegateonzleeware.com/main/roanoke-figure-heavily-wrangling-over-redistricting

The latest news suggests Roanoke will go into the 9th, but since the boundary runs all along the city, Bob Goodlatte may still be a resident of the 6th. The downside for Karen is that Roanoke is somewhat liberal/Democrat. The Democrat party rarely fields a candidate in the 6th and Virginia has open primaries. She might have seen a fair number of self-identified Democrats request the Republican primary ballot on election day and vote for her if there was no Democrat primary.
 
I don't understand why she wouldn't want to go with the State Legislature first and then work her way up. Goodlatte will not be defeated. If she gets any kind of serious support, she can probably win a State House seat or something like that. Had BJ Lawson gone with that strategy, he could have easily been an incumbent State Senator by now.
 
Yes, I am running as a Liberty-wing Republican against the long term RINO incumbent

Our website and the FB page are active and strong. I invite all of you to like our FB page, we need the "Likes" and I hope you will share this info with your friends, in and out of the 6th District.

By way of clarifying a few points in this line, in 2008 I donated to Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty PAC rather than his campaign -- and we had RP stickers all over the cars and I wrote in his name that November. I so admire and am inspired by him, as are millions of other Americans and people who love liberty everywhere.
 
Our website and the FB page are active and strong. I invite all of you to like our FB page, we need the "Likes" and I hope you will share this info with your friends, in and out of the 6th District.

By way of clarifying a few points in this line, in 2008 I donated to Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty PAC rather than his campaign -- and we had RP stickers all over the cars and I wrote in his name that November. I so admire and am inspired by him, as are millions of other Americans and people who love liberty everywhere.

Dig your work on Lew's site. Get in contact with the admins of this site, I'm sure you'd get your own sub-forum for grassroots coordination, visibility, updates, etc.
 
Our website and the FB page are active and strong. I invite all of you to like our FB page, we need the "Likes" and I hope you will share this info with your friends, in and out of the 6th District.

By way of clarifying a few points in this line, in 2008 I donated to Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty PAC rather than his campaign -- and we had RP stickers all over the cars and I wrote in his name that November. I so admire and am inspired by him, as are millions of other Americans and people who love liberty everywhere.

How did the redistricting go?
 
Here's the latest campaign update where she says "By the way, it appears that the "new" 6th District includes Warren and Page counties to the east, and while Salem will now belong to the 9th, we retain Roanoke City!"

I'm in her district and trying to help out with her campaign. She's running against one of the chief players behind SOPA! She's running a republican primary against Goodlatte who is the epitome of all things wrong with the Republican Party (i.e. vote whatever the party says)... the VA 6th district is very conservative where the primary IS the election since no democrat will ever win, Goodlatte is utterly despised by the left, they have no primary and VA is an open primary state, this will be the first primary he has ever faced in his 20 some years in office (i.e. the first chance for liberals to dump him). And lastly it's a June primary and one of the local political guru's said we only need 3% of the districts registered voters to win.

Between the opponent being the author/introducer of SOPA, having a promising swing vote potential, having the full backing of about every tea-party in this district (she does), and having the backing of the RP revolution we could land another Ron Paul in congress!
 
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