John Paul Mitchell
Early voting for Arizona’s state primaries is about a year away, but a candidate for governor scheduled to hold the first public event is already looking ahead to the November 2010 general election.
John Paul Mitchell hopes to qualify for the state ballot as an independent, which would allow him to bypass the primaries and go head-to-head against the Republican and Democratic nominees (and the Libertarian and Green alternatives, if those parties decide to get into the race).
I have written before about Mitchell, who is a manager at a Phoenix credit card call center. I continue to be impressed with the energy that Mitchell is throwing into what has to be a long-shot campaign. He’s got a robust Web site, is active on social media and has taken on some campaign staff. Now on Thursday, Mitchell will hold his first public forum before the Republican incumbent and the most likely Democratic challenger have even become candidates.
Mitchell is striving to run an unconventional campaign that uses rapidly evolving social technology to appeal to voters who are not longtime activists in the two major parties. In keeping with this theme, Mitchell will hold a two-hour online town hall to answer questions from the public. The chat, or liveblog, will feature Web software from Scribblelive, which allows users immediate access to such events through existing social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.
Now, it’s hard to see how Mitchell will have a major impact on next year’s election. After all, a central tenet of his politics is running government without any taxes and the 16th Amendment never was legally ratified. The latter position tends to held by extreme, anti-tax protesters who sometimes wind up in prison.
But Ron Paul surprised a lot of people with his 2008 success in fundraising, if not with the popular vote, and pioneered some Internet techniques that Mitchell will try to expand upon. So it will be worth watching to see what Mitchell does.
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