This longtime Democrat is running as a No Labels Party candidate just to mess things up

Organizers of the newly recognized No Labels Party in Arizona assert many things, including that they have no desire to field candidates for state office in the 2024 general election or to hold a state primary election.

Evidently, they’ll have to put up with both nevertheless.

That’s because of unique Arizona election rules that are favorable even to those candidates who can’t muster support from their political parties or the electorate to qualify.

Write-in candidate rules have a loophole

Two people have pulled papers to run as a No Labels candidate and more could be on the horizon.

Normally, that doesn’t mean anything.

A hopeful would still need to collect sufficient nomination signatures to qualify for the primary and then secure at least that same number of votes to advance to the general election.

Even with a much lower signature threshold than for candidates of established parties — that is, Democrats or Republicans — it’s not a sure thing.

Except for wrinkles in Arizona law involving write-in candidates, which at least one of the two No Labels aspirants, Richard Grayson, will look to exploit.

The filing period for write-in candidates begins after the regular filing period for the primary has ended and when the primary ballot lineups are clear.

Earn the nomination with just 1 vote

The timing allows opportunistic write-ins to select a race that features no or few other challengers.

Even when no candidate of a party qualifies via nomination signatures, the county recorder's offices must print and mail out ballots for primaries – in this case, ones listing the various offices up for election, but with blank space where candidate names would otherwise appear – to voters on the Early Voting List or who request an early ballot.

More notably, state statutes enable a write-in candidate of a party that is “not qualified for continued representation on the official ballot” — a new political party falls under this category — to win the party’s nomination with a plurality of the votes.

As few as one.

Grayson has won three primaries that way — twice under the Green Party and once under Americans Elect — with as few as two votes.

Eleven votes in the 2012 primary were his high mark; he was trounced in the general election by U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar.

Grayson sees this as performance art

To say Grayson is a political provocateur is no exaggeration.

He spent his early adulthood campaigning for candidates for national and state offices in New York where he grew up. He took a turn as candidate himself and kept at it over the past four decades, decidedly more as performance art than political ambition.

He once ran for city council in a Florida community and when the topic of protection of horses came up, he mused that they “probably make for very intelligent voters” and should be given the right to vote.

Grayson also suggested that the community change its name from Davie to David to add formality and gravitas.

In 1980, he ran for vice president of the United States, pledging to ban religious bookstores and restore the monarchy.

He simply wants to mess up No Labels

He’s an avowed progressive Democrat who banks, as he has done in other Arizona elections, on running as a protest candidate against an incumbent Republican.

And to do it by undermining No Labels, which he sees as nothing more than a nefarious bid to siphon Democratic support and get Donald Trump reelected.

He doesn’t seek nor want help from the Democratic Party because he doesn’t plan on campaigning or winning.

He recycles a response he once gave to a reporter: “If I win, the first thing I’d do is demand a recount.”

It doesn't matter that he won't win

Grayson hasn’t decided which race he’ll run. He’s eyeing one in which a GOP incumbent faces no challengers.

But true to form of his performance art, he has created a Pinal County (where he lives) No Labels Party voters for Joe Biden web page and registered an Arizona No Labels Party for Joe Biden PAC.

Grayson sees his motivations, like his chances of winning a general election, as unimportant.

“I am very immature even in my 70s. Maybe I think I can do to No Labels what the Democratic Party would like to do. Maybe not,” he told me.

“But, hey, I’ve made a lifetime of public performances by being disingenuous.”

Reach Abe Kwok at akwok@azcentral.com. On X, formerly Twitter: @abekwok.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: This Democrat is running under No Labels Party just to mess things up