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0 pointsakiselev9y ago0 comments

There are so many states each with their own unique political cultures it's very decentralized and "the party" isn't a unified entity as much as it is a group of people forced together by the historical accident of the two party system (just look at how many competing factions and ideologies there are like the tea party, evangelicals, libertarians, neocons, etc.). It's loose hierarchy that is largely held together by networks of donors and their relationships within communities. Nothing really stops you from running as a "Republican" or "Democrat" without support from party leadership except at the federal and state level because local election laws don't generally have the two party system baked into them.

Assuming the local/regional party machine backs him and provides campaign funds, he'll likely be required to at least call some major donors soliciting support for other campaigns that the relevant leadership is interested in or for the party organization itself. Congressmen at the state and federal level spend an absurd amount of time doing these calls on behalf of their own and others' campaigns because those elections are expensive to fight but at the local level, the elections are far cheaper and the allegiances to parties are looser. He would have to cater to his supporters in order to get their support for the next election but he wouldn't be obligated to do anything.

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pavel_lishin9y ago· 2 in thread

Besides the obvious ostracizing on behalf of the party, I wonder what would happen if I ran under a party banner, and then refused to do anything they asked of me along those lines.

paulddraper9y ago

You'd be called a RINO or DINO (R/D in name only).

People do that. Arguably, the parties used to be more ideologically diverse than they are now.

For example, the "boll weevils" (conservative Democrats) during the 80s aligned with Reagan on more issues than not. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_Democrat#1981.E2....)

The Log Cabin Republicans (Republican LGBT advocates) declined to endorse the party's presidential candidate in 1992 (Bush), 2004 (Bush) and 2016 (Trump)...except in 2016 a lot of local chapters that reversed the national organization's decision (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Log_Cabin_Republicans#History).

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So....there's a lot of deviating from party lines. Candidates have run on multiple political parties at various times. But presumably, you'll usually get the most support if you run elbows with the side that you agree with most. And feigning political beliefs is possible, but ew.

akiselevOP9y ago

You'd be called a "New York Republican."

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