Not invited to the party

The ranks of Arizona's independent voters have surged 185 percent in the past two decades. They have surpassed the number of registered Democrats and are on a pace to eclipse Republicans.

The ever-growing bloc of voters is increasingly courted by candidates, who often need their swing votes to win.

But the political muscle of the 1 million-plus independent voters hasn't led to an increase in the number of independent candidates. There are only four independents on the statewide ballot this fall.

This disconnect traces back to Arizona's election laws, which were written by Republicans and Democrats and designed to tilt the political playing field to the major parties' advantage. They include higher hurdles for independents to qualify for the ballot, less public financing, and a rule that puts independents at the bottom of the ballot.

Independent candidate Brent Fine got a taste of that when he learned he could get only 70 percent of the public campaign-finance dollars available to his partisan colleagues. When he asked officials at the Citizens Clean Elections Commission why, the answer highlighted the circular nature of the barriers facing independents.

"They said, 'If you want to change it, you need to go to the Legislature,'" said Fine, who is running for the state House of Representatives in the Ahwatukee Foothills-Chandler area.

Fine's chances of making that change as lawmaker, however, are slim precisely because he's running as an independent. Arizona has never elected an independent to the Legislature, Congress or statewide office. Only 33 independents have even attempted to run in the past two decades, according to an Arizona Republic analysis.

"There's a growing sense that the parties are an institution that operate for their own self-preservation," said Jackie Salit, founder of IndependentVoting.org and director of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's independent campaign. And although the major parties are shrinking in Arizona, "they control the political process in very authoritarian ways," she said.

Legal roadblocks

Tom Rawles, an independent running for state Senate, said he's more interested in trying to spotlight what he calls a dysfunctional political system than in winning his race.

"I'm running because I think the system is broken," said Rawles, who faces Senate President Steve Pierce, a Republican. "The two parties are more interested in acquiring power than in getting things done."

No newcomer to the political game -- he served on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors and then on the Mesa City Council -- Rawles was a Republican and a Libertarian before frustration drove him to become an independent three years ago.

Since launching a campaign as an independent, he's joined the elite fraternity of candidates who have been there, done that and have the loss to show for it.

Despite the odds, Rawles and other independent candidates say they press on because they don't feel they fit with the major parties. They disdain the gridlock that results from what often is a two-party standoff, and feel they offer an alternative to voters fed up with the status quo.

Their biggest obstacle to getting elected is the state's signature requirements to qualify for the ballot. All candidates must submit a minimum number of signatures on nominating petitions, but independents have to gather many more.

In Rawles' case, he needed at least 1,247 signatures, compared with 606 for Republicans and 251 for Democrats. A Libertarian who wanted to run in the central Arizona district would need only nine signatures.

The counts are based on a percentage of voter registration numbers. Established party candidates need 1 percent of their party's registered voters in the district in which they are running. In 1993, the Legislature amended the law and required independents to get 3 percent of the independent voters in their district -- a higher hurdle that is viewed as a barrier to nonpartisan candidates.

If they meet that hurdle, independents then face other challenges. They include:

Access to the voter-registration rolls. A decades-old law makes the list free for the political parties. Everyone else, including independent candidates, must pay. The cost can exceed $1,000. The data is a trove of voter information, from addresses to voting records.

Limited exposure during the primary-election season. Since independents have no partisan primary, their names are not on the sample ballots mailed to all voters. But the law requires all partisan candidates to be listed, even if he or she is unopposed.

The same no-independents-allowed rule holds true for the pamphlet the Clean Elections Commission mails to all voters; unchallenged partisan candidates still get to make a 200-word statement and have their photo published, valuable exposure for the coming general election.

Higher postage rates. State political parties can qualify for the non-profit bulk-mail rate, a 40 percent savings over the rate charged to commercial customers.

A smaller share of public campaign-finance dollars. Independents get 70 percent of the Clean Elections money allotted to partisan candidates in either legislative or statewide races. The rationale is independents don't face a primary race and thus need less money. Yet partisan candidates who face no opposition still get a nominal amount of public campaign financing.

Last place on the ballot. A law that rotates candidate names to ensure equal exposure on the ballot was amended 12 years ago to stipulate that independents must always be listed last.

The price of going it alone

There are other obstacles, consequences for candidates who decide to run outside an established party structure.

For example, independents walk away from the built-in support of a party. That means they lose out on a corps of volunteers ready to collect signatures, knock on doors and contribute to campaign coffers. It also sets them up for attacks from both the left and the right.

"They come at you from both sides," said Doug Quelland, a former Republican lawmaker now running for the state Senate as an independent. "And they're organized. There are no organized independent (parties) out there."

Quelland returned to the independent ranks (he ran for Congress in 1998 as an independent) after he was forced to resign his House seat in 2010 due to campaign-finance violations.

Mike Stauffer, an independent running against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a Republican, and Democratic challenger Paul Penzone, has felt the one-two punch of the major par-ties.

Democrats went after his nomination petitions, questioning the validity of the voter signatures. But they ultimately dropped their challenge.

Republicans also balked when he filed to run as a Republican because they didn't want Arpaio to have a primary contest.

In addition to the other obstacles, fundraising is a major challenge without the party support.

"Who's going to give me money?" asked Quelland. "It's a two-party dictatorship."

Money matters. The voter-registration list is a gold mine, containing voter addresses and voting records that help candidates target their message. By law, it's free to the political parties.

For independents, this gold mine costs a penny a name if they get the list electronically, a nickel a name on paper.

"As an independent, you have to pay for it," said Rawles. In his race, which straddles two counties, the cost for a digital file would be $1,231.

The political parties add their own data to the list they get for free, then sell it to individual campaigns. But they keep it in the family.

Pam Durbin realized it was easier to switch than fight. The Lake Havasu businesswoman filed to run as an independent, eyeing a state Senate seat in western Arizona.

Today, she is a Democratic candidate for the House.

Intimidated by the need to get at least 1,294 valid voter signatures, Durbin found the pitch from the Democratic Party too attractive to pass up. As a Democrat, she needed only 267 signatures to qualify, and there were people eager to help her collect them.

A game changer?

Some believe independents' electoral fortunes could change if Proposition 121 prevails on the November ballot. It would scrap partisan primaries in favor of an all-in primary with the top two finishers advancing to the general election, regardless of their party.

Ted Downing is a former state Democratic lawmaker who has thrown himself fully into the independent camp. He formed the Arizona Independent Candidate Coalition to share ideas. But being independents, the coalition fizzled as candidates went their own ways.

He got involved in the early efforts to draft the ballot initiative, convinced the system has to change. He chafes at the cost taxpayers shoulder for partisan elections.

He likes to note George Washington warned of the danger of putting party before country, and said that's a compelling reason for Proposition 121.

Rules 'are totally stacked'

Paul Johnson, chairman of the Open Government Committee which wrote Prop. 121, said the disadvantages independent candidates face was a driving force behind the measure.

"Everybody should be on a level playing field," he said. "The rules today are totally stacked against independents in every possible way."

He believes a revamped system would give independent candidates -- and independent voters -- a greater voice in the system by driving debate away from the extremes that he believes dominate the two-party system.

Others argue the system doesn't need to be blown up to make the process more amenable to independents.

"This idea of upsetting the entire system to get the top-two primary -- there's no evidence it works," said Randy Pullen, the former chairman of the state Republican Party.

He argued that lawmakers could simply roll back the laws that hinder independents.

But even with such changes, Pullen said, he doubts much would change. People align with parties for ideological reasons, so it probably would only marginally improve an independent candidate's chances, he said.

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