Independent candidate Jeff Clark failed to find the same success at the polls that other anti-establishment figures across the nation enjoyed yesterday.
Garnering roughly 2 percent of the votes cast in the Fifth District, Clark fell to both Republican frontrunner Robert Hurt, who won with about 51 percent of the vote, and Democratic incumbent Tom Perriello, who came in second with about 47 percent.
Clark's campaign focused mainly on "breaking the political duopoly that is the two-party system in Washington" and shared many roots with the Tea Party movement. Other key issues included a strong focus on job creation, protection of Second Amendment rights, energy policy and the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman.
Candidates who held similar positions in other elections included prominent Tea Party figures Rand Paul - a Republican and son of 2008 presidential candidate Ron Paul who was elected as one of Kentucky's senators - and Christine O'Donnell, a Republican who lost the Delaware senate race. Clark, who has never held public office of any kind, attributed his lack of success to the dominance of the two-party system and his status as a first-time office-seeker.
"As long as people give in to fear and allow themselves to be manipulated by the political parties, they will allow that to be the main play in political playbooks," Clark said. He expressed no regrets about running, saying that the experience was "eye-opening" and that he was satisfied with raising the concerns of citizens in the Fifth District.
"A base of 5,000 constituents who think that the two-party system is failing is not such a bad thing," he said. "That's a good base to build on, and we'll hopefully be able to inspire others to run and help those others take on the baton."
Despite Clark's strong conservative leanings, the Lynchburg Tea Party officially endorsed Hurt. Party vice chair of communications Kurt Feigel said voters were left with the choice of a "vote on a guaranteed lost cause and flawed candidate in Jeff Clark or a vote for Hurt." The Republican contender's alignment with the two-party establishment, Feigel said, was trivial.
Clark also drew fire from Bill Stanley, the Fifth District's Republican Party chairman, in a press release last Thursday that claimed the Democratic Party sent out mailings touting Clark as the "true social and fiscal candidate" in the election. Stanley called the mailings an attempt to "siphon off votes of social and fiscal conservatives" away from Hurt.
But the independent candidate did not seem fazed by the fact that he did not receive many endorsements, emphasizing the highly independent nature of the Tea Party on the local and regional level. Although the efforts of Paul and similar proponents of change are admirable, he said, the Tea Party should be primarily responsible for holding candidates responsible for their actions.
"Had it been Perriello refusing to debate, well, the Tea Party should have been up in arms about Hurt refusing," he said. "You can't allow a political party to keep getting away with this blatant hypocrisy or it will render itself irrelevant."
Clark added that he feared such hypocrisy would cause the Tea Party to "become a shill of the Republican Party."
Earlier in the year, Hurt had refused to appear in debate with Clark and said he would only appear with Perriello, a stance he upheld by not participating in the Oct. 25 Student Council-sponsored debate between Perriello and Clark.
With the end of the election season, Clark said he plans on returning to being a father and working man and that he will retreat from the public eye rather than seek any further office.
Read More
New School of Data Science building opens with remarks and ceremony
By Cecilia Mould | 15 hours agoThe four-story, 61,000 square-foot building includes four classrooms and two seminar rooms, as well as a two-story central hub for hosting events.
Democratic Futures Project fellow Félix Maradiaga announces campaign to end arbitrary detention
By Caroline Hagood | 15 hours agoA public website for the campaign launched Friday, which Maradiaga says is the first step towards raising awareness.
HRL preassigns 25 percent of returning resident advisors for 2024-25 academic year
By Cecilia Mould | 19 hours agoSome SRs are upset with this change, with two SRs saying that it has somewhat reduced the relative autonomy they have had when choosing their staff in past years.
