Dan Fishman,
announced senatorial candidate
in Massachusetts
Libertarian candidate Dan Fishman has announced his candidacy to fill the recently vacated seat of Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, who was recently appointed as secretary of state. LP candidates have historically netted some of the party’s highest vote totals in races for an open seat, where no competitor possesses the inherent advantages of incumbency.
Fishman, a software engineer, was one of the 2012 LP candidates who won more votes than the margin by which either the Republican lost to the Democrat, or vice versa. In Fishman’s Massachusetts House 6th District race, Republican candidate Richard Tisei lost to Democrat John Tierney by 3,600 votes, a margin much smaller than the 16,668 votes that Fishman received. Republicans were quick to cry foul, charging that Fishman should not have run at all.
Libertarians, however, had no reason to root for Tisei, who helped Big Government grow larger time and time again during his time in the Massachusetts legislature — voting for scores of new taxes, for higher government spending, and for Romneycare, the Massachussetts template for Obamacare’s federal takeover of the health insurance industry.
Fishman insists he had no ambition to affect the relative vote totals of his opponents. Rather, his primary goal in running was to bring attention to the national debt, which he considers to be the biggest problem facing our country.
“I was not in the race to weaken either candidate,” Fishman said. “I certainly disagree with how Democrat Tierney has voted, but I disagree very strongly with Republicans as well,” he said. “The number one threat to the country right now is the national debt, and I was the only candidate who committed that I would never vote to raise the national debt.”
National LP Executive Director Carla Howell notes that “Republicans and Democrats have spoiled elections for voters to such a degree that a majority of them don’t even bother to show up at the polls, offering them just two slight variations of more Big Government. Libertarians bring life to elections by giving voters a choice for shrinking Big Government and expanding freedom.”
Third-party and independent candidates for the special election to fill Kerry’s open seat have a brief window in which they must collect 10,000 certified signatures to be placed on the ballot. Fishman has some hard work ahead of him, but insists that it will be worthwhile: Whoever his Republican and Democratic opponents will be in the forthcoming race, Fishman’s voice will be the only one calling to shrink the size of government.
“All I ask of you is that you consider which candidate will put more power into your hands,” Fishman wrote on his campaign website. “If all power derives from the people, which is the premise of our country, government can not increase power without diminishing the power of the people.”
Visit Dan Fishman’s campaign website: www.FishmanForSenate.com
