The Third Party Fishing For Dissatisfied Christians
Pro-life marchers of the American Solidarity Party. Photo courtesy of ASP.
As the 2020 campaign hits an aggressive and overpowering fever pitch just weeks before the historic national election, many voters are displeased with their options.
Many Christian voters in particular feel uneasy with the current left-right spectrum in the U.S. as their values fail to fit neatly into either of the major parties.
In this valley of difficult decisions, third parties like the American Solidarity Party (ASP) are riding the wave of voter frustration, offering a proposed escape from the two-party system.
Polls show that despite the country’s increasingly tribal and binary political culture, voters are less than enthusiastic to actually cast their vote for President Donald Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden. While past iterations of the two political parties welcomed heterodoxy such as pro-life Democrats and Republicans against the death penalty, their modern platforms are far more dogmatic.
In a political climate where Christians often find it impossible to cast a vote without compromising at least a few of their religious convictions, the ASP hopes to convince them that they can be the answer.
Skylar Covich, the chair of the ASP, says that since the party’s founding in 2011, its seen steady growth from its original membership of under 20.
“People write to us that they feel much better about their vote because we are an option, because we have a candidate of high character who also agrees with them on most things,” Covich said.
The ASP finds its unique platform in Christian democracy, a philosophy that promotes active participation in elections in order to pass policies and social regulations in line with Christian ideas of morality.
“From conversations I had with the early members, there were some who wanted to keep our identity tied closer to Christian democracy; some primarily inspired by the sorts of Christian Democrats who brought European Catholics and Protestants together, while a few (ironically on the party’s left wing) wanted specific Catholic social teaching.”
The majority of the ASP is Catholic, but Protestants make up a significant and very active role in the organization. There are also a few Muslim, Jewish, atheist and agnostic members who find the policies of the ASP preferably despite disagreeing with the underlying philosophy and theology of Christian democratic thinking.
“For those wanting a secular party inspired by Christian political ethics, as most members seemed to then and still do now, solidarity provides a link both to Polish Catholic anti-communists and to the labor movement.”
The ASP sees its biggest successes by targeting not the high-minded, existential views of prospective voters, but instead attempting to offer them a concrete platform that aims for what they wish to see change specifically.
Covich said, “For many people, their combination of views is less based on a philosophical construct and more based on the specifics of what they want to see happen.”
Abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, war and other political issues centered on violence are a major source of anxiety for many voters.
“We have seen tweets with phrases like ‘no abortion, no war, no camps at the border, yes to justice for the poor’ or ‘if you care about religious liberty/freedom of conscience and a health care system that covers all’ or ‘if you care about protecting life and protecting our planet,’” Covich said.
ASP is not the only third party trying to seize on the moment to bolster their numbers. The Libertarian Party, one of America’s largest third parties, regularly blasts the two-party system on their social media.
The Green Party, another third-party organization that has seen their candidates elected to state legislatures and other mid-level offices, also wants to bust up the current deadlock in American elections.
The Green Party targets environmentally-focused voters who want to act to preserve natural resources through aggressive legislation. Specifically, most Green voters don’t believe either party is doing enough to combat the changing climate.
“Republicans deny the existence of the climate crisis. Leaders of the Democrats ignore the existence of the *solutions* to the climate crisis,” the official Green Party account wrote after Kamala Harris walked back the Biden campaign’s hostilities towards fracking.
Third parties’ biggest stumbling block in getting national attention is often the requirement for state-wide ballots. In order to get candidates’ names in front of voters, small political parties are forced to work overtime getting signatures and filing paperwork.
Oftentimes, third parties can only make it onto the ballot in a handful of states.
A social media graphic of the ASP.
“In 2016, we were only on the ballot in Colorado for President,” Covich said. “We have run candidates for a few other offices since, but nothing gets national attention like the presidential campaign, and with all of the factors I have just mentioned, we have never gotten more attention than we have now.”
It’s an encouraging sign, especially after so many in-person events have been canceled and so much of the political conversation has shifted during the pandemic, Covich said.
Independent voters are perhaps the most valuable demographic in American elections, forming a thin but necessary wiggle room for candidates that are free from any devout party affiliation.
Most independent voters tend to lean towards one party or the other in practice. Truly independent voters with no preference for the Democratic Party or the GOP tend to not vote at all, according to Pew Research.
Kanye West is the most prominent independent candidate running in the 2020 election, once referring to his organization as the “Birthday Party,” saying that with his administration, every day would feel like Americans’ birthdays.
West has centered his campaign around a platform dedicated to Christianity and family values, similar in some ways to the ASP.
This faith-based politicking, especially in recruitment to small parties powerless on a national scale, can prove difficult to sell.
“There are two slightly different stumbling blocks; one is the strategic importance of this moment, where people who agree on most of the same policy ideals convince themselves that either a Biden administration or a Trump second term are going to lead to drastic consequences and so we must stop them by voting for the other major party,” Covich said.
The other problem, as Covich sees it, is that people convince themselves that most of the policies of one of the major parties are logically consistent, even if they don’t agree with all of the policies.
Most of the ASP’s membership finds the party and becomes interested through online interactions with the group or its members, but the party wants to move towards an approach based in the real world. The ASP plans to create more local chapters to run community projects, run local candidates and then better organize state chapters.
Social and racial justice initiatives are also an issue that third parties like the ASP are quick to jump on. Third parties are more at liberty to form nuanced and heterodox opinions on social issues.
For example, the ASP has openly endorsed the phrase and political idea of “Black Lives Matter,” but has distanced themselves from any mainstream organizations operating under the banner. This is most likely because of the ongoing conflicts between the official Black Lives Matter manifesto and traditional Christian theology.
“We have been developing a relationship with a group called the And Campaign, and hope to reach out to socially conservative racial minorities, the majority of these of course,” Covich said, “but many of our leaders who are racial minorities, such as Amar Patel, 2016 vice-presidential candidate Juan Munoz, and new National Committee member Albert Thompson, had been Republicans.”
According to Pew Research, approximately 5% of voters in America vote for a third party candidate.
It is yet to be seen if this number will jump in the face of an election so many Americans find distasteful.
Timothy Nerozzi is a writer and editor from northeastern Pennsylvania. He covers religious issues with a focus on the Catholic Church and Japanese society and culture.