Governor Howard Stern (L-NY)

In 1994, Howard Stern ran for Governor of New York. He was nominated by the Libertarian Party, but because he didn't want to disclose his personal finances or home address he backed out.

Prior to dropping out, he polled in the 20s. Let's say he wins in a fluke-plurality (34-33-32 L-R-D maybe).

His big issues were free speech, limiting road work to only take place at night, and bringing back the death penalty.

On most other issues in reality he's more of a moderate democrat. He thinks DeBlasio raised taxes too much, but still thought taxes ought to have gone up a little bit for example. He owns a gun but is okay with some gun control. I think it'd be fair to call him a culturally libertarian policy centrist.


New York's politics are weird by national standards. The influence of third parties is felt pretty widely due to the fusion electoral process where multiple parties can nominate the same candidates. In 2016 Chuck Schumer was nominated by the Democrats, Working Families Party, and Independence party for example and Gary Johnson was nominated by the Libertarians and the Independence Party. The influence of a successful third party gubernatorial candidacy would have weird ripple effects.

Who'd Stern support in 1996 historically? I could see him going for Clinton or Perot here.

Does Pataki come back to win 4 years later? I can't see Stern being happy as Governor.
 
In 1994, Howard Stern ran for Governor of New York. He was nominated by the Libertarian Party, but because he didn't want to disclose his personal finances or home address he backed out.

Prior to dropping out, he polled in the 20s.

I've never seen any actual evidence of that apart from Stern's own claims, and even they didn't quite say that:

" Stern claimed polls showed him with 15-20 percent of the vote, although CNN reported at the time he had less than 10 percent." https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...resident-there-was-howard-stern-for-governor/

"Although most people originally regarded Stern's candidacy as a publicity stunt, he won the Libertarian Party nomination and said recent polls showed he was garnering up to 20 percent of the vote." https://www.upi.com/Archives/1994/08/04/Howard-Stern-quits-NY-gov-race/6841775972800/

Note the "said" and "up to."

Unfortunately, there were no "official" polls until Stern dropped out.
 
I've never seen any actual evidence of that apart from Stern's own claims, and even they didn't quite say that:

" Stern claimed polls showed him with 15-20 percent of the vote, although CNN reported at the time he had less than 10 percent." https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...resident-there-was-howard-stern-for-governor/

"Although most people originally regarded Stern's candidacy as a publicity stunt, he won the Libertarian Party nomination and said recent polls showed he was garnering up to 20 percent of the vote." https://www.upi.com/Archives/1994/08/04/Howard-Stern-quits-NY-gov-race/6841775972800/

Note the "said" and "up to."

Unfortunately, there were no "official" polls until Stern dropped out.

Thanks for the correction then.

I found the 20s figure from an older thread on this site about the subject.
 
Additionally, Stern promised that once his main platform proposals were achieved he said he'd step down and let his lieutenant Governor Stan Dworkin (a former state legislator from Rockland County) ascend to the position of Governor so that somebody who was really qualified could run things.

How well would Dworkin run things?
 
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