Arizona Americans Elect Party Scores in 2014 Primary; J.L Mealer to be Party's Nominee for Governor; Rebecca DeWitt and Stephen Dolgos for Congress; Kelly Gneitling for State Senate; Suzie Easter for State House of Representatives

PHOENIX, Sept. 8 -- According to the official August 26 primary results released today, the dynamic and growing Arizona Americans Elect Party had 1,474 voters in the primary; the Libertarians had 6,134 voters. There are 26,915 registered Libertarians and only 399 registered Americans Elect voters so that was a spectacular showing for our party.

J.L. Mealer will be the Americans Elect nominee for Governor, winning the primary over write-in candidate Janelle Wood 722-38. Barry Hess will again be the Libertarian gubernatorial nominee.

There will, as in 2012, be two Americans Elect candidates for Congress, both winning with write-in votes: Rebecca DeWitt, who was previously a Green Party nominee, won the Americans Elect nomination in the 7th C.D. with 4 write-in votes; and Stephen Dolgos, the party’s 2012 nominee in the 8th C.D., won the nomination again with 2 write-in votes. (A “plurality” of the votes is needed to achieve nomination.)

Joe Cobb will be the 7th C.D. Libertarian nominee for at least the third time; he and DeWitt will be competing for second place against Democratic nominee Ruben Gallego since there is no Republican candidate in the district.

In the 8th C.D., Americans Elect candidate Dolgos is assured of running second to Republican Rep. Trent Franks since they are the only two candidates.Many Democrats may end up voting for Dolgos, who could achieve a substantial percentage of the vote, much more than he did in a multicandidate race in 2012.

Two Americans Elect candidates will be on the ballot for the Arizona State Legislature: Kelly Gneitling for State Senator in District 7 (won the primary with 7 write-in votes), where there’s no Republican candidate; and Suzie Easter for State Representative in District 22 (won with 4 write-in votes), where she’ll face 2 Democrats and 2 Republicans, one of whom each is an incumbent.

(Arizona legislative districts have one State Senator and two State Representatives, so the two running with the highest number of votes in each district are elected.)

There are several Libertarian candidates for the legislature, but apart from the Governor’s race, none of the other seven state offices have any minor party candidates. The Green Party is no longer an official party in Arizona.