LoHud
by Jacob Fischler, Albany Bureau
November 4, 2010

ALBANY — The rent may be too high, but Jimmy McMillan got too few votes to win his own line on the ballot for the next four years.

McMillan's Rent Is 2 Damn High Party and other third-party gubernatorial candidates, who gained national attention in their free-for-all debate last month, largely failed to get the 50,000 votes needed to win a future ballot line.

The only one who got it was Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins, results Wednesday showed. The Independence, Conservative and Working Families parties — who also backed the major-party candidates — received enough votes to secure their ballot status.

"We'll be a real opposition," said Hawkins, who raked in 56,868 votes with 97 percent of precincts reporting statewide. As opposed to Working Families or Conservative parties, said Hawkins, the Greens will run what he described as a "real" third-party candidate "to give real change."

After it was announced Tuesday that Attorney General Andrew Cuomo would be New York's next governor, McMillan thanked the roughly 40,000 voters that filled in his bubble Tuesday via Twitter.

"Your support has shown me that my vision and my passions matter, for that, this is a certain victory," he wrote.

The other candidates who didn't make the cut for a guaranteed ballot line included the Anti-Prohibition party's Kristin Davis, New York City Councilman Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn) and Libertarian Warren Redlich. Redlich fell short by about 5,000 votes.

"I'm looking forward to going back into obscurity," said Redlich. "I thought we (the Libertarian party) would make a bigger dent."

Conservative Party Chairman Mike Long said the party appears to have received close to 200,000 votes on its line. That would give it row C on the ballot, moving up a spot past the Independence Party. The Working Families Party may end up on row D, and the Independence Party could be headed for row E, he said.

The number of votes each party receives on its line determines its positioning on the ballot.

Third-party campaigns in other statewide races ate up a slice of the voter pie as well.

While incumbent Tom DiNapoli secured his seat as comptroller by just three percentage points, Green Party candidate Julia Willebrand snuck in with 4 percent.

Carl Person, the Libertarian candidate for attorney general, earned nearly 35,000 votes in the midst of Attorney General-elect Eric Schneiderman's decisive victory over Staten Island District Attorney Dan Donovan.