Earlier this week we told you about John Jay Myers, the Libertarian Senate candidate who believes he'll be unfairly excluded from WFAA's planned October 2 debate. He promised to bring protesters to the station's headquarters on Young Street, which he did today around 11.
When we got there, there were about ten people, cheerily holding signs and waving at cars despite the heat.
"Sometimes you just gotta stick your finger in the eye of the man," Myers told us. "We just want people to know we exist. We've done just about everything we can."
The group had some company. Across the street, four uniformed officers watched them casually, along with Dallas police Sergeant Vincent Lee, who seems to appear at every protest. A couple of folks in plain clothes who looked like they might be building managers joined them. One woman came over briefly, Myers told us, to ask them how long they planned to be there.
"Two or three weeks," Myers deadpanned. "Just kidding," he added, when the woman blanched. In an email later that day, he said the protest "maxed out around 25 people." No one from WFAA came out to speak with them.
"Just the guy who told us to stay off their lawn," he said.
Referring to Democratic candidate Paul Sadler, Myers called it "a shame that the Democrats won't put up someone who actually stands for their platform, rather than someone who doesn't want to cut a dollar of the military budget or legalize marijuana even on a medical level. I'm for full legalization. There are issues that are ignored by the two major parties that the Libertarians address."
Myers said the votes he pulls will likely be from "the Ron Paul people" on the right and the "frustrated people" on the left, the ones who "voted for Obama because they wanted to end the wars, legalize marijuana, and legalize gay marriage. They didn't get those things." If he pulls 15 or 20 percent of the vote, he said, "Maybe it will send a message across the bow to the left: 'Get your act together.'"
"I'm a U.S. infantry vet," one of the protesters, 31-year-old Reed Davis told us. "And I'll tell you something right now, our brothers aren't dying in combat right now so we can be coerced right here in the United States... They say we're going to spread democracy overseas, and we can't even get it right here."
"I think the two-party system is pretty much broken," said 26-year-old Rachel Doan. Her son Dante, two, squirmed in her arms as he tried to get down and make another mad dash towards traffic. "I know people will pretty much vote for the two main parties," she added, but hoped the protest would help "shift the message a little bit."
Dante howled.
"I think he wants to live free!" another protester yelled, jokingly.
"Every little bit can help," said Ken Stanford, a 32-year-old who said he's running for Tarrant County Tax Assessor. "A win for any of us is a win for all of us."
