Email Share 109 Shares

Gay Realtor and Libertarian Party activist Bruce Majors announced last week that he filed papers to run in his party’s primary in April 2014 as a candidate for D.C. mayor.

Majors, 55, ran last year as a Libertarian Party candidate for the D.C. congressional delegate seat against longtime incumbent Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat.

Although Majors lost to Norton by a margin of 88.5 percent to 5.9 percent, he received 16,524 votes, far exceeding the minimum number of votes needed to allow the Libertarian Party to hold a primary in the next D.C. election.

Without a primary, independent and small party candidates running in citywide races must obtain 2,000 petition signatures to gain access to the ballot. With a primary, candidates can get on the ballot with petition signatures equal to 1 percent of voters registered with their party.

In the case of the tiny Libertarian Party, Majors and other Libertarian candidates expected to run for City Council seats need just two valid signatures to gain access to the primary ballot. If they win their primary they are automatically placed on the general election ballot in November.