Joseph Puente: An independent candidate against political parties

Joseph Puente, part-time filmmaker and actor, is the only candidate running for Congress in Utah’s Third Congressional District who is politically unaffiliated. Although Puente remains neutral on most issues, he does tend to lean a bit to the left.

Most of Puente’s political campaign is centered around stopping the intolerant war waged by hard-core Republicans and diehard Democrats. Unfortunately for Puente, Democratic nominee Karen Hyer shares many of the same views on the issue.

Because Puente is completely self-funded, much of his campaign has been online. With Obama setting the virtual precedent on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, many of today’s candidates view these online networking tools as necessities. Since these tools are free, independent candidates like Puente can compete on the same playing field as big-time and big-funded candidates.

Puente claims to be a representative, rather than a politician.

“Politicians go to Washington already locked in a party platform – and they usually won’t budge. It’s time to elect someone who can see past the rhetoric. … If we want to get anything done in Washington, we need to remove big money interests from the political equation,” Puente mentioned on one of his many YouTube posts.

Puente’s core beliefs are not as apparent as the other candidates. On current national issues, Puente poses completely new and innovative solutions; for example, he believes health care reform should be a state responsibility, as opposed to a “federal catch-all system that might work for one state, be overkill for another or fall short of the needs for a third.”

Puente strongly believes that people will not vote for their candidate because of who they are, but rather because of their political party.

Puente warned America with George Washington’s own words: “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism … and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.”

To find out more about Puente, visit www.JoePuente.org