Rick Stanley, a Denver businessman seeking the 2002 Libertarian nomination for the U.S. Senate race likely involving Allard and Strickland, thinks so.

On July 31st, Stanley filed an FEC Statement of Candidacy with the Colorado Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Senate, declaring his intent to run for the Senate seat currently held by Allard. He also obtained an Employer Identification Number from the IRS in order to open a campaign bank account, depositing $2,000 of his own money to get it started.

On the same day, Stanley also FAXed copies of the above documents to all Denver-area media sources, including the Denver Post, the Rocky Mountain News, National Public Radio and the Associated Press. The Denver Post, NPR and the AP acknowledged Stanley's candidacy with brief stories; the Rocky Mountain News did not. Instead, repeated stories in the RMN specified that Strickland was "the only opponent" to Allard.

Stanley was outraged so he organized a 175-person protest outside the Rocky's front door on Aug. 14th, armed with signs that read "The Rocky Mountain News LIES!"

A second protest is scheduled for Aug. 29th and Stanley is mulling a libel lawsuit, which would cite a little-known precedent making published remarks excluding one from a group to which one legitimately belongs (like Senate candidates) defamatory.

"We're looking into it now," Stanley said recently. "Nobody's made any decision. We are consulting with several lawyers about it."

The Rocky Mountain News drew the wrath of Libertarians last October when it published a 2000 Voters Guide sans any mention of a record-setting number of Libertarian candidates, and found protestors at its door then too.

Stanley said he spoke to a Scripps-Howard representative who could not explain the RMN's pattern of excluding Libertarian candidates. If a lawsuit is filed, it might become a class-action suit naming several national media outlets and their local affiliates for common journalistic practices such as rounding vote totals in three-way races to make it appear that the Libertarian received no votes, he said.

"I'm the only announced candidate from the Libertarian Party and the party is one hundred percent certain to nominate me," Stanley stated. "I have wherewithal."

His major issues as a Senate candidate will be restoring the Constitutionality of government, ending the "police state" caused by the War on Drugs, and "starting a Second American Revolution."

"I'm only going for one term," hoping in that time to demonstrate "that the oath of office is a lie when Democrats and Republicans take it," Stanley remarked. He advocates "citizen legislators" who are well versed in Constitutional law and the Bill of Rights.

Comparing himself to Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, Stanley says he is "blunt, to the point, and honest." As a case in point, the Constitution, he says, "has been interpreted six feet under the ground."

At age 47, Stanley realized he was a Libertarian only two years ago, when a lifelong friend loaned him the book "What It Means To Be A Libertarian," by Charles Murray. Prior to discovering the Libertarian Party, he was "apolitical."

Now the flag at Stanley Fasteners on East 39th Street in Denver flies at half-mast, upside down, as a sign of national distress. In California, many people are doing the same thing, he said, but are adding signs that say "Restore Freedom - Vote Libertarian!"

Fifteen months before the election, Stanley calculates his roster of supporters at 35,000 and estimates he'll need at least 600,000 votes to win.

"Only 565,000 to go," he grinned.