Talk:John H. Cox/Archives/2021

Potential Newsom recall

Hey y'all! Cox has been discussed as a potential candidate for a recall election, specifically related to the latest of either five or six recall attempts against Governor Gavin Newsom, especially relevant since Cox donated $50,000 to this effort. If you have information to contribute on this topic specifically, please add it to the Draft on this topic. The link for that is here... Draft:2021 California gubernatorial recall election (Please do not submit this page for publication, as it may or may not end up being necessary at all. If the group pursuing this does not meet a signature guideline of 1.5 million by mid-March, the page will remain a draft. Sharing info nevertheless!)

"Perennial candidate" descriptions

Hello all! With the potential recall election ahead, and the 2022 gubernatorial race in CA in full swing, there's been a lot of edits to this page. I wish to discuss the words "perennial candidate". From a very basic standpoint, it just means someone who has run many times but never won, though we all know it has a more derogatory meaning. This small edit-war ended with DrSangChi stating that things should be taken to the Talk page. Therefore, I open this discussion here. I want to start by recognizing that I make the assumption all of us are here on good faith, and that there are no conflicts of interest related to campaigns. How should we use the term perennial candidate, and where should it be placed? Personally, I feel that we should have perennial candidate in the first paragraph, and that there is no need for his current candidacy to be in the first line, as this isn't the case for any other candidates. I also think he is objectively a perennial candidate, even if it could be used insultingly. But Wikipedia exists for discussion. What are everyone's thoughts? PickleG13 (talk) 23:01, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

• Thank you for posting this PickleG13! I really have no horse in this race, but I am trying my best to help out however I can. Of course, we all have biases, but I promise I always try my hardest to remain neutral. I have a few more edits I'd like to make, but I'll leave them here before I do. As for my comments on the perennial candidate issue, I very strongly believe it is too unduly influential, although it is objectively true. I do think there are examples of candidates who are not otherwise notable and yet because of their many publicized runs for office, they became known as perennial candidates (Omar Navarro comes to mind). However, there is an obvious precedent that if a candidate is notable on their own, the designation does not belong- at least in the first paragraph. Eugene V. Debs, William Jennings Bryan and Jacob S. Coxey Sr. are the poster children for perennial candidates, and yet none of them carry the designation in their opening title. And of course, John Cox isn’t as respected and notable as Eugene Debs, but even perennial candidates who aren’t respected at all (dare I say, David Duke) still do not carry the designation. DrSangChi (talk) 19:13, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
• For the record, I believe CHANGE-CA should be included somewhere in the top three paragraphs, as Cox campaigned on the org’s reputation. But suppose we are to remove the CHANGE-CA founder designation or the candidate for governor designation from the opening paragraph because they do not accurately reflect who they are. In that case, I believe we must also do that with the perennial candidate designation. DrSangChi (talk) 19:14, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Orphaned references in John H. Cox

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of John H. Cox's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "Primary election results":

• From 2008 United States Senate elections: "Ballots Cast". Elections.il.gov. February 5, 2008. Retrieved April 4, 2015.
• From 2002 United States Senate election in Illinois: "Ballots Cast". Elections.il.gov. March 19, 2002. Retrieved April 4, 2015.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 21:02, 4 May 2021 (UTC)