Richard Grayson Ties for Third Place with 6.96% of the Vote in 2012 Arizona Green Party Presidential Preference Primary

We tied for third place, with 6.96% of the vote, in yesterday's Arizona Green Party presidential preference primary. But we had 39 votes, and the second-place finisher had only 50 votes, so we weren't far behind. We finished second in four counties: Pima (Tucson), Pinal (our home county), Mohave and Navajo, and we tied for second in a fifth county, Cochise. In three Arizona counties -- La Paz, Santa Cruz and Greenlee -- we finished in a six-way tie for first place, or last place, since none of the Green Party candidates got any votes at all.

We carried our hometown, Apache Junction, and apparently the Navajo Nation as well. In a majority of Arizona counties (8 out of 15), we did no worse than second place. Here is the end of today's front-page story in The Arizona Republic, which was of course mostly about Mitt Romney's win in the Republican primary:

Although Republican politics dominated the day, six Green Party candidates also appeared on Arizona's primary ballot. Jill Stein, a physician who has run for statewide office several times in Massachusetts, jumped out to an early lead, far outpolling the other candidate with a national organization, Kent Mesplay, who is an air- quality inspector from San Diego County.

Two other nationally prominent candidates did not make it on Arizona's ballot: Harley Mikkelson, a retired government employee from Michigan, and comedian Roseanne Barr.

Richard Grayson, a familiar face in the Arizona Green Party, appeared on the ballot, but he released a statement last month that he would act as a stand-in for Barr and ask that votes he receives be given to her at the national convention this July in Baltimore.

Two other Arizonans, Gerard Davis and Michael Oatman, along with Gary Swing, who is also a candidate for Congress in Colorado, trailed in votes.

This is an early report from reporter Suzanne Adams' story in the Kingman Daily Miner in Mohave County, where we got 25% of the vote, our second-best showing:

According to unofficial election results, Romney got 39 percent and Santorum got 31 percent of 15,070 Mohave County Republican voters. Newt Gingrich came in third with 21 percent of the vote and Ron Paul received 9 percent.

Romney won Arizona by a slightly larger margin - 47 percent of state Republicans voted for Romney and 27 percent voted for Rick Santorum. Gingrich also came in third in the state with 16 percent, followed by Paul with 9 percent.

In the race for the Green Party nomination Stein got five of the votes from eight Mohave County Green Party members who participated Tuesday. Richard Grayson came in second with 2 votes and Michael Oatman came in third with one vote.