Parachute candidate

A parachute candidate, also known as a “carpetbagger” in the United States, is a pejorative term for an election candidate who does not live in and has little connection to the area he or she is running to represent. The allegation is thus that the candidate is being “parachuted in” for the job by a desperate political party that has no reliable talent indigenous to the district or state or that the party (or the candidate himself/herself) wishes to give a candidate an easier election than would happen in one's own home area.

Examples

United States

U.S. Senate

• Former U.S. Senator Scott Brown ran unsuccessfully as a Republican for U.S. Senate in 2014 in New Hampshire, despite having previously represented the more liberal Massachusetts in the Senate as recently as 2 years prior.
• Former Reagan administration diplomat Alan Keyes, a resident of Maryland, ran unsuccessfully as a Republican during the 2004 Illinois U.S. Senate election.
• First Lady Hillary Clinton successfully became a Senator from New York after having bought a house in Upstate New York in 1999, prior to the 2000 election. She had previously resided in Arkansas
• Former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy successfully became a Senator from New York in 1965 until his death on June 6, 1968. He had previously resided in his home state of Massachusetts.

U.S. House of Representatives

• Former Maryland State Senator Alex Mooney ran successfully in 2014 as a Republican to represent West Virginia's 2nd congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Canada

House of Commons of Canada

• Chrystia Freeland faced allegations of being parachuted in by the Liberal Party to contest a 2013 by-election in safe seat Toronto Centre, given she was living in New York City at the time, which she ultimately won.
• The New Democratic Party nominated Phyllis Artis of St. Johns for Labrador, who unsuccessfully contested the seat in 2008.

United Kingdom

House of Commons of the United Kingdom

• Shaun Woodward MP defected from the Conservatives to Labour in 1999. He faced much criticism from former Conservative colleagues, particularly when he refused to resign and fight a by-election. Woodward did not run for re-election in his safe Conservative seat of Witney in Oxfordshire, instead being selected for the ultra-safe Labour seat of St Helens South in Merseyside. Labour Minister Chris Mullin wrote later in his diaries that "the New Labour elite parachuting [Woodward] into a safe seat ... [was] one of New Labour's vilest stitch-ups ... [it] made my flesh creep."

• Luciana Berger Has been considered emblematic of the New Labour policy of parachuting middle class southerners into safe seats in traditional Labour heartlands such as the northern working class seat of Wavertree. She was heavily criticised for having no connection to the Wavertree constituency or Liverpool when she first ran in 2010. When asked by a local radio station to answer for basic questions about Liverpool she was unable to, and during the candidate selection process slept at another MPs house rather than make any permanent home in the area. The media raised suggestions that she was only selected for the seat because of her close connection to the Blair family. She went onto win the seat in 2010 and retain it 2015.

• Douglas Carswell MP defected from the Conservatives to the UK Independence Party in 2014, in turn displacing the existing UKIP candidate in his constituency of Clacton. Given Carswell was living in London at the time, he was accused carpetbagging by the former UKIP candidate.

See also

• List of democracy and elections-related topics