lack of an incumbent running for reelection. Its founders, through an organization called "Level The Playing Field", focused on efforts to get independent and third-party candidates access to the 2016 general election debates. Candidates in 2012 and 2014 In Arizona, several candidates ran under the Americans Elect Party banner in 2012 and 2014. In 2012, Richard Grayson and Stephen Dolgos ran on an Americans Elect ticket in Arizona's 4th and 8th Congressional Districts, respectively. In 2014, Rebecca DeWitt and Stephen Dolgos ran as Americans Elect candidates in the general election in Arizona's 7th and 8th Congressional Districts, respectively, and John Lewis Mealer was the Americans Elect party candidate for Arizona Governor. In addition, in 2014, Kelly Gneiting ran for the State Senate in Legislative District 7, and Suzie Easter ran for the State House of Representatives in Legislative District 22. Also in 2014, Alan Reynolds ran for California Lieutenant Governor in California's June 3, 2014 direct primary election as a candidate of the Americans Elect Party. He received 56,027 votes, or 1.3% of the total. Americans Elect also ran television ads supporting the U.S. Senate campaign of former Maine governor, Angus King. People Americans Elect was formed by many of the individuals who were responsible for a previous attempt to nominate an Internet candidate, Unity08, and had substantially identical goals for the 2012 presidential election cycle. Americans Elect's founder and Chairman was financier Peter Ackerman. Kahlil Byrd was the former CEO; he subsequently became the president of StudentsFirst by January 2013. Other members of the Board of Directors included Eliot Cutler, Dennis Blair, Stephen W. Bosworth, Irvine Hockaday, and Christine Todd Whitman and Joshua S. Levine. The Board of Advisors included notable names such as Greg Orman, Mark McKinnon, John Negroponte, among others. Reception and impact Although it had a minor impact on the election, columnist Thomas Friedman initially saw promise in the organization, writing "Americans Elect. What Amazon.com did to books, what the blogosphere did to newspapers, what the iPod did to music, what drugstore.com did to pharmacies, Americans Elect plans to do to the two-party duopoly that has dominated American political life—remove the barriers to real competition, flatten the incumbents and let the people in." Some commentators discussed the possibility of Americans Elect producing a spoiler candidate. Columnist Harold Meyerson predicted that an Americans Elect candidate "could well replicate the signally dubious achievement of Ralph Nader in the