Peace & Freedom Party’s Roseanne Barr Running Cable Television Ads in California

Comedienne-turned-presidential candidate Roseanne Barr has purchased television ads in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Media tracking sources told ABC News that the former television sitcom star is spending $4,900 on cable television ads that will air from October 9 through October 16.

The ads will run on several cable networks, including CNN, MSNBC, TBS, the Country Music Channel (CMT) and Comedy Central.

“This is terrific news,” said Peace & Freedom Party state chair Kevin Akin.  “It’s so difficult for alternative voices to be heard in a presidential election, but this type of targeted cable advertising gives us a unique opportunity to get our message out.”

Akin, who doubles as chairman of the party’s National Organizing Committee (NOC), believes that Barr’s candidacy in a solidly-blue place like California —a state President Obama carried by more than 3.2 million votes in 2008 — gives progressive-minded voters a chance to “vote their conscience” without affecting the outcome of the increasingly close race between Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

“In fact,” Akin told Uncovered Politics, “it’s the only way to make your voice really heard.”  A vote for the Peace & Freedom Party, he continued, is the only way for frustrated and disillusioned progressives and working-class voters to demonstrate their support for peace and economic justice.

Barr, who is on the ballot in California, Colorado and Florida and hopes to qualify as an official write-in candidate in more than twenty additional states, emerged from a relatively crowded field to win the Peace & Freedom Party’s presidential nomination in early August after losing an earlier bid for the Green Party’s nomination.

A proven vote-getter, Sheehan’s presence on the Peace & Freedom ticket could help galvanize the antiwar Left.

Antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan was chosen as Barr’s vice-presidential running mate.  An active member of the Peace & Freedom Party, the soft-spoken Sheehan waged a spectacular challenge to then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi in 2008, garnering an eye-opening 46,118 votes, or 16.2 percent, as an independent candidate while finishing second in that contest.

Founded in 1967, the Peace & Freedom Party is going national this year for the first time since the early 1970’s when it affiliated with the left-wing People’s Party, which ran famous pediatrician and antiwar activist Benjamin Spock for the presidency against President Richard M. Nixon and Democratic challenger George S. McGovern in 1972.

On the ballot in ten states that autumn, the 69-year-old baby doctor-turned-activist polled 79,000 votes nationally — a figure the Peace & Freedom Party hopes to surpass this year.