By Shawn Zeller, CQ Staff

Third-party presidential candidates are having a really bad year. That’s saying a lot for a class of politician long used to neglect, from the public and the polls alike, and usually condemned to campaigning with little money and little or no mainstream media attention. But with all of the discontent in the country and the bitterness in the two major parties, this might have been a year for “other” to triumph.

It wasn’t.

LONELY QUEST: Nader and Constitution Party candidate Baldwin debated Oct. 23 in Washington. (CQ / SCOTT J. FERRELL)

With Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain coming into the homestretch, the lackluster cast of third-party — and no-party — candidates has faded into obscurity.

A group called Free and Equal Elections, which tries to make it easier for minor-party candidates to get on state ballots, had to cancel a candidate debate at Columbia University in New York on Oct. 19 after none of the candidates would agree to come.

The group’s president, Christina Tobin, tried again that week in Washington. She held a briefing for reporters in the elevator lobby of the National Press Building, but only one journalist showed up, along with Carey Campbell, who heads a Virginia group that sought to draft New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to run for president, and two former campaign aides for ex-Sen. Mike Gravel of Alaska.

Tobin handed out fliers announcing that two candidates would be at her Oct. 23 debate — consumer advocate Ralph Nader and Constitution Party nominee Chuck Baldwin. She put on a brave face nonetheless. Because the major parties try to exclude third-party challengers, she said, “We have to create our own media opportunities.”

Despite Tobin’s efforts, this year might be the worst year in decades for third-party candidates, according to experts and political activists. The 2004 presidential contest had been bad enough: All the minor candidates together polled barely 1 percent of the nationwide vote — Ross Perot alone drew almost 19 percent in 1992. Nader, the best-known among them, was still suffering the bitter backlash of Democrats who blamed his candidacy in 2000 for George W. Bush ’s victory in Florida.

This year, both Obama and McCain have vigorously reached out to independents — Obama has pitched his pledge of change against Washington business as usual, while McCain has run as a maverick who has challenged his own party leaders.

“It’s probably a more-difficult-than-usual year because the two parties for the first time in a long time have thrown up candidates that people sort of like,” says Bruce Barry, a professor of management and sociology at Vanderbilt University who moderated a third-party debate there this month.

Opinion polls often overstate third-party support, and that bodes ill for all insurgent candidates this year, since their poll numbers are already microscopic. Most show Nader pulling about 3 percent, with the Libertarian Party nominee, former Georgia GOP Rep. Bob Barr, at 1.5 percent. No other candidate registers.

The fundraising success of Texas Rep. Ron Paul , a self-proclaimed libertarian who sought the GOP nomination this year, had given Libertarians some hope, but Barr has raised only $1.1 million, just 3 percent of Paul’s total. Nader has raised the most among the third-party contenders, $3.7 million. Green Party nominee Cynthia McKinney, a former House Democrat from Georgia, has raised $177,195.

McKinney and Barr “just aren’t very good candidates,” says Jon Kraus, one of the Gravel aides at last week’s briefing. Nader, he says, “is a very steady presence, but he needs people to help him, and he’s not getting that this election.”