These are by no means all the Independents running for Governor in '06, just the ones who have the potential to do very well:

Independent MA-Gov candidate Christy Mihos spoke to about twenty UMass Amherst employees and students in Amherst on 30 May.  He was invited by the Massachusetts Society of Professors, the faculty union -- he initiated the contact and the MSP has since invited all the other candidates to meet.  (I'm on the MSP board.)

It's very unlikely that I'll vote for anyone but the Democrat in the general election, and that was probably true for most of the other people in the room, but it's good to get Mihos' perspective.  He was particularly interested in speaking at UMass because he was a trustee of the five-campus system for five years, appointed by Weld and "fired by Swift" (his words).  He promised that if elected governor, he would make himself ex officio chair of the UMass board, cut the UMass president's office to better support the campuses, and honor contracts with UMass employees.  He spoke of his practice as trustee to gather students, etc., to tell him about the real problems of the university, just as he would actively gather input from his store managers.

Mihos' life story is the basis of his candidacy -- he built a small family business into a large chain of convenience stores and entered public service through the board of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.  He said that he had been ahead of the curve in noting the corruption and inefficency of the Big Dig project, trying to get Bechtel removed as primary contractor.  He was forced out of his position by Swift -- as he described it, Swift tried to remove him directly, was rebuffed by the courts, and then was able to appoint enough new members to remove him as chair with the collusion of the legislature.  He characterized his tenure as support of the public interest in opposition to "big labor, big media, big business, and big government".