So who else is running for president?

From left to right: Jill Stein, Rocky Anderson, Virgil Goode and Gary Johnson / CBS News

Mainstream media coverage of the presidential election has focused almost entirely on President Obama and Mitt Romney, the only two candidates who polls suggest have a legitimate chance of victory in November. But among the 415 people who have filed statements of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission are a handful of lesser-known candidates who are fighting hard to make their case to the American people.

Four of those candidates will face off next Tuesday in a Larry King-moderated debate hosted by the Free and Equal Elections Foundation, which describes itself as dedicated to creating "a climate where all voices are heard regardless of political party or persuasion." 

Below is an introduction to those four candidates: Libertarian Party candidate and former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, Green Party candidate Jill Stein, Justice Party candidate and former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson, and Constitution Party candidate and former Congressman Virgil Goode.

Gary Johnson

Johnson, who served two terms as the Republican governor of New Mexico, wants to cut government spending across the board by 43 percent in order to balance the budget, including a 43 percent cut to the military budget. He would make massive cuts to Medicaid and Medicare and either raise the Social Security retirement age or institute means testing. Johnson would not raise taxes, though he would replace the tax code with the national sales tax known as the "FairTax."

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Gary Johnson: Top ten political questions

Johnson argues that the Republican Party needs to stop focusing on social issues, and advocates for what he calls a "socially accepting" government - one that would legalize and regulate marijuana and allow same-sex couples to have the same federal rights as straight couples. He opposes gun control laws, supports "school choice" through the states, supports abortion rights, wants to have Congress audit the Federal Reserve, and would lower the drinking age to 18 years old.

Johnson is on the ballot in 48 states, and Republicans have expressed concern his presence could end up costing Romney electoral votes - which is why they blocked him from the Michigan ballot for filing his paperwork three minutes after the deadline. (They also tried and failed to keep him off the ballot in Pennsylvania, and a Public Policy Polling survey out of Colorado found Johnson with 4 percent support.) Last year, Johnson sought the Republican presidential nomination before leaving the party after being excluded from most of the primary debates. He had been seen as a potential standard bearer in the general election for supporters of Libertarian-leaning Texas Rep. Ron Paul (a former Libertarian presidential candidate himself), but Paul has declined to endorse him. "I think he's between a rock and a hard place with his son Rand, and I don't expect an endorsement," Johnson told CBSNews.com last week.

Jill Stein

Green Party Presidential Candidate Dr. Jill Stein (L) embraces Cheri Honkala after announcing her as the Green Party vice-presidential choice during a press conference July 11, 2012, in Washington, DC.

/ AFP Photo/Paul J. Richards

Stein, a physician who twice ran for Massachusetts governor, advocates a "Green New Deal" that she says "will move rapidly to get our country off of fossil fuel addiction and to open up a new economy powered by 100% renewable wind, solar, bio and geothermal energy." To do so, she would provide grants and low-interest loans to grow green businesses, increase research funding for green energy and promote green transportation, including mass transit and bicycling. 

Stein says she would create 25 million jobs through a "nationally funded, but locally controlled direct employment initiative," create a single-payer Medicare-for-all health care system, provide free college education and forgive student loans, halt all foreclosures and evictions, nationalize utilities, and reform the tax system so that the tax burden is "distributed in proportion to ability to pay." She would pass "real financial reform" that would end taxpayer-funded bailouts, restore the Glass-Steagall act, and break up "too-big-too-fail" banks. Stein would also institute mandatory public financing for elections, replace "winner take all" elections with proportional representation, replace the Electoral College with direct presidential elections, and reduce military spending by 50 percent.

Stein, who defeated comedian Rosanne Barr for the Green Party nomination, was arrested with running mate Cheri Honkala earlier this week protesting her exclusion from the second presidential debate. "I am basically in this to ensure that everyday people have a voice in this election and a choice at the polls that's not bought and paid for by Wall Street," she told CNN Wednesday. You can read a CBSNews.com interview with Stein here.

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[CJ2351]

No mention of Ron Paul? Again.

[xfahctor]

That's because Ron Paul is not running for president, I wish eh was, but he isn't.

[XIVwords]

I am writing in Merlin Miller-----aside from Miller, Virgil Goode is about the only other voice of sanity in the entire scatosphere of politics. At the rate things are going in this country we are very soon going to find ourselves being balkanized whether anyone likes it or not.

[Swift29]

Lastly, Johnson just strikes me as rote. Not going to cut it. Another right wing Frankenstein. Stein is obviously from somewhere like Mass.: half her stances are absolutely correct and half would never get off the ground, i.e. are politically non starters. Anderson comes closest to what's needed so that makes me think Salt Lake's not a bad place to live, except for all the Mormon bodysnatchers. Poor Goode sounds like a made to order robot for Virginny's population. Real knee jerk positions. Think rural South. Unfortunately for that state and the country, way way too many people are of that stripe. Unsophisticated, don't understand economics nor American history, quick to agree with some lie Fox, etc. flashes in front of their eyes, or the ads playing to their small viewpoints. And don't read too much into the word viewpoint, some southern ideals are right on the money. But some are just wrong turns that detract from what really needs to be grabbed by the collar, like fiscal policy.
Lord, only 3 more weeks.

[XIVwords]

Did you mean "world" viewpoint? Weltanschauung? WHOSE world viewpoint do you find so precious that people in the south or any other point of the compass have any moral obligation to even have one? Seems to me that the "world viewpoints" of an awful lot of sociopathic cestodes in this country have gotten this country right where it is now and getting worse yet----if America had dispensed with so much of a "world view" and started tending its own soil and refrain from inserting its ever intrusive proboscis into the affairs of other nations, the wntire world would be grossly better off....people like you seem to delight in equating that to "lack of cosmopolitanism" and "bankruptcy of culture" which it is in no way.

[RonPaulKicksAss]

I am writing-in Ron Paul!

[jeffersonrepublican]

A vote for Gary Johnson is not a wasted vote. He won't win but if he gets enough votes he'll impact the type of nominees these two parties put forth and change the attitudes of congress and the president. Look what Ross Perot did. He got 19% of the vote and what do you know - we soon had a balanced budget and a strong economy. So it's not a wasted vote.

[jntlw]

The two party system is very broke and I for one welcome the other parties, and I would have voted for Jill Stein, but I had to make my vote count against any GOP (I had their lying agenda) so, I had to do what I had to do. We should have ahd all of them in all the debates.

[SuzanneO75]

Don't you see, that is exactly the problem. Just vote for who you really want/believe in. Dems/Repubs are one in the same. Things will never change for the better as long as people do just what you did, because of holding onto fear.

[Swift29]

Sorry Suzie75, have to agree w/JNT here, Way WAY too much at stake to let Robme and more importantly his party, win or get too much sway. We need to shut down the GOP agenda for good. Change their platform. Some planks/ideals won't go away, especially with the born agains (lusting for the Rapture) but JNT's right: the party's ARE the problem. Mainly the Dems are in the center now, except for birdbrain ideas from the outer left. But the right is so far out people don't see it because they've been brainwashed into thinking Obama's a socialist, for example. So I guess Robme was a socialist in Mass. and when he touts that state's healthcare bill he's just being forgetful.
But I digress, open the debates! No softball questions! Ample time for any and all answers.

[Aine57]

I don't remember who said it, maybe Eugene V. Debs? However: "I'd rather vote for someone/something I like and not get it, than vote for someone/something I don't like, and GET IT."

[SuzanneO75]

Yes! More people need to start thinking/acting this way!

[gbreadmann]

Don't forget Lyndon LaRouche. His followers have been hanging out around the local post offices. Very pushy.

[Swift29]

I thought he was in jail.

[qyeteye]

So the nation is subject to a clown show and rolling calamity yet the 1% candidate who demonstrates offshore tax shelter and $100 mil. IRA mastery, etch-a-sketch political positioning, charging others for his "success", demonstrated bully tactics for a forced hair cut to "Bain way" negotiating strategies and debate moderator run-over is considered as best to lead this nation?

Meantime a short article appears on 30 other candidates not aligned with a money saturated, institutionally corrupt, democracy-for-sale model.

Yet its a rigged process that We The People enable by not demanding better. In fact - we make it worse by voting for and rewarding those who provide a public "service" of dysfunction and grid-lock.

[Swift29]

Agreed. How to get enough people up out of their seats (away from their tv's soothing bath) and supporting a party that is relevant and sane, as opposed to the tea party, for instance. One, people don't read anymore: the masses get their opinions from the media be they Fox's yellow journalism, shills like Beck, etc. or what should be mainstream which also has a 'bent' but at least doesn't outright lie and incite mayhem and murder. Two, the system is made by and for the politicians.
I don't know how we can wrest back the reins. If we look for a radical leader' we will surly get one. Don't see how anyone can get DC to alter the process and the dirty money. At this point we may get china paying for politicians, PLURAL, next cycle and we'll be none the wiser. Great. Or as they say, nice!
Personally I think we need a politician running for prez who's of the working class and for the working class. Not another lawyer; one who went to all the prep schools, and feels entitled.
But I figure only when someone really hits 15-20% like Perot can they get enough support to get the parties to change. Ideally that much support would garner further contributions and get a real live third party off the ground. Spoiler be damned.

[HardyMacia]

Is CBS going to cover this debate live like the other debates? This is a debate I would tune into watch.