Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mark Clayton (politician)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus to delete this material. There is substantial and well-argued support for a merge, and indeed there is very nearly a consensus for it, but I don't think we're quite there. Discussion about the possible merge can continue on the article's talk page until consensus about it is reached. What this AfD has found is that this article title should not become a redlink. NAC—S Marshall T/C 23:05, 19 August 2012 (UTC) [reply]

Mark Clayton (politician)[edit]

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Only claim to notability is having embarrassed the Tennessee Democratic Party by winning the state Democratic primary. This is a WP:ONEEVENT situation, not something that merits a full-scale encyclopedia biography. For background, it took only 25 petition signatures to get on the primary ballot in Tennessee; the party did not have any approval over the candidates who filed; and the state has an open primary in which voting was heavy on the Republican side this year. This guy won the primary by accident; he will lose by a landslide in November, and no good purpose is served by discussing his biography and political views in an article. Article topic can be merged into Tennessee Democratic Party. Orlady (talk) 21:55, 12 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Tennessee-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:52, 13 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Politicians-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 00:53, 13 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete or Merge and redirect (note unlikely search term) to United States Senate election in Tennessee, 2012 per WP:POLITICIAN. Location (talk) 01:42, 13 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Merge any useful content to United States Senate election in Tennessee, 2012 per WP:POLITICIAN. Not sure about the redirect, but an entry for him will need to be maintained at the Mark Clayton dab page.--Arxiloxos (talk) 01:45, 13 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. This guy is getting a lot of negative attention at the moment, and I know that inclines people to delete sometimes, but he is still the candidate of a leading party for Tennessee's Senate seat. He's certainly unlikely to win, but that's true of much less fringe-y candidates in certain constituencies. I urge that we consider Clayton's notability under GNG, BIO, and POLITICIAN, without letting the tenor of the coverage bias us. We may yet decide that the coverage is flash-in-the-pan. I'm not voting at present. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 04:40, 13 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

My view on this is not because of any concern about negative (or positive) coverage; it's because the usual practice here has been cover unelected candidates, if they are otherwise non-notable, in the article about the particular election. See WP:POLOUTCOMES: "Unelected candidates for a national legislature or other national office are not viewed as having inherent notability and are often deleted or merged into long lists of campaign hopefuls, such as New Democratic Party candidates, 2004 Canadian federal election, or into articles detailing the specific race in question, such as United States Senate election in Nevada, 2010." I suspect that quite a bit of content about Clayton and his campaign and positions could end up being used in that article. --Arxiloxos (talk) 04:48, 13 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yup yup. My comment was partly pre-emptive. Not saying he's notable - just that if you would think he was notable if the coverage was positive... –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 04:56, 13 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I already created (but hid for now) the proper link at 'Mark Clayton (disambiguation). That is:

Mark Clayton, Democratic Party candidate for the United States Senate election in Tennessee, 2012

I happen to love the idea of 'common WP:OUTCOMES', and I happen to agree with the spirit of WP:POLOUTCOMES which rightly guards against hundreds of new articles each year for long-short candidates of very temporary notability. But I'd like to see a little common-sense injected there, per 2010 Alvin Greene vs 1988 Robert R. McMillan (yeah, McMillan is listed there in that section). The lots of easy headlines about the largely-laughable Greene candidacy = article, while McMillan is a decorated Korea War vet, executive of Avon Products, 14-year co-host of Face Off on PBS, the only non-physician on the AMA board, the chairman of the federal Panama Canal Commission, AND a major-party-nominee for U. S. Senate. There's not a doubt that a simple article on the boring McMillan would survive on notability grounds, but who cares to create it if you have to immediately dig for enough sources to immediately satisfy WP:SIGCOV and fend off the WP:WHACAMOLE brigade? Again, the spirit of WP:POLOUTCOMES is well-intentioned, but its seeming threshold blocks too many articles on actually-notable candidates who merely lack cheerleading editors with the wherewithal to source them from the get-go. --→gab 24dot grab← 16:18, 13 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete or adopt new policy. Full disclosure: My opinion is that the two major party nominees for general election to president, state governor, and United States senator should automatically be assumed notable, and I proposed that at the Village Pump (see Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#WP:CANDIDATE). That major party "assumed notable" proposal (which I nicknamed WP:CANDIDATE) is absolutely not the policy right now, but it's probably the only way a nobody like this Mark Clayton could survive AfD PRODding. --→gab 24dot grab← 16:18, 13 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Merge - This could be a delete vote for me; however, depending on the results of the election this article could be kept. As such, I would recommend merging it to Tennessee Senate Elections for the time being. --MalcomMarcomb11376 (talk) 19:54, 13 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There is vanishingly little chance of this guy winning, although some right-wing Republicans have suggested that they may vote for him because he's more conservative than Bob Corker. --Orlady (talk) 20:48, 13 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Merger to the article about the election (United States Senate election in Tennessee, 2012) is the right solution. I failed to find that article when I was starting this AfD -- possibly because it wasn't linked in the article about Clayton. --Orlady (talk) 20:48, 13 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep Obviously notable. He won the primary election, the Dem party disavows, etc. Plenty of coverage of him and the election. The argument that the elected nominee for U.S. senate from a major party isn't notable seems absurd. How does deleting this article improve the encyclopedia or serve its readers who want to know more about this major party candidate for the U.S. Senate? Candleabracadabra (talk) 20:06, 16 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have expanded and updated the article from the ample coverage this individual has recieved in reliable independent sources (the core basis for establishing notability). As he received tens of thousand of votes in a previous (2008) Senate primary candidacy, and given the extent of the ongoing coverage and controversies related to his candidacy (including a Federal lawsuit alleging fraud) claims of BLP-1E are rather preposterous. Candleabracadabra (talk) 21:35, 16 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect per WP:POLITICIAN. I was torn on this one, because he really did get a flurry of nationwide attention when he (accidentally?) won the Democratic primary. Other than that, however, he has not been notable, so redirecting to the relevant election per usual practice is the way to go. --MelanieN (talk) 19:17, 19 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.