Who will be the third man? The Libertarian Party wrangles over a presidential candidate in a weird election year.

AuthorDoherty, Brian

Three men stand behind presidential-looking podiums on a Fox News soundstage in midtown Manhattan. One is the former governor of New Mexico, who was the first major American politician to support legalizing marijuana. Another is a pioneer of antivirus software, whom Belize authorities still would like to question in connection with an unsolved murder. The third used to work in the building as a producer on the Andrew Napolitano-hosted show Freedom Watch, and is on record telling a hostile interviewer in 2015 that he swims in a "pyramid pile of pussy."

It's March 29 in an already-weird election year, and a live studio audience of 50 libertarians is buzzing with anticipation. One of these three candidates will almost certainly be on the ballot across the country this November for the most powerful political job in the world, as the Libertarian Party (L.P.) nominee. In a voting cycle that finds more voters than ever alienated from the major parties, how will the Libertarians handle this unprecedented opportunity to break through?

Not by playing it straight. When moderator John Stossel asks about gay marriage, the international fugitive, John McAfee, replies by relating his version of how he'd first encountered the former TV producer, Austin Petersen. "Austin and I met in a gay bar," McAfee says. "Marry who you please." Irreverent and direct, respectful not of politesse, but of liberty. Later in the conversation, the former governor, Gary Johnson, plants a wet one on McAfee's cheek.

No matter which of these very different candidates (or any of their estimated 13 challengers) ends up winning the nomination, the core attributes and attitudes of the Libertarian Party appear likely to remain intact, in a year when more eyeballs than usual will be searching for a third-party alternative.

McAfee, for one, hadn't even heard of the L.P. one year ago (or so he says: the software magnate has an avowed penchant for spinning tall tales to the media). And despite his self-tended reputation as a gun-toting former drug dealer who has burned through a hundred million bucks, he might just get the nomination. Petersen has his own coterie of online supporters, and 2012 nominee Johnson has the apparent advantage of being treated by The New York Times and other political outlets as the presumptive frontrunner. But Libertarian Party members don't tend to let the Times call their tune.

Longtime L.P. activists see the 2016 election as a unique opportunity. Richard Winger, editor of Ballot Access News and America's foremost expert in third parties, said in late March that Republicans especially face the "sudden shocking realization" that their party is "having a terrible problem and therefore people are interested in looking for alternatives."

At press time, America's major party presidential candidates seem likely to be Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Both are historically unpopular: Clinton's aggregated disapproval rating as of mid-April was 55.6 percent, and Trump's was 64.4 percent. With Trump running on a blustery platform of protectionist "greatness," Republicans who are dedicated to the old GOP verities of limiting government, or just appalled by Trump's personal style, seem more ready than in the past to look beyond their party's candidate for something that reminds them of the things they used to like about being Republican.

It's also a year of novelty and upheaval in national politics all around, symbolized not just by the rise of outsider Trump, but by the surprising challenge to Clinton's glide path to the nomination from independent democratic socialist Bernie Sanders. Surely, many hope, this must be the year for that epitome of politics-not-as-usual, a third party, to shine.

Now firmly established as America's largest third party, the L.P. is coming off its all-time highest presidential vote totals in 2012, when Gary Johnson earned 1.27 million votes, or nearly a full percentage point. Heady stuff for a party that since its 1971 founding has treated national politics as an opportunity to engage in ideological education and outreach and had only broken even 550,000 votes once before in its history.

Johnson, after a career as a successful entrepreneur, was a popular two-term Republican governor of New Mexico from 1995 to 2003, then a very Democratic state. He stood reasonably firm for spending and tax cuts through his prodigious use of the veto pen. (He did not, however, succeed in cutting overall government spending through his tenure, though he would have if the legislature had accepted his proposed budgets.) He was the first sitting governor to call for legalizing marijuana, and after his 2012 L.P. bid became CEO of a publicly held marijuana product company, Cannabis Sativa Inc. He uses the product himself, and believes the company has the potential to become the Starbucks of pot.

Johnson is taking a sabbatical from the company to seek the L.P. nomination once more. A week before the Stossel debate, he hit a media home run: A Monmouth University poll placed him at 11 percent nationally against Trump and Clinton. (Confounding many pundits' expectations, the Libertarian drew more supporters from Clinton than from Trump.) Johnson admits that those impressive results were due not to the popularity or even awareness of his brand, but rather to the fact that when presented with any third option, 11 percent of respondents lunged at it.

Johnson might seem the obvious choice for the L.P., delivering the kind of experience and track record most third-party candidates lack. But many Libertarians think differently. In online and state convention straw polls, Johnson is coming out ahead of his competitors, but with less than the 50 percent support he'll need to win the nomination.

Rather than an easy coronation at the L.P. convention in Orlando this Memorial Day weekend, the 2012 nominee faces competition galore. There is McAfee, whose recent reputation is based less on his role in making his eponymous antivirus software and more on the fact he fled Belize in colorful fashion after being dubbed a "person of interest" in the murder investigation of his neighbor there, and who has turned himself into a sort of living men's magazine profile--funny, accomplished, hard-living, and dangerous. There is Petersen, current editor of the movement news and commentary site The Libertarian Republic, who is an energetic salesman of libertarian ideas and "internet...

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