Rare News Desk
2012 Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson and 2012 Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul.
Videos by Rare
The Washington Post has identified seven states where Libertarian Party candidates could swing control of the Senate this fall.
One is pizza deliveryman and Murray Rothbard fan Sean Haugh, who is running for Senate as a big-l Libertarian in North Carolina. In a must-pickup for Republicans to win a majority, incumbent Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan clings to a 3-point lead over GOP challenger Thom Tillis in the Real Clear Politics polling average (though she’s below 50 percent in most surveys).
The Post reports that Haugh received between 8 and 11 percent of the vote in four recent polls. While such figures seldom hold for obscure third-party candidates in close campaigns as Election Day approaches, that’s likely to be quite a bit more than the eventual winner’s margin of victory.
This phenomenon is nothing new. Outlets ranging from the conservative Human Events to the liberal Daily Kos observed that Libertarian candidates might have cost Republicans as many as nine races in 2012. At the very least, that’s the number of elections in which the Libertarian received more votes than the Democrat’s winning margin.
In Montana, incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester beat Republican Denny Rehberg by 18,674 votes. Libertarian Dan Cox received 31,287 votes, or 6.5 percent of total ballots cast. In Indiana, Democrat Joe Donnelly beat Republican Richard Mourdock by 131,575 votes. Libertarian Andrew Horning won 146,453, or 5.8 percent.
Even in the presidential contest, where Barack Obama’s popular vote margin over Mitt Romney far exceeded Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson’s record 1.2 million votes, there might have been a libertarian difference. Ron Paul’s 2012 Republican primary vote total surpassed Obama’s margin over Romney in four key battleground states—New Hampshire, Florida, Ohio, and Virginia.
As recently as last year’s Virginia gubernatorial election and as long ago as when Harry Reid was reelected to the Senate by 428 votes in 1998 while a Libertarian got more than 8,000 votes, Libertarians have been accused of tipping races away from Republicans. John Ensign, the Republican who ran against Reid that year, eventually became a senator. So did John Thune, who lost his first Senate race by just 524 votes when a Libertarian took more than 31,000.
Veteran political reporter John Gizzi asked Thune if he thought Libertarian Kurt Evans had been the spoiler in his losing Senate campaign. Gizzi reports that Thune didn’t hesitate: “No doubt about it. He ran to the right of me.”
Tester unseated incumbent Montana Republican Sen. Conrad Burns in 2006 with the help of a Libertarian with blue skin. And in a 2002 piece in the New York Times, the conservative writer John J. Miller quoted a Libertarian Party official as saying exit polls show LP candidates take twice as many votes from Republicans.
I’ve long maintained that conservatives and small-l libertarians are better off in the Republican Party. As a Republican, Gary Johnson was twice elected governor of New Mexico. As a Libertarian, he made history (in raw vote totals—the 1980 LP ticket still got the highest percentage) by getting some 59.7 million fewer votes than Romney.
As a Republican, Ron Paul was elected to Congress twelve times. As a Libertarian, he won about 430,000 votes nationwide. That’s not even a fourth of what he got in the 2012 Republican primaries. Paul’s least successful Republican presidential campaign got roughly as many votes as Johnson’s most successful Libertarian campaign. Finishing a distant fourth in the GOP primaries did more to advance Paul’s ideas and raise his profile than winning the Libertarian nomination.
Rand Paul, Justin Amash, Thomas Massie, Raul Labrador, Kerry Bentovolio—I could go on, but I won’t belabor the point.
It’s also not necessarily true that every vote cast for a Libertarian is taken from a Republican. There are good reasons, for example, to think Libertarian Robert Sarvis didn’t really spoil the Virginia governor’s race for Republican Ken Cuccinelli.
Finally, no candidate—Republican, Democrat or third party—is entitled to anyone’s vote. They must earn it. Some of these Republicans who lost when strong Libertarians were in the race certainly didn’t.
In Montana, Rehberg ran to the left of Paul Ryan’s budget and was worse than the Democrat on civil liberties. In Indiana, Mourdock made a Todd Akin-like gaffe about abortion and rape—after Akin’s implosion, so he should have known to be a bit more careful in answering a question about abortion.
Personally, I thought Republican Cuccinelli was superior to Libertarian Sarvis. Ron and Rand Paul obviously agreed. The Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney wrote Cuccinelli “would arguably be the most libertarian governor in the United States if he wins.”
But given all the misinformation about Cuccinelli’s positions on birth control, sodomy laws and other personal freedoms—and the candidate’s inexplicable refusal to challenge these misperceptions—I can understand why so many liberty-loving voters felt differently.
If small-l libertarians can be strategic, however, maybe libertarian Republicans and LP libertarians don’t have to work at cross purposes. A liberty swing vote can be used as leverage to get better Republican candidates.
There is anecdotal evidence that electability concerns hurt liberty candidate Greg Brannon in North Carolina’s Republican primary. Maybe those concerns would have been less if Republicans thought Brannon would bleed fewer votes to Sean Haugh than Tillis?
It also not be a coincidence that the Libertarian Party’s presidential popular vote totals have been up since Ron Paul started running for president—or that the LP’s past two nominees have been former Republican elected officials.
Maybe it’s time for the Republican Party to take notice.
