Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
LIBERTARIANS EYE NEW, VARIED CONSTITUENCIES
ertarian. Titus has the advantage in a heavily Democratic district, though Strawder said he hoped his campaign would reach young voters especially.
Strawder said he used to be a Democrat and was driven to the Libertarian Party because its platform of equality addresses all people.
Strawder said was reaching out to young voters through hiphop and his work with programs for kids and teens. He said Titus was the “OG” and all but a lock to win re-election, but he wanted his campaign to “make a rumble.” Education and criminal justice reform are two of his priorities, he said.
“I’m a reformed gang member, I’d been in the streets awhile and God changed my life,” he said, noting that he has since graduated from the College of Southern Nevada. “What better way to fight crime when you can relate to the people out there doing it, and you know what can help you to lower crime?”
Strawder not only faces Titus and Republican Joyce Bentley, but Independent American Party candidate Dan Garfield. (The Independent American Party opposes federal land ownership and is the largest third party on the ballot with just under 4.4 percent of the state’s active registered voters.)
Both third parties that will appear on the November ballot are dwarfed by the state’s unaffiliated and nonpartisan voters, which together make up over 22 percent of the state’s active registered voters.
Gregg Luckner, Libertarian candidate in the 4th Congressional District, is in one of the most competitive general election races with Republican Cresent Hardy, Democrat Steven Horsford, IAP member Warren Ross Markowitz and two unaffiliated candidates.
The high number of unaffiliated voters in Nevada could lean away from the two major parties, particularly this election, when the messages from Republicans and Democrats are so negative, Luckner said. The 4th District is a rematch between Hardy and Horsford, exactly the type of “same old, same old” situation that is making Republicans and Democrats less attractive to voters, he said.
“They go by name recognition, primarily,” Luckner said of the GOP and Democrats. “They don’t go by platform or what they’re achieving or anything like that, and I feel like in this election especially, Democrats are just anti-Trump.”
Librarian Paolina Taglienti, who is married to Luckner and working on the campaign, said she was planning outreach to the state’s legal brothels and marijuana dispensaries, which have become popular stops for candidates on the campaign trail in Nevada.
She and Luckner said Libertarians were the only party with a pro-sex worker platform nationally.
While the business is legal in certain parts of Nevada, including Nye County in the 4th Congressional District, several mainstream Republicans have declined to support brothel owner Dennis Hof, a GOP candidate for the Nevada Assembly. Democrats and feminists alike have mixed stances on sex work.
“It is legal in Nye County,” Taglienti said. “There are people who make this life choice, and they need to be protected as well. This is a career.”