LIBERTARIAN CANDIDATE CHOSEN
Libertarian presidential candidate fends o≠ five rivals to win party slot
Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson clinches the presidential nomination for the Libertarian party.
orlando, fla.» Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson won the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination on Sunday, fending off five rivals from different factions on two closely fought ballots and securing more than 55.8 percent of the total vote.
“I will work as hard as I can to represent everyone in this room,” Johnson said after his victory. “After this convention, people will be looking to us to describe what it means to be a Libertarian. And I realize it will be up to me to tell them.”
But Johnson’s near-miss on the first ballot kicked off an afternoon of protests and delegate glad-handing, with the vice presidential race to be decided later. Johnson had run a careful campaign with an eye on the general election, picking former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld — like him, a Republican who switched parties — as his running mate. In Saturday night’s debate, Johnson, alone among the top five contenders, said that he would have signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and that he thought people should be licensed to drive cars. He was loudly booed for both positions.
“I liked it,” Johnson said in an interview before Sunday’s vote. “Let’s draw attention to the only candidate onstage saying that he would sign the Civil Rights Act; let’s draw attention to the only candidate onstage who’s in favor of driver’s licenses. I don’t know about you guys, but I think that’s a great distinction between myself and the rest of them.”
Those positions were tough to swallow for some of the party’s self-identified radicals. They’d spent the campaign season — including more than a dozen debates — labeling Johnson a “Republican-lite” candidate who could not expand on the 1 percent of the vote he had won as the 2012 nominee. Johnson was silent when the first ballot showed him just six votes short of a majority.
Johnson gained 60 votes on the second ballot, while Marc Alan Feldman, a wellliked physician who just that morning had helped people injured by a hit-and-run driver, lost 40 votes between ballots.
Johnson’s victory began the race for vice president, which promised drama of its own. Weld, who had made a fitful Libertarian run for governor of New York in 2006, was not otherwise tied to the party.
In his victory speech, Johnson beseeched the delegates to look past any of their ideological qualms with Weld to consider the breakthrough the party could win if it nominated two refugees from the GOP. Weld, he said, had done 25 major media interviews since agreeing to run. That was 25 more interviews than Jim Gray, a judge who became Johnson’s 2012 running mate, ever did.
“I realize it’s up to you,” Johnson said. “If it’s not Bill Weld, I don’t think we have the opportunity to be elected president of the United States.”