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AP Photo/The New Mexican, Clyde Mueller
Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson announces his bid for the Libertarian Party nomination for president of the United States, Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2011, in the rotunda of the New Mexico State Capitol in Santa Fe, N.M. Johnson, a long-shot candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, said Wednesday he was leaving the GOP in favor of running as a Libertarian.
By Karoun Demirjian (contact) 
Friday, Oct. 5, 2012 | 2 a.m.
Sun coverage
When the election is this near and polls are this close, it often seems like any soft breeze could tip the scales in favor of one presidential candidate or the other.
Such as a good jobs report. Or a bad debate performance.
Or a third party candidate.
Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party’s pick for 2012, hasn’t gained as much recognition as his third-party predecessors.
He hasn’t been invited to participate in the debates, as Ross Perot was in 1992. He hasn’t yet captured as many headlines as did the 2000 cycle’s Ralph Nader, whose 90,000 votes in Florida tipped the scales out of former vice president Al Gore’s favor enough that George W. Bush was eventually awarded the state’s electoral votes and became president.
Despite that, Johnson’s campaign, and the Libertarian Party backing him, consider Johnson to be a more serious candidate than any of his predecessors.
“Gov. Johnson is the most qualified person to be president of the United States that I know of,” Judge Jim Gray, Johnson’s running mate, said in an interview with the Sun on Thursday. “As he has said: We will run to win.”
But, as Gray and members of the Libertarian Party readily admit, their real goal is a far more modest showing that won’t get Johnson anywhere near the White House. Still, the very fact he’s on the ballot could potentially keep one of the two frontrunner candidates from getting in.
“In a close race, can he be the spoiler? Certainly he can be the spoiler,” said Jennifer Duffy, senior editor with the Cook Political Report. “In a really close race, a third candidate who gets 2 percent can make a difference.”
The Johnson camp’s goal is actually 5 percent, that being the performance threshold necessary to get public funding in 2016.
“Academic polls are showing the governor between 5 and 6.5 percent, so that’s where we are now,” Campaign Manager Ron Nielsen said in an interview Thursday, adding that he expected the turnout for Johnson in Nevada to be higher. “What we’re presenting is an opportunity for voters to make a choice. And we say it’s the best choice. ... If the notion comes up that Gary Johnson is a spoiler, then so be it. People have the right to make a decision.”
“If we just get 5 percent of the vote nationwide, it will be historic,” Gray said. “It will be the beginning of the end of the two-party system.”
To reach that goal, his campaign is doing everything they can to promote Johnson on a limited budget — the campaign has less than $2 million in total reported receipts — and almost no airtime.
But with his name recognition still relatively low, it’s clear that his campaign staffers are promoting the negative aspects of Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney to rustle up the protest vote.
“It is a protest we’re encouraging: We’re protesting the two-party system,” Nielsen said. “We’re protesting the same versus the same, and we’re offering something different.”
Johnson’s showing in Nevada — where the presidential race remains tight — depends on how many voters decide they want to cast a protest vote and, of those, how many of them decide to choose Johnson as their protest selection.
Nevada has its fair share of disaffected voters this year, especially in the Republican Party.
“Nevada’s a very unique situation. ... I think we’ll have a huge faction of people that are GOPers on the Ron Paul side who want to see the revolution continue with Gary Johnson,” said Brett Pojunis, a national committee member with the Libertarian Party who is based in Nevada and is supporting Johnson. “Gary in the campaign has spent a tremendous amount of time, effort, resources and money developing a message specifically for the Ron Paulers, and that message is: ‘If you loved Ron Paul, you’re going to love Gary Johnson.’”
Pojunis rattled off several points of Johnson’s platform that matched up with Paul’s. They’re both anti-war, pro-small government and in favor of ending the Fed. It’s a message Johnson has been taking directly to the Ron Paul supporters for months, even appearing at a rally of the Paul faithful in Tampa to ask for their support.
“(Ron Paul’s) supporters are coming to us because we have one enormous benefit and quality that Dr. Paul does not: We will be on the ballot in November, and he will not be,” Gray said.
That message is swaying some Paul followers, but not with the same against-all-odds gusto they exhibited for Paul.
“My vote is about 98 percent cast in stone for Gary Johnson,” said Cynthia Kennedy, a Paul supporter from Las Vegas and one of the Nevada delegates to the Republican National Convention who broke their obligation to vote for Romney in Tampa, Fla., in favor of Paul. “But who knows? At the last minute, something might happen and Obama makes a terrible decision — if he’s leading in the polls and it’s absolutely imperative to get him out of there, I might change my mind.
“But Romney seems to be doing okay without my vote,” she hastily added.
“I think (Johnson’s) a much better candidate than Romney or Obama ... and I may vote for him. But I’m not supporting him or endorsing him; I’m not actually going out and hustling up votes for him,” said Jim Ayala of Henderson, who also was an RNC delegate who switched from Romney to Paul. “I probably agree with maybe 80 percent of the stuff Gary Johnson talks about. But I see Rand Paul as a much more viable collector of the Paul support. ... He probably agrees with his father on 90 percent of the issues.”
Johnson already has vowed that he would remain the Libertarian Party’s candidate through the 2012 cycle and run again in 2016 — when most Paul supporters are expecting that their former leader’s son Rand, currently serving as a U.S. senator from Kentucky, will pick up the mantle of the movement his father inspired and possibly run for president.
“It’s tough to go with a guy like Gary Johnson knowing that it’s going nowhere,” said Carl Bunce, Paul’s former state campaign director, who said he would not be shifting his loyalties. “I think (Johnson’s) a good asset for the libertarian mindset, movement, argument, but I don’t think he’ll have a huge effect from Nevada, as far as pulling voters from Republicans.”
In Nevada, Johnson isn’t the only option to register one’s displeasure with the two big-party candidates on offer. There’s also the option to vote “none of these candidates.”
“None of the above — I think that might be more of a factor than Gary Johnson, actually,” Bunce said.
But it’s difficult to know for sure. There hasn’t been much reliable polling in Nevada that takes Johnson’s candidacy or the none of the above option into account, Duffy said.
Paul’s supporters drew a lot of attention during the Republican primary season, but in the end, they didn’t turn out that many votes: Paul drew only 6,175 to the state caucuses out of a total 32,894 voters.
“In the presidential election, there’s going to be what — 800,000 voting here? It’s a very small fraction of the total,” said David Damore, professor of political science at UNLV. “In Nevada, some folks pride themselves of that libertarian mindset, so it is better territory for (Johnson) than a lot of places. But it’s still at the margin.”
The numbers are slightly better when one looks to registered Libertarian voters, who number just shy of 8,000 statewide, according to the Nevada secretary of state’s official count from September 2012.
Pojunis and other Libertarians plan to use the Johnson campaign to grow those numbers: On Monday, the Libertarian Party will launch a three-week long “Double the LP” drive to promote Johnson and double their dues-paying membership, a campaign that will culminate on Oct. 26 with a party in Las Vegas featuring Johnson and Gray.
But whether that will generate enough energy around the campaign to put Johnson over the turnout top isn’t clear.
Thus far, Johnson has attracted only modest crowds, such as the 300 who turned out to hear him speak at UNLV last week — and that’s the Libertarian Party’s estimate. Campaign officials did not share formal estimates of anticipated attendance for a series of events Gray plans to hold in and around Las Vegas on Friday.
In an interview, Gray was particularly optimistic about his chances of winning over the local electorate, from all parts of the political spectrum.
“In Nevada, there’s such disenchantment: Most people figuring on putting an ‘X’ by Obama’s name are just voting against Romney, and most people putting an ‘X’ by Romney’s name are just voting against Obama,” he said. “We are coming at Obama from the left ... and we’re coming at Romney from the right.
“We’ve approached the Tea Party ... and we’re in line with the Occupy movement. We are in the middle where neither Buchanan nor Ralph Nader were. We apply across the board. We are classic liberals and classic conservatives. ... We are refreshing.”
But in this election climate, a refreshing alternative may not be enough to get voters up and to the polls — even if they are fed up with their standard choices.
“Romney or Obama ... a lot of time voters just can’t stomach voting for either of them,” Duffy said. “But they still don’t want to be the spoiler."
Which concludes that all Ron Paul supporters are pot smokers and occupy protesters. Hurry people only a few days to register if you have an address and drivers license.
""We've approached the Tea Party ... and we're in line with the Occupy movement. We are in the middle where neither Buchanan nor Ralph Nader were. We apply across the board. We are classic liberals and classic conservatives. ... We are refreshing."
Which is it.....they must believe in everything or nothing .....or everything in between.
Interesting........so they are for exactly what???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Will Gary Johnson emerge as the real winner on election night?
http://www.thedrum.com/content/hidden-in...
Barack Obama will thank and support Gary Johnson for attracting voters that would normally vote for Mitt Romney.
I am a 60 year old life long conservative & a state delegate.
Ron Paul opened my eyes to the corrupt 2 party paradigm . both parties stand for basically the same thing now...
big government & wars .
the 2 party system is broken. I can predict the winner of this "selection"...
The winner will be the Goldman Sachs puppet who supports bailing out the banks.the winner will be a warmonger & he will support the patriot act, NDAA , SR347 & a police state.
the winner will support spending printed fiat currency at the expense of the middle class.
the winner will be a puppet to the secret bankers of the privately held Federal reserve...
The loser is the constitution & we the people.
I'm also distrustful of Both Political parties Bank Sponsorship and would have loved too see the Libertarian AND Green Party representaed at the Debates - instead of the Political Sloganeering we got. Give 10 Minutes to Answer so they can give their two minute commercial and then talk In Depth.
@vegasbike......there are libertarians on the left as well. After you get over the stereotype of Libertarians and examine what Johnson believes and states that he will attempt to do he is as attractive if not more so to disaffected Obama voters such as myself as he is to disaffected Romney voters. Make no mistake, Johnson is not simply a more conservative and more ethical version of Romney [although those criteria are easy enough to meet].
What are they about?
Freedom and liberty...unlike the republicrats.
Some day, the Libertarian Party may be larger than the Republican Party, especially after the coming Romney debacle!
A vote for Johnson is a vote for Obama....as long as you realize that when you cast your ballot its up to you.
This jerk, who is on a gigantic ego trip, is trying his best to get Obama-rama reelected. What an idiot.
If the libertarian and AIP parties get a certain percentage of the vote, then they are on the next ballot as a"qualified party." see Ross Miller's website.
Therfore your vote is not wasted.
Romney is running against:
Virgil Goode
Gary Johnson
None of the above
Obama
Greens not on ballot. Obama will win and ultimately become RULER OF THE WORLD!!
You people that rationalize that he's a wasted vote, secretly wants Obama to win, etc are an embarrassment to logic. The only reason a third party won't win this time is because of logic like your's. I predict, next time around, debate or no debate, Libertarians will win.
Yeah right, Gary Johnson is a loser. Great Governor of New Mexico, successful business man...I'm sure you're a bigger success.
Everybody vote Gary Johnson, I already did. There is no reason not to, other than ignorance.
Vote Romney Ryan not Johnson or we will be stuck with what we now have and we can't take four more year's of nothing but borrow and spen money borrowed from China.
Wake up American's before it's to late
Gary Johnson and Jim Gray are the best opportunity for a rebirth of Liberty and fiscal restraint that our country has seen in generations. They have my vote. Take a look at www.isidewith.org and maybe you'll find they stand for what you stand for too. They are the most qualified guys running. Their only problem is name recognition. Help my guys get well above 5% so that in 2016 they're a major, visible force with $90 million in funding.
If one of the two major party candidates loses it's nobody's fault but their own.
Would you say the duopoly control over the Presidential Debates, is most important toward preventing an elevation in the discussion about balancing the budget, or more toward avoiding foreign policy criticism, as a reason to dismiss Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, and Virgil Goode?
HR459, S202 "The Federal Reserve Transparency Act", overwhelmingly passed the House of Representatives and is sitting on Senator Harry Reid's desk dying from neglect. It is up to the Democratic Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate to bring "Audit the FED" to a roll call vote.
Call Harry today! (702) 388 5020 and call his D.C. number too: 202-224-3542
I'm voting for Gary Johnson because he will put us on the path we need; END THE FED!
The FED is why we go to war and topple governments. We bombed Iraq in 2003 to return the sale of oil from euros back to dollars. Obama armed AlQuaida to topple Libya last year because the dinar threatened the dollar. As soon as U.S. armed "rebels" shot Gadaffi, a "central bank" was set up.
Gary Johnson is the only candidate to vote for that isn't a FED puppet. Johnson intends to cut the size of government across the board and veto any budget that isn't balanced, and march the troops home from Afghanistan.
The FED censored media doesn't give us news. Did you know about "The Federal Reserve Act"?
Right now, the FED's trillion dollar house of cards is threatened by Iran selling oil to China and Russia for gold instead dollars. The FED has no morals or compassion, and when it's game is lost, the FED will toss the board and all the pieces on the floor like a spoiled 4 year old.
The stakes are too high to NOT vote against it! Do not waste your vote on the FED's "Robamney Show", it's an expensive illusion of choice
http://lango.us
Gary Johnson is giving himself away. He is wearing the Peace Symbol on his jersey in picture 3 of the slide show, and on page 8 in the print edition of the SUN.
For more education about the Peace Symbol, please go to (for example) http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/False%20R..., titled "The Peace Sign and Satanism."
In there it states: "Known as the 'peace sign' throughout the 1960's and into the present day, this symbol is the Teutonic rune of death. 1950's peace advocate Gerald Holtom may have been commissioned by communist sympathiser Bertrand Russell to design a symbol to unite leftist peace marchers in 1958. It is clear that either Holtom or Russell deemed the Teutonic (Neronic) cross as the appropriate symbol for their cause."
Libertarian adherents to Presidential candidate Gary Johnson need to be cautious about this candidate and his non-verbal, subliminal message. Could he be betraying the Libertarians, or have the Libertarians already transitioned into libertine Satanism?
According to Thomas Jefferson, "Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty." Gary Johnson, by betting on the lack of Vigilance of the American People is flaunting the Peace Symbol to his supporters.
Poor GJ -- tilting at windmills while riding a political horse that just isn't going anywhere. He would've probably been better off working within the GOP, especially here in southwest, to increase the influence of the Liberterian wing within the GOP. May not have played so well with the Paulies who seem more interested in political martyrdom than success, but it would've been more likely to actually result substantive positive change. Vote Romney folks -- unless you like debt, deficit, unemployment, and failure.