Libertarians Pick Gary Johnson and William Weld as Presidential Election Ticket
The Libertarian National Convention on Sunday chose a pair of former Republican governors as their presidential and vice presidential nominees, putting forward the most-experienced election ticket in the party's four-decade history.
Delegates gathered here picked former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson as their presidential standard-bearer and backed Mr. Johnson's preference for former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld as the vice-presidential nominee.
By selecting a ticket composed of veteran Republican officeholders, Libertarians were hoping to present voters with a credible alternative to presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, both of whom are likely to enter the fall election as the most unpopular presidential candidates in modern history.
Despite more than four decades on the national scene, the Libertarians haven't drawn more than 1% of the vote in a presidential election or elected anyone to federal office.
Still, with opinion polls showing more Americans open to a third-party candidacy in 2016 than ever before, Libertarians say they hope to draw from a well of disaffected Republican, Democratic and independent voters. The party is also likely to be the only third-party option on the ballot in all 50 states this fall.
Together, Messrs. Johnson and Weld have more than a dozen years of governing experience. Mr. Johnson was a popular two-term Republican governor of New Mexico, best known for his expansive use of the veto during his eight years in office and his support for the decriminalization of drugs. He ran for president in 2012 as a Republican before switching to the Libertarians, capturing the party's nomination and garnering nearly 1.3 million votes in the general election -- the party's best showing yet.
Mr. Weld was elected twice in heavily Democratic Massachusetts, governing as a moderate Republican with liberal views on abortion, gay rights and gun laws.
"Fifty percent of Americans right now are registering themselves as independent, meaning new voters are registering themselves as independents. Where's that representation? Well, I happen to think it's libertarian," Mr. Johnson told reporters. "I happen to think that most people in this country are libertarian, they just don't know it. Here's the great opportunity leaving here today."
The pair of nominees now faces an uphill battle for legitimacy and attention. No third-party presidential candidate has won the presidency in American history, and no third-party candidate has carried a state in a presidential election since 1968, when former Alabama Gov. George Wallace did so.
This year, a handful of scattered polls that included Mr. Johnson's name shows him polling about 10% in a three-way race against Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump.
Nicholas Sarwark, chairman of the Libertarian Party, on Sunday said the party is now looking to make inroads into the class of donors that usually bankrolls Republican candidates, including billionaires David and Charles Koch. "There's backchannel communications to suggest to the Koch brothers that the return on their political investment would be a lot higher in the Libertarian Party, and we align better with their values than the Republican Party," Mr. Sarwark said.
Mr. Weld's nomination was in doubt throughout the weekend, as delegates wrestled over whether he waslibertarian enough to represent the party.