Chase Oliver is nominated as Libertarian Pary candidate for president

August 25, 2024

Chase Oliver, a candidate for the Georgia Senate election in 2022, won the presidential nomination late Sunday night for the Libertarian Party, the third-largest political party.

The nomination came after seven rounds of voting over a long, contentious day as factions of the party feuded over the nomination and party leadership positions. After winning, Oliver promised to unify the party in his acceptance speech.

“I’m extending my hand,” he said. “Take it and be a part of liberty.”

Oliver is supported by the Classic Liberal Caucus, a left-leaning faction. After the last standing contender was knocked out, Oliver won with 60 percent of the vote against “none of the above.” The contest had fewer than 900 delegates voting.

The final contender was Michael Rectenwald, a former New York University professor who faced backlash and left his job after he invited controversial far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos to speak to his class. Rectenwald, endorsed by the right-wing Mises Caucus that had taken over the party in 2022, had been the front-runner for most of the day. But Oliver, who was in some ways a protest vote against the ruling caucus, ultimately surpassed Rectenwald in their final head-to-head round.

“In a weird way, this is a microcosm of where the country is headed,” said Dave Smith, a comic and Mises Caucus leader. “Things are so polarized.”

Democrats and Republicans are worried that especially this year, third-party candidates might pull voters away from their nominees. In 2020, Libertarian nominee Jo Jorgensen garnered more votes than the margin of victory in some battleground states.

In the first round of voting, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who had sought the party’s nomination, was eliminated with 2 percent of the vote after many delegates had argued Kennedy’s platform did not entirely align with Libertarian values. Trump, who was a write-in candidate, got 0.65 percent, or just six votes.

“What an unexpected honor to wake up this morning to a groundswell in the Libertarian Party seeking to nominate me,” Kennedy tweeted after he had left the convention and returned to California. “I would have accepted the nomination if offered because independents and third parties need to unite right now to reclaim our country from the corrupt two-party system.”

Christopher Thrasher, an independent ballot access consultant and attorney, said that Kennedy could have performed better if he had made a greater effort to convince delegates that he wanted the nomination.

“Waiting for a grass-roots movement was never going to cut it,” Thrasher said.

Kennedy and Trump spoke at the convention on Friday and Saturday, respectively, after the party took the unusual step of inviting non-Libertarians to the stage to garner wider recognition. Kennedy was applauded when he spoke about his objections to coronavirus public health mandates, but he faced some pushback from audience members who shouted at him to eliminate government agencies rather than reform them.

Meanwhile, Trump was loudly booed and heckled by the audience mostly made up of Libertarian delegates who objected to his record as president, which included contributing to the national debt, allowing federal marijuana prosecutions, and failing to pardon or drop charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, NSA leaker Edward Snowden and drug kingpin Ross Ulbricht. Trump had suggested Libertarians should nominate him “only if you want to win,” but the day after his speech, Trump claimed he couldn’t be nominated because he was already the Republican nominee and that there was “enthusiasm” from the crowd.

Oliver, an openly gay man and sales account executive, ran in the 2022 Georgia Senate race against Raphael G. Warnock, the Democratic incumbent, and Herschel Walker, the Republican challenger, and won 2 percent of the vote, denying a victory to the two major party candidates and leading to a runoff.

In his victory speech, Oliver alluded to the presumptive Republican and Democratic nominees as being two bad options. He said he aimed to offer an alternative to voters — a common message of the third-party candidates this election who see this race as their moment.

“We know that the lesser of two evils continues to give us more evil,” he said. “But we’re done with that, and so are the voters.”

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