Libertarians skip over Trump, RFK Jr. for Chase Oliver
The Libertarian Party chose one of its own as its presidential nominee Sunday night, capping a grueling day of elimination voting and a boisterous four-day event, where Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unsuccessfully sought to court the group’s backing.
The nominee, Chase Oliver — an openly gay former Democrat who in 2022 forced a runoff in a race for a U.S. Senate seat in Georgia — beat out nine other candidates at the party’s national convention in Washington, including Kennedy.
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Kennedy, who was a late addition to the official list of potential nominees Sunday morning, was eliminated in the first round of voting Sunday afternoon, with 19 votes — just 2% of the total.
Trump, who was not an official candidate, received six write-in votes in the first round.
The Libertarian Party is among the better-established minor parties, with name recognition and placement on the majority of state ballots in November.
The Libertarian nominee is guaranteed to be on the November ballot in at least 37 states, a number that party leaders say they expect to grow in the coming months.
With its emphasis on unfettered individual liberties and limited government, the party draws supporters from across the political spectrum. Libertarian Party faithful call for the dismantling of the regulatory state — including, for some, the abolition of the Internal Revenue Service and the FBI — as well as the legalization of drugs and sex work. Broadly, the party has embraced cryptocurrency, opposed tariffs and foreign military spending, and called for the release of the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, who is being held in the U.K. and faces espionage charges in the U.S.
A theme of the party’s convention, displayed proudly on badges and signs at the convention, was: “Become Ungovernable.”
On Sunday, it almost was. The party took more than seven hours, and seven rounds of elimination voting, to get a presidential nominee — and even then the party nearly ended up without any candidate at all, as more than one-third of the final voters cast ballots for “none of the above.”
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