Third Party Candidates: Gary Johnson and the Libertarian Party
Gary Johnson served as Governor of New Mexico from 1995 to 2003, as Republican. Born in 1953, he had been a successful businessman, building from a door-to-door handyman small business that he had began to make extra money in college. He was success in that enterprise and he started a company called Big J Enterprises, in 1976, which specialized in mechanical contracting. The company won a large contract from Intel's expansion in Rio Rancho, which increased Big J's revenue to $38 million. Big J became a multi-million dollar corporation with over 1,000 employees.. Johnson sold the company in 1999, by which time it was one of New Mexico's leading construction companies.
Governor Johnson ran for President of the United States twice: once in 2012 and again in 2016. On April 21, 2011 ge declared his candidacy for the 2012 Republican Party nomination for President of the United States, but the campaign failed to gain traction and he withdrew from the Republican race on December 28, 2011. He had originally thought about running for president in 2009. In October of that year, he founded the Our America Initiative, a political advocacy committee with fiscally conservative and libertarian ideas that included government efficiency, lowering taxes, ending the war on drugs, and protecting civil liberties. He hired strategist Ron Nielson of NSON Opinion Strategy to organize the committee.
In February 2011, Johnson was a featured speaker at both the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and the Republican Liberty Caucus. He finished third in the CPAC Straw Poll, trailing only Ron Paul and Mitt Romney. He participated in the first of the Republican presidential debates, hosted by Fox News in South Carolina on May 5, 2011, but he was excluded from the next three debates. Exclusion from the debates caused fundraising problems and a lack of free media.
On November 29, 2011, Johnson ended his campaign for the GOP nomination and confirmed reports that he was considering a run for President as the candidate for the Libertarian Party. He made the formal announcement on December 28, 2011. In making the announcement, Johnson said, "I'm a Libertarian in belief. I successfully governed as a Libertarian in everything but the name, and I am running for president as a Libertarian." On May 5, 2012, at the Libertarian National Convention, Johnson received the Libertarian Party's official nomination for President of the United States by a vote of 419 votes to 152 votes for second-place candidate Lee Wrights. Following his nomination, Johnson asked the convention's delegates to nominate as his vice-presidential running-mate Judge Jim Gray of California. Gray won the vice-presidential nomination on the first ballot.
Johnson received ballot access in 48 states and Washington D.C., and he achieved write-in vote status in Michigan. Oklahoma was the only state to not include Johnson on the ballot.
Johnson usually came in with single digit numbers in most polls. In a July 2012, JZ Analytics poll he received 5.3% support, and in a September 2012, CNN poll, 4% of registered voters said that they would vote for him. In a similar CNN poll held on November 1, he polled at 5.1% of likely voters.
Johnson and Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein sued the Commission on Presidential Debates, the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee, alleging that the Commission's failure to extend them an invitation to the 2012 violated the Sherman Antitrust Act and the First Amendment. The suit was dismissed by the federal courts; the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled in 2017 that the two candidates lacked a valid legal claim or a cognizable injury.
The Johnson-Gray campaign raised $2,553,878 with 87% from private donations and 13% from federal funds. No money was raised from any PACs. By comparison, Barack Obama's campaign raised over $632,000,000 (spending almost $541,000,000) and Mitt Romney's campaign raised over $389,000,000 (spending over $336,000,000).
Johnson finished with 1,247,923 votes. At the time that was an all-time Libertarian Party record in terms of raw total. He received 0.99% of the popular vote, which was then the party's second-best showing ever in vote percentage in a presidential election, behind that of Ed Clark in 1980. In his home state of New Mexico, Johnson received 3.55% of the vote.
Four years later, Johnson formally announced his candidacy for the 2016 Libertarian presidential nomination, in an interview with Neil Cavuto on the Fox Business Network program Coast to Coast, on January 6, 2016. On March 3, 2016, Johnson addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington D.C., portraying himself as the third-party option for anti-Trump Republicans, and saying that the Libertarian Party would be the only third party able to place its nominee on the ballot in all 50 states in 2016 due. When Donald Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, Johnson described Trump's political views as too authoritarian.
In early May, some commentators speculated that Johnson might be considered as moderate enough to take votes away from both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and that Johnson could get votes from "Never Trump" Republicans and disaffected Bernie Sanders supporters.
On May 18, Johnson announced that he had chosen former Republican Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld to be his running mate. On the first ballot of the 2016 Libertarian National Convention on May 29, 2016, Johnson earned 49.5% of the vote. On the second ballot he won the nomination with 55.8% of the vote.
Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee and also a former Republican governor of Massachusetts, said he would consider supporting the Johnson-Weld ticket, adding that, "if Bill Weld were at the top of the ticket, it would be very easy" for him to do so. Johnson and Weld participated in two nationally televised Town Halls hosted by CNN on June 22 and on August 3. The latter event was viewed by over 1.61 million people.
In August, Johnson's poll numbers began to approach the 15% threshold necessary to make him the first third party candidate in recent history to participate in the broadcast, fall Presidential debates. In early September the Gary Johnson campaign began its first wave of paid TV ads targeted at the Western states of Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Washington and the northeast state of New Hampshire. The growing poll numbers were met with attacks from the Hillary Clinton campaign in September 2016, warning that "a vote for a third party is a vote for Donald Trump". Democrats also ran attack ads against Johnson.
In September and October 2016, Johnson made a series of errors when facing questions about foreign policy. On September 8, on MSNBC's Morning Joe, he was asked by panelist Mike Barnicle, "What would you do, if you were elected, about Aleppo?" (referring to the war-torn city of Aleppo in Syria). Johnson responded, "And what is Aleppo?" When an Barnicle replied that "Aleppo is in Syria, it's the epicenter of the refugee crisis," Johnson responded by saying that "the only way that we deal with Syria is to join hands with Russia to diplomatically bring that at an end." Johnson's "what is Aleppo?" question attracted significant media attention, most of it negative. Johnson later said that he had "blanked" on the question.
Later, during a CNBC town hall television broadcast on September 28, Johnson was asked by moderator Chris Matthews, "Who's your favorite foreign leader?" Johnson at first stated "the former president of Mexico" but could not identify him by name. Johnson then stated: "I guess I'm having an Aleppo moment" and "I'm having a brain freeze."
In late September 2016, Johnson's support was shown at 8.6% by the RealClearPolitics average of presidential polls and at 7.9% by the FiveThirtyEight polls-only forecasting model. A Washington Post-SurveyMonkey 50-state poll was conducted online between August 9 and September 1 and showed that Johnson was polling at 10% or higher in 42 states, and at 15% or higher in 15 states.
In late 2015, Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, both represented by attorney Bruce Fein, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking to compel their inclusion in the debates. The case was dismissed in August 2016, with Judge Rosemary Collyer finding that the plaintiffs had no viable legal claim.
Johnson did not meet the established criteria to participate in the debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. From January to June 2016, Johnson raised a total of $1.4 million, surpassing Johnson's fundraising in his 2012 run. In the month of August the Johnson campaign managed to see its greatest online fundraising totals, receiving over 2 million dollars in online contributions. In August 2016, Johnson became the first third-party presidential candidate to raise $5 million in a single month.
Following the 2016 election results, Johnson was blamed by some media analysts for the election of Donald Trump. There were four states in which Trump's lead over Clinton was less than Johnson's total number of votes: Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. There were close races in Michigan, where Trump won by fewer than 14,000 votes, Johnson got more than 172,000 votes and in Wisconsin, where Johnson won more than 105,000 votes, Trump won by less than 33,000 votes.
Johnson received 4,489,233 total votes and 3.27% of the national vote, finishing third in the nation and setting a record for the Libertarian Party's best ever electoral result in the process. His share of the national vote was also the highest for a third-party candidate since Ross Perot's 8.4% showing in the 1996 presidential election. The highest percentage of votes received by Johnson was in New Mexico where he received 9.3%.
Governor Johnson ran for President of the United States twice: once in 2012 and again in 2016. On April 21, 2011 ge declared his candidacy for the 2012 Republican Party nomination for President of the United States, but the campaign failed to gain traction and he withdrew from the Republican race on December 28, 2011. He had originally thought about running for president in 2009. In October of that year, he founded the Our America Initiative, a political advocacy committee with fiscally conservative and libertarian ideas that included government efficiency, lowering taxes, ending the war on drugs, and protecting civil liberties. He hired strategist Ron Nielson of NSON Opinion Strategy to organize the committee.
In February 2011, Johnson was a featured speaker at both the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and the Republican Liberty Caucus. He finished third in the CPAC Straw Poll, trailing only Ron Paul and Mitt Romney. He participated in the first of the Republican presidential debates, hosted by Fox News in South Carolina on May 5, 2011, but he was excluded from the next three debates. Exclusion from the debates caused fundraising problems and a lack of free media.
On November 29, 2011, Johnson ended his campaign for the GOP nomination and confirmed reports that he was considering a run for President as the candidate for the Libertarian Party. He made the formal announcement on December 28, 2011. In making the announcement, Johnson said, "I'm a Libertarian in belief. I successfully governed as a Libertarian in everything but the name, and I am running for president as a Libertarian." On May 5, 2012, at the Libertarian National Convention, Johnson received the Libertarian Party's official nomination for President of the United States by a vote of 419 votes to 152 votes for second-place candidate Lee Wrights. Following his nomination, Johnson asked the convention's delegates to nominate as his vice-presidential running-mate Judge Jim Gray of California. Gray won the vice-presidential nomination on the first ballot.
Johnson received ballot access in 48 states and Washington D.C., and he achieved write-in vote status in Michigan. Oklahoma was the only state to not include Johnson on the ballot.
Johnson usually came in with single digit numbers in most polls. In a July 2012, JZ Analytics poll he received 5.3% support, and in a September 2012, CNN poll, 4% of registered voters said that they would vote for him. In a similar CNN poll held on November 1, he polled at 5.1% of likely voters.
Johnson and Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein sued the Commission on Presidential Debates, the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee, alleging that the Commission's failure to extend them an invitation to the 2012 violated the Sherman Antitrust Act and the First Amendment. The suit was dismissed by the federal courts; the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled in 2017 that the two candidates lacked a valid legal claim or a cognizable injury.
The Johnson-Gray campaign raised $2,553,878 with 87% from private donations and 13% from federal funds. No money was raised from any PACs. By comparison, Barack Obama's campaign raised over $632,000,000 (spending almost $541,000,000) and Mitt Romney's campaign raised over $389,000,000 (spending over $336,000,000).
Johnson finished with 1,247,923 votes. At the time that was an all-time Libertarian Party record in terms of raw total. He received 0.99% of the popular vote, which was then the party's second-best showing ever in vote percentage in a presidential election, behind that of Ed Clark in 1980. In his home state of New Mexico, Johnson received 3.55% of the vote.
Four years later, Johnson formally announced his candidacy for the 2016 Libertarian presidential nomination, in an interview with Neil Cavuto on the Fox Business Network program Coast to Coast, on January 6, 2016. On March 3, 2016, Johnson addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington D.C., portraying himself as the third-party option for anti-Trump Republicans, and saying that the Libertarian Party would be the only third party able to place its nominee on the ballot in all 50 states in 2016 due. When Donald Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, Johnson described Trump's political views as too authoritarian.
In early May, some commentators speculated that Johnson might be considered as moderate enough to take votes away from both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and that Johnson could get votes from "Never Trump" Republicans and disaffected Bernie Sanders supporters.
On May 18, Johnson announced that he had chosen former Republican Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld to be his running mate. On the first ballot of the 2016 Libertarian National Convention on May 29, 2016, Johnson earned 49.5% of the vote. On the second ballot he won the nomination with 55.8% of the vote.
Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee and also a former Republican governor of Massachusetts, said he would consider supporting the Johnson-Weld ticket, adding that, "if Bill Weld were at the top of the ticket, it would be very easy" for him to do so. Johnson and Weld participated in two nationally televised Town Halls hosted by CNN on June 22 and on August 3. The latter event was viewed by over 1.61 million people.
In August, Johnson's poll numbers began to approach the 15% threshold necessary to make him the first third party candidate in recent history to participate in the broadcast, fall Presidential debates. In early September the Gary Johnson campaign began its first wave of paid TV ads targeted at the Western states of Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Washington and the northeast state of New Hampshire. The growing poll numbers were met with attacks from the Hillary Clinton campaign in September 2016, warning that "a vote for a third party is a vote for Donald Trump". Democrats also ran attack ads against Johnson.
In September and October 2016, Johnson made a series of errors when facing questions about foreign policy. On September 8, on MSNBC's Morning Joe, he was asked by panelist Mike Barnicle, "What would you do, if you were elected, about Aleppo?" (referring to the war-torn city of Aleppo in Syria). Johnson responded, "And what is Aleppo?" When an Barnicle replied that "Aleppo is in Syria, it's the epicenter of the refugee crisis," Johnson responded by saying that "the only way that we deal with Syria is to join hands with Russia to diplomatically bring that at an end." Johnson's "what is Aleppo?" question attracted significant media attention, most of it negative. Johnson later said that he had "blanked" on the question.
Later, during a CNBC town hall television broadcast on September 28, Johnson was asked by moderator Chris Matthews, "Who's your favorite foreign leader?" Johnson at first stated "the former president of Mexico" but could not identify him by name. Johnson then stated: "I guess I'm having an Aleppo moment" and "I'm having a brain freeze."
In late September 2016, Johnson's support was shown at 8.6% by the RealClearPolitics average of presidential polls and at 7.9% by the FiveThirtyEight polls-only forecasting model. A Washington Post-SurveyMonkey 50-state poll was conducted online between August 9 and September 1 and showed that Johnson was polling at 10% or higher in 42 states, and at 15% or higher in 15 states.
In late 2015, Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, both represented by attorney Bruce Fein, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking to compel their inclusion in the debates. The case was dismissed in August 2016, with Judge Rosemary Collyer finding that the plaintiffs had no viable legal claim.
Johnson did not meet the established criteria to participate in the debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. From January to June 2016, Johnson raised a total of $1.4 million, surpassing Johnson's fundraising in his 2012 run. In the month of August the Johnson campaign managed to see its greatest online fundraising totals, receiving over 2 million dollars in online contributions. In August 2016, Johnson became the first third-party presidential candidate to raise $5 million in a single month.
Following the 2016 election results, Johnson was blamed by some media analysts for the election of Donald Trump. There were four states in which Trump's lead over Clinton was less than Johnson's total number of votes: Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. There were close races in Michigan, where Trump won by fewer than 14,000 votes, Johnson got more than 172,000 votes and in Wisconsin, where Johnson won more than 105,000 votes, Trump won by less than 33,000 votes.
Johnson received 4,489,233 total votes and 3.27% of the national vote, finishing third in the nation and setting a record for the Libertarian Party's best ever electoral result in the process. His share of the national vote was also the highest for a third-party candidate since Ross Perot's 8.4% showing in the 1996 presidential election. The highest percentage of votes received by Johnson was in New Mexico where he received 9.3%.