Frank Daniels III

fdanielsiii@tennessean.com

If you go to The Tennessean website and put “Gary Johnson” in the search box (located in the top right corner with a gray magnifying glass in it) you will discover one news story pertaining to the Libertarian presidential nominee – it is dated March 15 … 2014.

Readers, like Cate Scott, have written letters to the editor about why they are supporting the former governor of New Mexico for president, but in our newspaper, like many others, Johnson is conspicuously absent.

In a year where voters have pointedly expressed their dissatisfaction with presidential candidates who represent status quo politics, it seems odd that we are not interested in learning more about Johnson, who was a surprisingly effective governor from 1995 to 2003.

Republican Johnson

Johnson barely won a four-man Republican gubernatorial primary in 1994, snagging 34 percent of the primary vote. He beat the incumbent governor, Democrat Bruce King, by 10 percentage points in the general election – in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 2-1 margin.

Like a traditional Republican, he ran on a platform of “a common sense business approach” to government (you can go ahead and yawn at that), with promises to cut the growth of government spending, reduce taxes, increase jobs, and, of course, law and order.

Once he was elected, Johnson executed his promises by using his veto power – he vetoed 47 percent of the bills that reached his desk, and exercised line-item veto power on almost every bill he signed.

He cut government spending in every area during his first term, except education, where the state’s budget increased by over 30 percent.

When he ran for re-election in 1998, against the popular Democratic mayor of Albuquerque, he won again won by 10 percentage points.

In a 2001 interview with the libertarian Reason magazine, Johnson described his accomplishments as governor as building 500 miles of four-lane highway in the state to increase access to jobs; reducing taxes by $123 million a year; reforming Medicaid; reforming New Mexico’s prison system, which was under federal supervision, and reducing state government payrolls by 1,200 people.

He failed to pass a school voucher program, but did get a statewide charter school authorizer bill passed.

Libertarian Johnson

During his second term, Johnson called the nearly two-decade long “war on drugs” a failure and began advocating for the legalization of marijuana. It was perhaps his first step to embracing the Libertarian Party, which was founded in 1971 in Colorado and advocates for a small government, broad personal and civil liberties with strict personal responsibility.

“Live and let live is the Libertarian way,” states the party website.

The first Libertarian ticket, in 1972, received 3,674 votes.

Johnson became a Libertarian in 2011 and was the party nominee in the 2012 presidential election with running mate James P. Gray, an Orange County, California, judge. He got on 48 state ballots and received almost 1.3 million votes, or just under 1 percent of the popular vote. President Barack Obama received almost 66 million votes, GOP nominee Mitt Romney received nearly 61 million.

Johnson tapped former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld as his running mate in 2016.

Johnson and Weld advocate a diverse range of solutions, including: a broad tax simplification plan that would ultimately replace income and payroll taxes with consumption taxes (sounds a lot like Tennessee); term limits for all federal offices; an immigration policy that focuses on work visas and employment issues more than militarization of our borders; decriminalization or legalization of marijuana as part of a comprehensive criminal justice system reform; a woman’s right to choose (their slogan: Appreciate Life. Respect Choice. Stay Out of Personal Decisions); and send American troops to war only with clear Congressional authorization.

Electable?

Generally, if you ask someone whether they would vote for Johnson the answer, well, other than “Who?”, is that the vote is wasted and will either ensure that Hillary Clinton wins, or Donald Trump wins – whomever the person dislikes more.

Of course, then many folks cringe at the thought of either of the main party nominees serving in the White House. They are after all the two most unpopular candidates in the history of candidate popularity polling.

So, hold your nose and vote, or take a look at an option.

The other main complaint I’ve heard over the past two weeks as I talked with folks, was skepticism toward the extremism of the Libertarian philosophy.

Read the Democratic Party platform, or the Republican platform. Both tend more toward extreme positions than most voters embrace.

If we want to see change in how our government works, putting these two former governors in the mix might be the right thing to do.

Reach Frank Daniels III:fdanielsiii@tennessean.com, 615-881-7039, or on Twitter @fdanielsiii