AUSTIN – The most consequential name on Texas’ U.S. Senate ballot this year might be Neal Dikeman.

Never heard of him, you say?

Then you’re among a giant majority among the state’s 15 million registered voters.

Dikeman is a 43-year-old venture capitalist in Houston who graduated from Texas A&M University and now has a wife and two preschool-age kids. But more relevant to the 2018 election cycle, he’s the Libertarian nominee in the red-hot race between first-term Republican incumbent Ted Cruz and Democratic Congressman Beto O’Rourke of El Paso.

He’s a first-time candidate who’s realistic about his chances of winning one of the most watched races in the nation for a seat in the U.S. Senate. (Spoiler Alert 1: There's no chance.) And he’s keenly aware that his place on the ballot could siphon off votes that might otherwise go to Cruz or O’Rourke, or both.

And that could be pivotal in what recent polls suggest is a race that is well within the margin of error. (Spoiler Alert 2: There's at least some chance.)

“The fascinating thing is that this race might just be tight enough where my votes start to matter,” Dikeman said in a recent telephone interview.

Typically, Libertarian candidates who promote a message of small-government conservatism as if it were religious dogma are seen as more of a threat to Republicans.

The Green Party, which is rooted in the environmental movement and leans farther to the left on social issues than the Democrats, has been blamed (or credited, depending on one’s politics) for drawing away enough votes to have swayed the 2000 and 2016 presidential elections at the expense of Al Gore and Hillary Clinton.

In Texas this year, the Libertarians have automatic ballot access because they won at least 5 percent of the vote in at least one statewide race two years ago. The Green Party fell short of that legally required benchmark, meaning they won’t be on the Nov. 6 ballot.

That could prove worrisome for Cruz. Make no mistake, Texas is Republican state. And Cruz, the polls show, is rock solid among rock-solid Republican voters in Texas. But, the one-time presidential candidate who came in second to Donald Trump for the GOP nomination two years ago, is not showing the same strength in the polls as the other Republican statewide ballot.

Dikeman, on one hand, pushes back on the notion that his candidacy cuts only against the Republican. He points out that the flip side to his party’s fiscal conservatism is a just-as-strong bent toward social liberalism.

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“What that really means is small government on both sides,” he said. “That’s keep the government out of my pocketbook, out of my house and out of my life.”

But on the other hand, Dikeman said he studied voting-habit data that suggests the strongest pockets of Libertarian votes are concentrated in the Republican-dominated suburbs in the counties surrounding Austin and in the ruby-red Republican expanses of West Texas.

He said he's received friendly reviews when he has dropped in on local newspapers and radio stations in places like Fort Davis, Fort Stockton and Pecos. He's not under the illusion that he or any of the other statewide Libertarian candidates can win a majority of the votes out.

But, he added, it's a good place to start. Voters out in the flyover regions of Texas, he said, are worried about what he said is the out-of-control debt spawned by the Trump-Republican tax cuts and the promised additional government spending pushed by the Democrats.

Around Austin, Libertarian-leaning voters are put off by what he said is an increasingly intrusive government into the private lives of private citizens.

"One of our goals is we're actually going to take some ground this year," Dikeman said.

But taking ground is not the same as taking a majority on Election Day. It's more about sending the two-party system a message, he said.

"That's part of my reason for running. Somebody's got to stand up and be the protest vote," he said. "I'm happy to be that guy."

John C. Moritz covers Texas government and politics for the USA Today Network in Austin. Contact him at John.Moritz@caller.com and follow him on Twitter @JohnnieMo.