In this ghastly political season, potential first-time Libertarian (and less populous but no less shell-shocked Green) voters can seem like refugees seeking sanctuary from a partisan civil war.

All they want is for the bombs and the bombast to stop.

Polls show the Libertarian ticket, composed of the first pair of governors to run together in 68 years, within striking distance of the magical 15 percent, the threshold to qualify for the televised debates.

Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson, former two-term Republican governor of New Mexico, compares the debates with the “Super Bowl.” He could throw in the Olympics and the World Series and not overstate the stakes for a third-party candidate in a media market glued to the Trump-Clinton cage fight and little else.


Libertarians? Aren’t they called Republicans who smoke dope? Hippies of the right, as Ayn Rand said?

“Libertarians come in a lot of flavors,” smiles Matt Zwolinski, a University of San Diego philosophy professor.

A self-identified Libertarian ever since a classmate at Santa Clara University gave him a copy of Rand’s “The Fountainhead,” Zwolinski says purists within the party don’t consider him a “real” Libertarian because he supports a role for government in erecting a social safety net.

In a nice play on words, Zwolinski, 41, founded a blog called Bleeding Heart Libertarians that champions free markets and social justice, a pairing that in his scholarly view is logical. (Economic growth is the only proven way to improve standards of living, he argues.)


Similarly, Johnson and William Weld, a former two-term Massachusetts governor, are viewed with suspicion because they’re real-world politicians who have had to compromise with Democratic legislatures to govern their states.

× Gary Johnson and Bill Weld explain why they’re running as Libertarians

To absolutists, Johnson & Weld are far from perfect. In fact, they were barely nominated at a raucous Libertarian convention. But that’s what makes them work for refugees from the major parties.

For example, Johnson, Zwolinski tells me, “has not been willing to come out and say, ‘I think heroin ought to be legalized.’ If you’re a purist Libertarian, it’s not just that marijuana should be legalized — that’s easy! — but that all drugs — heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine —ought to be legalized.”


To be sure, Johnson’s open support of marijuana legalization going back to 1999 (and his well-known consumption of the drug and his former business ties to the cannabis industry) will confuse, if not turn off, some non-inhaling voters.

To many Americans, especially those who don’t have a bong in the cupboard, Libertarians have a drug problem. (Of course, Libertarians would say they have a solution, ending the War Against Drugs.)

But imagine if Johnson performed the full monty and espoused the legalization of heroin. It would be political malpractice.

“Purity is the kind of thing you cling to when you don’t have power,” Zwolinski says.


Though the likability of Johnson, a self-made millionaire and extreme triathlete, is off the charts, he’s not terribly “articulate,” Zwolinski concedes. He can appear diffident in interviews.

At the same time, Johnson comes off as the opposite of a slacker. “I could climb Mount Everest today,” the 63-year-old has said without boasting. (He’s scaled the tallest peaks on every continent.)

Weld, on the other hand, appears a more sophisticated pol with a “shabby-genteel bearing and a boarding-school sarcasm that comes off as both appealing and arrogant,” according to a recent New Yorker profile.

They’re “the perfect ticket to emerge,” Zwolinski believes. They’re Republicans with strong libertarian leanings, which means they’re both budget hawks and social progressives, free traders who question rash military intervention abroad.


Most important to the political refugees of 2016, they’re sane, personable, funny, comfortable in their weathered skins — and they’re not Donald or Hillary.

But can the United States elect a third-party president, which would be nearly as historic a development as the election of a black or female president?

“It’s immensely difficult,” Zwolinski laments. We live in a two-party monopoly where Johnson/Weld may be making an impact on polls, as high as 12 percent in some surveys, but they receive maybe 0.1 percent of the Trump-obsessed news coverage.

But even as he concedes the near-impossible odds, Zwolinski brightens and recalls the unlikely rise of Trump and the unpopularity of Clinton.


“Stuff happens!” he exclaims.

In a July 20 column, I suggested it would take a triple bank shot for Johnson/Weld to: 1) get into the debate; 2) win a handful of states; and 3) force a divided House of Representatives to compromise on Johnson.

Well, first things first.

For the last few years, answering the phone during election season has turned into a game of reflexes at our house.


If the line is silent, we try to hang up before someone comes on to ask us if we want to participate in a survey.

If caught, we used to say, “Please take us off your list” — and then hang up.

Recently, however, we’ve taken to picking up every unknown caller and waiting for a voice in the hope that we’ve been selected to participate in a national poll of presidential candidates.

We’re still waiting to cast a verbal vote for Johnson/Weld that might help the team cross the 15 percent barrier.


In this strange season, a transient telephonic vote seems much more consequential than a general election vote in a slam-dunk blue state.

At the very least, we deserve a great TV show.

(Full disclosure: My wife, an ardent Obama supporter in ‘08 and ‘12, just paid $10 for a Johnson/Weld bumper sticker, billing the purchase to our joint MasterCard. Technically, I guess, I’m a donor.)

logan.jenkins@sduniontribune.com