The Constitution stipulates that you have to be 30 years old to run for the United States Senate, so it's a good thing that Eric Brakey had a birthday this month. Brakey, a GOP state senator in Maine, is that rare Liberty Movement conservative who made it to the November ballot for the U.S. Senate as a Republican. He was a Ron Paul delegate and state director in 2012, he received an early endorsement in this year's Senate race from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and in an interview published Wednesday he enthused about the Libertarian Party's Senate candidate in New Mexico, Gary Johnson.

"I think that Gary Johnson would be one of the best U.S. senators in the U.S. Senate were he to win," Brakey told The Libertarian Republic. "I think he would be there on a lot of issues that are near and dear to my heart as a libertarian….I hope that he wins. I would love to serve alongside him."

Brakey took an unusual path to the GOP nomination. Trumpian Gov. Paul LePage played will-he, won't-he for a long time, and competitor Max Linn was disqualified from the primary due to petition-signature issues. Even running unopposed, Brakey received only 59 percent of the vote. His race against incumbent independent Angus King and Democratic patsy Zak Ringelstein is universally rated as a "safe" win for King, and the meager polling so far has been brutal—52 percent to 25 percent (with 9 percent for the Democrat, and 15 percent undecided) in a Suffolk University poll earlier this month.

Brakey's issue set sounds more libertarian than Republican—pro-marijuana legalization, pro-right-to-try, anti-corporate welfare, anti-military interventionism. He's a criminal justice reformer and a gun rights advocate. And he's gently dismissive of those libertarians who think Gary Johnson or other Liberty Movement types fail to pass libertarian purity tests.

"Now, he's not a perfect libertarian," Brakey said in the interview, "but there are very few people who are perfect libertarians. In fact, if you ask most libertarians, there's only one person who's a perfect libertarian, and that's whoever that person is….'And no one else is a real libertarian except for me, I'm the only one who's doing it right.' I don't really think that. I support anyone and everyone who is trying to promote the cause of liberty in whatever path they are doing so. Whether that's through the Republican party, or other parties. Whether through political means or nonpolitical means. I think that we should all support and encourage the cause of liberty wherever it is being advanced, anywhere."

Here is another interesting exchange from Brakey's interview with The Libertarian Republic's Gary Doan: