A Virginia representative has become the first Republican in Congress to back Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, a decision that makes him the second representative of his party to publicly reject Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president.

“I’ve always said I will not vote for Donald Trump and I will not vote for Hillary Clinton,” Virginia representative Scott Rigell said in an interview published by the New York Times on Saturday. “I’m going to vote for the Libertarian candidate.”

Johnson, a former Republican governor of New Mexico, has courted disaffected conservatives and moderates, and allied himself with vice-presidential nominee William Weld, formerly a moderate Republican governor of Massachusetts.

Rigell’s announcement followed the party conventions and a week of controversies for Trump, with a subsequent free-fall in poll numbers and reports of interventions by the party hierarchy. The Trump campaign denied such reports and trumpeted strong fundraising figures, but in the atmosphere of division, the Clinton campaign has worked hard to woo disaffected Republicans.



Earlier this week, the New York representative Richard Hanna became the first Republican elected to Congress to endorse Clinton, writing in an op-ed that he considers Trump “deeply flawed in endless ways”. “He is unfit to serve our party and cannot lead this country,” Hanna wrote.

Sally Bradshaw, a key adviser to Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor and failed presidential candidate, said this week she would vote for Clinton if the contest in her state was close. Meg Whitman, chief executive of Hewlett Packard and an influential donor who backed the New Jersey governor, Chris Christie, for the Republican nomination, endorsed Clinton for president outright.

The Clinton campaign has also shown the Guardian a list of 22 influential national security figures now backing their candidate for the White House.

Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee in 2012, has hinted that he may vote for Johnson and expressed admiration for Weld. “If Bill Weld were at the top of the ticket, it would be very easy for me to vote for Bill Weld for president,” Romney told CNN in May. Like Bush and Hanna, Romney has criticized Trump for months and said he would not vote for the businessman.

Speaking to the Guardian in June, Johnson said he believed Republican candidates beaten by Trump in the primary, including Bush, would end up voting for him. “When it’s all said and done, they’ll pull the Johnson-Weld lever because it’s a real choice,” he said.

Johnson also ran for the White House in 2012, collecting 1% of the national vote. On Saturday, averages of four-way presidential polls – also including the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein – gives him 8.4% support, versus Clinton’s 43% and Trump’s 36.7%. Candidates must reach 15% to be included in the presidential debates. This week, a suit filed by the Johnson and Stein campaigns seeking entry to the debates was thrown out by a federal judge.

Hanna and Rigell intend to retire from Congress after this year. Another representative, the Illinois Iraq war veteran Adam Kinzinger, has said he will not support Trump but will not vote for Clinton or tell his supporters to do so.



Rigell told the Times he has urged his Virginia constituents to reject Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric. “When their own conscience is seared by some statement that Trump has made,” he said, “I have encouraged them to be direct and also, in a timely manner, repudiate what he said. People will respect it if you have a reason and you put it out there.”

Rigell added that he would remain a Republican unless the party became permanently associated with views and policies espoused by Trump, in which case he would become an independent instead.