DELAND — Having secured the Libertarian Party's nomination for the U.S. Senate, Paul Stanton has a new goal: 9 percent.

If he can reach 9 percent in a reputable poll of more than 815 likely Florida voters before Sept. 30 — a tall order in a race with well-funded, familiar competitors Marco Rubio and Patrick Murphy — Stanton will earn a place next to them at the Leadership Florida debate at Broward College in Davie Oct. 26, as well as possibly others.

If he falls short of the debate stage and on the Nov. 8 ballot, the DeLand computer programmer has already made history, winning the first Senate Libertarian primary ever in Florida. And in an election year when candidates are pledging to be "a Senator who fights with them and for them," to fight terror and "stand up to ISIS," Stanton aims to offer something different.

"Florida voters deserve a peace candidate," Stanton said. "Even if I don't win, Florida voters deserve the option to vote for peace."

IRAQ WAR SHAPES VIEWS

The nervous 31-year-old who moved to DeLand about a year ago cuts an unlikely figure among Florida politicians. For a recent interview at his recently purchased house, a 52-year-old, 4-bedroom, concrete-block pool home with an enclosed patio, Stanton wears a sport coat over a "Live Free" T-shirt. His day building data-analytics tools for Frontier Communications requires him to campaign mostly at night and on weekends.

Stanton's interest in politics developed from his experiences with the Army in Iraq and after returning home from the war.

He took the armed-services vocational aptitude battery on Sept. 11, 2001, when the hijackings and attacks on the World Trade Center towers and Pentagon radically reshaped his country.

"That was the biggest determining factor in my willingness to join the Army," he said.

He was in Iraq in 2005 and 2006 where he was responsible for personnel security for a bomb squad in the 101st Airborne Division.

"The war was awful," Stanton said.

One day his team was called to the site where an IED had been discovered. "I ordered this gunner to aim toward the most likely avenue of attack," Stanton said.

With the big gun aimed at a nearby house, a group of children emerged. The team gave them candy and toys, as instructed in such circumstances, but Stanton said his gunner made a comment that stuck with him.

"If (the Iraqis) were in our country and aiming guns at our kids, he would have wanted to blow them up, too," Stanton said. "That's the sad truth of things."

Stanton's anti-war sentiments melded with another experience he had returning home from Iraq.

As he flew home, he carried his equipment, including a large bayonet and gun, sans bullets, but the Transportation Security Administration wouldn't let him keep a tube of toothpaste.

Later, he read of controversial body-scanning technology at some airports and believed it was another violation of citizens' constitutional rights. He wanted to protest at the Fort Wayne airport by handing out copies of the U.S. Constitution.

"I was a veteran who had taken an oath to defend the Constitution, so I thought I would hand out Constitutions," Stanton said.

Airport officials, though, told him he could only protest in the "animal relief" area — where dogs and cats are allowed to go pee outside — so he sued.

The airport later changed its regulations.

CALL TO LIBERTARIAN PARTY



Ron Paul, the Texas congressman who brought Libertarian ideals to the Republican party, initially appealed to Stanton's burgeoning political ethos. He went to a Conservative Political Action Conference in 2011 to hear Paul, who lost three times trying to become president. While there, Stanton met Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party's presidential nominee this year, at a cocktail party.

"I had a nice chat with him. He completely won me over," Stanton said. "All of his Libertarian views came from a place of deep compassion for people and it showed."

During Johnson's first run for president in 2012, Stanton "came out of the Libertarian closet," he said. But the Johnson campaign managed just 1 percent against President Obama and Mitt Romney.

Fast-forwarding to 2016, Johnson was again on the ballot against unpopular Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, surging to an average of 8.2 percent in the most recent RealClearPolitics poll aggregator, including a high of 12 percent in the IBD/TIPP poll that ended Sept. 1.

Stanton and other Libertarians saw an opportunity to make up ground in Florida. The only problem was the lone Libertarian candidate, Augustus Invictus, an attorney who billed himself "the most dangerous Libertarian in America," and practiced an occult pagan religion that once involved sacrificing a goat.

Invictus, who attracted supporters including Neo-Nazis and white supremacists, has also advocated a civil war and a eugenics program to sterilize or abort "the weakest, the least intelligent and the most diseased," according to former Libertarian Party chairman Adrian Wyllie in a Facebook post announcing his resignation last year because other party committee members refused to join him in disavowing Invictus.

Stanton said there were lots of "conspiracy theories" within the Libertarian party as to why he raised his hand to challenge Invictus in a primary. He denied even meeting Willey until after he had announced his candidacy.

Nor did he consult with Char-Lez Braden, the new state party chairman.

"I never asked for permission," Stanton said. "That's not a Libertarian thing."

And he felt responsibility tugging at his shoulder.

"In the Army, they drill it into our heads. If someone needs to step up and take charge, that better be you," Stanton said. "So it was me."

Stanton got 73.5 percent of the Libertarians' vote, defeating Invictus by an impressive 48 percentage points.

Post-election, Stanton didn't go much into concerns he has about Invictus.

"The big thing with him is he gets in the news sometimes for various un-Libertarian things," he said. "Honestly, if I had not run, someone else would have run."

And he was inspired by Johnson, who Stanton says "has a very real chance of winning this year ... and if he does, there will be coattails, so I am an opportunist, too."

CHALLENGING RUBIO, MURPHY

In the general election, the entire Florida electorate — 12 million voters — will see Stanton's name up against Rubio and Murphy.

And to win the Libertarian primary, Stanton received fewer than 3,000 votes statewide. The last-place Democratic finisher, Reginald Luster, got nearly 10 times that number and the last-place Republican, Ernie Rivera, got more than 45,000 votes.

He knows he's a longshot at best.

Both he and Braden, the party chair, are eager to see how the campaign of Johnson on the presidential ticket helps Stanton and other Libertarian candidates.

"There's no doubt that Gary Johnson is going to help bring life to Libertarians all around the nation, and he will shine a light on Paul Stanton," Braden said. "Stanton will stand on his own, and for Floridians who want a better form of government, Stanton will fit that bill better than any of the other contenders."

Stanton is hoping to get a platform to debate solutions to Florida's greatest problems with Rubio and Murphy, and he might not be far from that goal. A Public Policy Polling survey of 744 likely Florida voters Sept. 4-6 found 10 percent to favor Stanton. The poll fell shy of the Leadership Florida standard for qualifying for the debate.

If he were to debate, Stanton said environmental problems in the Everglades and Indian River Lagoon will be made better if the federal government stops making it worse by subsidizing the Big Sugar industry and using federal resources such as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers when state and local experts have more of a direct motivation to find fixes.

Stanton also wants to debate tax policy. He advocates eliminating a tax on corporate money stored in foreign banks. "We have $2.1 trillion sitting overseas that would come back to us, but doesn't because we have the tax on the repatriation of capital," he said.

But he's not all policy wonk and computer programmer.

Stanton bought the new house in DeLand and is planning to marry Ashley Barton, a Missouri native, in 2018.

"Compared to a lot of people, I have had a privileged life," he said. "I've traveled overseas, as I've been to war. A lot of kids didn't get to make it that far. I've had a relatively safe, good happy life, you know, the American dream, the American experience."