Jim Cole/Associated Press

When an Albuquerque Journal reporter last went to visit her state’s former governor in Taos, N.M., he answered the door in “boiled-wool slippers and a peace sign T-shirt,” she wrote in a January 2010 column.

“Federal government spending — I’m livid,” the former governor, Gary Johnson, told the reporter, Leslie Linthicum, before amplifying his sentiments with a coarser word. “This whole spending more than you take in, I just think it’s insane.”

On Thursday, on the steps of New Hampshire’s state Capitol, a suit-and-tie-clad Mr. Johnson announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination.

Mr. Johnson is in favor of legalizing marijuana (a way to weaken Mexican drug cartels) and against continuing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has said that spending heavily to secure the borders and deport illegal immigrants is not worth the expense. So who invited this hippie to the Tea Party?

Representative Ron Paul, the libertarian standard-bearer, has been encouraging. In June, when speaking to The Daily Caller about his own uncertainty about 2012, Mr. Paul, a Texas Republican, said Mr. Johnson would be the best of the other potential candidates. And as Slate’s Dave Weigel notes, Mr. Johnson hired Mr. Paul’s finance director, Jonathan Bydlak.

Mr. Johnson, governor from 1995 to 2003, has millions of his own money. And he can point to the healthy state of New Mexico’s budget when he left office to establish his clout as a fiscal conservative. Also, it’s not the worst time to be a dark horse. As results of a New York Times/CBS News poll showed on Thursday, Republicans are not exactly enamored with their probable primary menu. (Mr. Johnson did not register in the poll.)