Former Rep. Bob Barr says a number of Republicans have been trying to persuade him not to run for president on the Libertarian Party ticket, but none has given him a convincing reason.

The former Republican congressman from Georgia formed an exploratory committee last month and told The Washington Times that he has since been subjected to the behind-the-scenes pressure from Republicans not to run.

Mr. Barr says even people who have tried to dissuade him understand why he thinks it important to raise issues from what he calls a “genuinely conservative” perspective and to offer alternatives to the positions of the two major-party candidates.

“In the month since we formed our exploratory committee, not a single Republican who has spoken with me to try and convince me not to seek the Libertarian nomination has disagreed with my reasons for considering a run,” Mr. Barr told The Times yesterday in an e-mail exchange before leaving London on a flight to Atlanta.

Most Republicans who asked him not to run “also said they understand why I’d run and why John McCain is not conservative and will not seriously tackle the growth in government power and spending,” he said. “Some said they would vote for me if I ran, but for the sake of the Republican Party, they would prefer I didn’t.”

Mr. Barr will speak today at the National Press Club.

But Republicans, both publicly and behind the scenes, are saying a Barr run could hurt him financially and sink Mr. McCain’s Republican candidacy in the general election, likely against Sen. Barack Obama.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told The Times yesterday that “Bob Barr will make it marginally easier for Barack Obama to become president. That outcome threatens every libertarian value Barr professes to champion.”

Russ Verney, an adviser to the 1992 Ross Perot presidential campaign and his 1996 campaign manager, has been working with the Mr. Barr’s exploratory committee “to help put together the infrastructure for his presidential run,” Libertarian Party spokesman Andrew Davis said.

Mr. Barr, a former federal prosecutor, was a conservative Republican before he became a Libertarian in 2006.

“In 1992, Ross Perot took rather obscure issues like government spending and national debt and made them clear for the public,” Mr. Verney said. “Sixteen years later, the public inherently knows the country is headed in the wrong direction, something has to be done, and can’t be done through Republicans and Democrats.”

The Libertarian Party says it “is on track to achieve ballot access in at least 48 states.”

If he wins nomination at the Libertarians’ May 22-26 national convention in Denver, it could financially burden his law practice and consulting firm in Atlanta, while enlivening discussion at organizations with which he has been associated, including the American Conservative Union, the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Rifle Association.

To the dismay of some Republicans who consider the ACLU a champion of liberal causes, he has consulted for the civil liberties group on informational and data privacy issues on which many liberals and conservatives see eye to eye.

In a debate last week at Oxford University, Mr. Barr argued that in some ways the end of freedom predicted in George Orwell’s “1984” has arrived, “not in the form of a brutal dictatorship but in the guise of modern governments using the tools of digital technology and the fear of terrorism to take away what vestiges of privacy remain to our citizens.”

He said the debate topic would be a major part of his platform if he runs.

A poll paid for by his exploratory committee found that 36 percent of likely voters recognized his name and that 9 percent said they would vote for him over Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain. But a Zogby poll released last month found 45 percent of likely voters favoring Mr. Obama, 42 percent for Mr. McCain, 3 percent for Mr. Barr and 1 percent for Ralph Nader, with 8 percent undecided.

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