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CEDAR RAPIDS — Iowa Libertarians think there is a silver lining to the 2016 presidential race featuring two highly unpopular major-party candidates.

“Iowans don’t like either major-party candidate,” said Keith Laube, Libertarian Party of Iowa chairman. “Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are so disconnected from the American public that people are looking for another option.”

If 2016 is the year people vote for the candidate, not the party, Laube is optimistic that a better-than-ever showing by the Libertarian presidential candidate in November will help establish the party as a viable alternative to two-party gridlock.

The Newton civil engineer thinks the Libertarian ticket of former GOP governors Gary Johnson of New Mexico and William Weld of Massachusetts (www.johnsonweld.com) will appeal to Iowa voters who are Libertarian “at heart (because) they don’t want to pay a lot of taxes and they want government to be efficient, but at the same time, they don’t want to lose their freedoms.”

The challenge may be to change voting habits, said Chris Larimer, who teaches political science at the University of Northern Iowa.

“Regular voters who identify with a political party are going to have a hard time overcoming their partisan loyalties,” Larimer said.