CV NEWS FEED // The Libertarian Party held its National Convention over the weekend, where it nominated Chase Oliver, a self-described “armed and gay” activist who holds several leftist positions on social issues.
Prior to winning his party’s nomination, Oliver was best known for being the Libertarian candidate in Georgia’s 2022 U.S. Senate election. Many observers have since regarded the candidate as playing “spoiler” in the race, which the Democratic incumbent narrowly won.
In the Senate race, Oliver garnered just over 2% of the vote – more than double the difference between Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-GA, and Republican nominee Herschel Walker. Due to no candidate having a majority, the race went to a runoff, which Warnock won.
While campaigning for his long-shot Senate bid, Oliver called himself a “pro-choice candidate” and supported measures to make abortion legal nationwide.
“If I were in the United States Senate, I would be supporting the codification of Roe and Casey to make it federal law,” he said at the time.
In addition to being pro-abortion, Oliver appears to be a staunch supporter of the LGBTQ movement and mass migration.
In June 2022 – also when campaigning for the U.S. Senate – Oliver bragged on X (then known as Twitter) that he attended a “Pride” event where a “drag queen” was reading “a story about rainbows” to children.
Three months later, he implied in another X post that he supported “puberty pausing via well known medicines” as part of so-called “care for trans kids.”
Last year, Oliver appeared to endorse the acceptance of refugees from the Gaza strip in a reply to an X post by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Several X users expressed that they will not vote for Oliver given his many leftist policy positions.
Jared Rabel, a self-described right-libertarian, wrote: “Chase Oliver defends transition therapy for kids, is radically pro abortion and supports open borders as well as the acceptance of radical Islamists onto our shores based on an old French poem. No way.”
Rich Muny noted that he has “supported most [Libertarian] presidential candidates since the election of 2004, but liberal nominee Chase Oliver is way too far left.”
“He supports (essentially) open borders, amnesty for illegals, usurping the states on abortion, forcing taxpayers to subsidize existing student loans by dropping the interest rate to 0%, the trans agenda, and on and on,” Muny wrote.
“One positive: we have now FIVE leftist candidates versus ONE on the right,” he added. “Joe Biden (D), RFK JR. (I), Jill Stein (Green), Cornell West (I), and Chase Oliver (LP) are all leftists, while Donald Trump (R) is the sole right-of-center candidate.”
Oliver won the nomination on the seventh ballot Sunday, beating out nine other candidates – including, most notably, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Kennedy – who is not a registered Libertarian – was eliminated following the first round of balloting, where he only received 2% of the vote.
Both Kennedy and former President Donald Trump spoke at the convention.
CBS News reported that during Kennedy’s Friday convention speech, he “tried to win Libertarians over to his camp by promising to pardon government whistleblower Edward Snowden … and to drop espionage charges against Julian Assange … two figures revered by Libertarians.”
While Kennedy received applause for these promises, “some Libertarians felt he wasn’t a true candidate for their party,” CBS noted.
The following day, Trump’s speech at the convention made headlines. After a chorus of boos greeted the 45th president, he remarked: “You can either nominate us and give us the position or give us your votes.”
As the boos continued, Trump added: “Keep getting your 3% every four years … maybe you don’t want to win.”
CBS reported:
In his pitch to Libertarian voters, Trump called for the commutation of Ross Ulbricht’s life sentence. Ulbricht, the founder of the Silk Road website, was found guilty of multiple felonies tied to the black market site. Silk Road allowed users to buy and sell products anonymously, including drugs and fake government documents. The Libertarian Party has made freeing Ulbricht a part of its platform.
While he made a play to win over the votes of disillusioned Libertarians, the presumptive Republican nominee was not a candidate for the party’s nomination.
Per POLITICO, Trump was “deemed ineligible for the nomination by the Libertarian Party chair” and in any case unable to accept both the Libertarian and Republican nominations.
During the balloting, academic Michael Rectenwald finished in a close second place to Oliver. The party selected the third-place candidate economist Mike ter Maat as its vice presidential candidate.
The Libertarians clock in a distant third among American parties in numbers of registered members.
The Associated Press (AP) reported: “Third parties have rarely been competitive in U.S. presidential elections and the Libertarian candidate four years ago won 1% of the vote.”
“But the [Libertarian Party’s] decision is getting more attention this year due to the rematch between Trump and Democratic President Joe Biden, which could hinge again on small vote margins in a handful of contested states,” the AP continued.
CatholicVote reported last summer:
Chase Oliver was the Libertarian nominee for the 2022 Georgia U.S. Senate Election, and Mike ter Maat was the party’s candidate for January 2022 special election for a heavily Democratic House seat in south Florida. Oliver received 2% of the vote in his bid, faring slightly better than ter Maat, who tallied less than 1%.
