Brian Doherty at Reason:
Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary
Johnson did something amazing last week: got
double-digits (10 percent) in a September poll of likely voters
in Ohio. He’s simultaneously getting the usual smattering of
positive press, the most popular of which has been
Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic declaring that he
intends to vote for Johnson. Friedersdorf explains
that serious liberals should have serious problems with President
Obama on war, civil liberties, and executive power, issues on which
Johnson is superior.
Beyond that sort of principled iconoclasm, serious news sources
such as
NPR are declaring Johnson might likely sway the election
in that third party role as “spoiler” for both
Obama and
Romney in swing states. Johnson told C-SPAN this week that
his own polling has found that in New Mexico and Colorado, he takes
more from Obama, and in North Carolina and Michigan he takes more
away from Romney. A Reason-Rupe poll finds him
taking equally from both nationally.
Is it possible the Libertarian Party, in a year of
great discontent with both major party candidates, can make a
real difference, or at least earn more than 1 percent, a feat that
hasn’t been matched since the 1980 campaign of L.A. attorney Ed
Clark and billionaire industrialist David Koch?
The biggest barriers to Johnson’s success are money and
attention.
According to FEC filings as of the end of September, Johnson’s
LP campaign had spent $1.6 million through
August. Johnson told C-SPAN this
week the campaign has spent more than $2 million. (In
comparison, Bob Barr spent $1.4 million in his 2008
Libertarian campaign.) While Politico
reported in late September that “significant super PAC support
for Johnson has yet to materialize,” at least one Johnson-oriented
SuperPac, Freedom and
Liberty PAC, has spent to support Johnson in August and
September, according to FEC filings,
$35,000 on telephone surveys,
$80,000 on making TV commercials,
$100,000 on a website, and a
quarter million on advertising in August and September.