Independent Political Report Interviews Libertarian Presidential Candidate Mike ter Maat

Libertarian Party presidential candidate and economist Mike ter Maat recently joined Independent Political Report to talk about his experiences on the campaign trail as a Libertarian Party candidate, what issues matter the most to his campaign, and what a hypothetical Libertarian presidential administration might look like. His official campaign website can be accessed here.

The interview initially took place over the phone on February 15, 2024. It has been transcribed and edited in accordance with the guidelines outlined in the Chicago Manual of Style. Independent Political Report conducts candidate interviews with the aim of providing insight into those running for office for the benefit of the public.

Evans: Opening question—can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your background, and what motivated you to run for president as a libertarian this year of all election years?

ter Maat: This year of all election years, I think that we have a huge opportunity in 2024, and we all recognize some of the reasons why that’s so. The other parties are about to nominate what are arguably and objectively odd and unpopular candidates—that’s one reason why we have a huge opportunity. The other is even a little bit more sad than that, and that is we all recognize that our government has gone off the rails. Americans are increasingly aware that many of the problems we have in the United States are the result of bad public policy, so I think that people are looking for a solution outside of the usual Republican and Democratic Party political duopoly, as we refer to it. That’s one of the reasons why we have such a huge opportunity.

ter Maat (cont.): The other is that a lot of what has gone wrong about our government plays into our wheelhouse. As Libertarians, our government has become too overreaching and too overbearing. It is too large. It has expanded in scale and scope well beyond what the Constitution would have anticipated, and all that plays into a libertarian mindset for getting back on track. I think that even more than opportunity, there’s an obligation for libertarians. After all, we are the philosophical descendants of the people who put together the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and formed our government for the purposes of protecting our individual liberty. And so that means that we’re obliged to get a few things right that we haven’t gotten so right in the past.

ter Maat (cont.): One of those in answer to your question, “Why am I running?” is to run on a very principles forward—a very libertarian, principled platform. I believe that one of the things that I can help the party focus on and help Americans focus on is real libertarianism [and] what it means for libertarian solutions to be brought to bear to many of our everyday challenges.

ter Maat (cont.): The other thing that I can help the party and this campaign get right is to run a very professional [and] very credible campaign. That’s why we lean very hard into my own personal background in public policy and public service—I was a professional economist for more than two decades, I worked for the White House for a couple of years and other agencies, I was a professional advocate in Washington for many years for free markets and less regulation, I had my own business educating financial services executives, I taught economics at three different universities, and as a second career, I worked as a police officer for 11.5 years in South Broward County, Florida, where I was working the entire time on the road as a registered Libertarian—so, I’ve been around the block in a couple of different ways.

Evans: You hit upon something that I want to bring up a little later, but going back to what you said about bringing a professional campaign and epitomizing an ideologically principled libertarian perspective—you’ve been traveling the country. You’ve been talking to libertarians and, ideally, potential delegates and things of that nature in a more generalized sense. What type of questions are you receiving right now from members of the party? What are they looking for you to do as a candidate?

ter Maat: It runs a fairly broad range. A lot of delegates are most concerned with what our policy positions are, and so you get questions leveraging a lot of the hot buttons that exist for most Americans. What are we going to do about inflation? What are we going to do about the national government’s debt? What are we going to do to get the government to stop spending so much money? What are we going to do to institute a different foreign policy instead of the ridiculously, unfortunately, sadly, counterproductively type of policy that we have today, which is so militaristic [and] bent on intervening with other nations’ foreign affairs? What are we going to do to get control of our border? These are some of the same issues that every American has a curiosity about from a public policy point of view.

ter Maat (cont.): And then, of course, we get into a lot of issues regarding, “Well, how are we going to campaign in a way to get our policy views heard?” So, a lot of that revolves around running a very principled campaign—and doing so for a couple of different reasons. One is to brand the party correctly, something I believe we haven’t done a great job of in the past. The other reason is that I believe it’s the right thing to do strategically. In other words, to get as much exposure as you can to voters, the media, [and] to big donors, you have to run a completely differentiated campaign. You have to run a campaign that leaves no doubt [and] makes no mistake that this is a campaign completely different from anything you would get from a Republican or a Democrat.

Evans: It sounds like you’ve gotten a lot of the same feedback from people and what they want to see in a Libertarian candidate. I am curious now, being on the campaign trail and being open about the fact that you’re a pro-reform law enforcement officer, or at least a former law enforcement officer, what does being pro-reform mean to you in that regard? And has it ever become an issue for you when meeting with and seeking the support of Libertarians while you’re trying to get the nomination?

ter Maat: Well, Libertarians are of a mindset to change the way that policing is conducted in the United States. In that sense, it’s a great dovetail. I am not a fan of bad policing, and when you are a cop, you see the big difference that exists between good policing and bad policing. I’m not a fan of bad police messaging, either.

ter Maat (cont.): You see on the right so often, especially among Republicans, this silly idea of “back the blue” in every case possible. Even as a police officer, I never said anything that dumb. And on the left, you see all too often things like “defund the police,” which has turned out to be empirically speaking, objectively speaking, rudely counterproductive. And I think both of those are opt-outs from what should be a robust debate about how we change the way that police officers are managed in the United States.

ter Maat (cont.): I spend a lot of time focusing on the fact that we need to do a couple of particular things: One is to end qualified immunity. One is to require police officers to carry their own liability insurance, just like doctors carry malpractice insurance so that when things do go wrong, there is a plan there so that Americans can seek redress in court. That’s very, very important, and today, qualified immunity, unfortunately, sets a tone that suggests the federal government believes it should be difficult for Americans to seek redress in court, and that’s not at all the way the system should work. We need to change that fundamentally.

ter Maat (cont.): The other level at which we need to change things is at the agency level. We need to make it more feasible for communities, whether a city, town, or at the county or state level, to hire agencies with greater competition [and] with more choices. Right now, most communities don’t have any choice at all, right? Most communities have the sheriff’s office, love it or shove it. In some towns, you’ve got the choice between maintaining your own police department or hiring the sheriff’s office to police your community. Two choices are better than one, so that’s an improvement, but what we would really like to see is more robust competition like any other business.

ter Maat (cont.): That’s really the signal we want to send—that we want policing to look more like other industries where there’s competition among agencies. That you should be able to hire a private sector organization if it’s fully qualified, meets the standards that your community expects, is able to train and deploy officers the way that you want to, [and] is able to ensure the discipline required so that officers behaviors align better with the principles and culture of your underlying community. You should be able to hire a different agency for that, not just rely on hiring public sector employees and creating a police department or the sheriff’s office. You should have many more choices, and in the long run, what we want to see is that looking like other industries. It means that the best police officers get paid more, the weaker police officers get paid less, and crappy police officers get fired, just like other businesses.

Evans: While on the trail, have you been approached by other law enforcement agents who’ve had questions about your platform positions? Have you sold them on why this reform is needed?

ter Maat (cont.): Yes, and it is a mixed bag. There are plenty of police officers, both inside the Libertarian Party and outside the Libertarian Party, who are on board with the idea of profound, really fundamental reform, and there are others who are naturally skeptical. Any time you bring change to a business or an industry, you’re going to get a lot of skepticism and pushback from those who are comfortable [and] from those who are used to the way things have worked. I think we need to appreciate the difficulty of instituting what is ultimately required: A new culture in many ways, and culture takes time to change.

ter Maat (cont.): A lot of police officers believe that qualified immunity, for example, is extremely important to their ability to do their job appropriately. It turns out that qualified immunity doesn’t affect all that many cases. The reason it’s important is because police officers think it’s important, and that’s why it needs to change. Officers aren’t used to the idea that if qualified immunity were to go away, what would happen? What does that look like? What does that feel like? And, of course, nobody is advocating for a system in which you make a good faith, honest mistake on some random Tuesday, and all of a sudden, you lose your job. That’s not what this is about.

ter Maat (cont.): What this is about is improving accountability, creating a situation in which if you do make mistakes at work, you’re going to be held accountable, and there’s going to be a financial pinch. There’s the possibility of being priced out of the market if you’re a risk that your insurance company is no longer interested in backing up, just like if you were a doctor making mistakes in the O.R. The other beauty of it that some officers appreciate and many don’t, is that we want a third party outside check on the system. We want an insurance company to come in from the private sector outside the system and demand greater accountability, greater transparency, [and] greater information to help hold the system accountable because, as we know, politicians at the local level really do a crappy job of it now.

ter Maat (cont.): The other thing that needs to be said is you don’t want to chase everybody out of the law enforcement business who’s a Libertarian. You don’t want to just cede this huge part of public service to Republicans and Democrats—mostly Republicans. You want libertarians in there in every phase of government, in every aspect of government, fighting the good fight, trying to do the right thing.

Evans: I want to shift to looking at the actual nomination because we’re getting closer. We’re several months out from the convention date, and I don’t think it’s a secret, but there’s a lot of infighting going on within the Libertarian Party. Let’s say it’s the convention, and you’ve won the party’s nomination for president. You now have the backing of significant institutional support, but you would also come to inherit a party that has seen a lot of division and fighting between caucuses. Are you someone who wants to bridge these divides, and if so, do you have anything in mind strategy-wise to unite the various factions within the party under your nomination?

ter Maat: I think that I am uniquely positioned to be able to pull that off. For starters, I have deep relationships inside the Mises Caucus and deep relationships outside of the Mises Caucus. Our campaign is positioned to earn more than 50% of the delegates representing the Mises Caucus and more than 50% of the delegates not in the Mises Caucus. We have not only good relationships politically but work-wise. We plan to bring on some of the best talent from inside the Mises Caucus and from elsewhere in the party into our campaign.

ter Maat (cont.): As you may know, our campaign is already up and running with seventeen individuals who are professionals. They are paid—they’re not paid a great deal of money—but we have seventeen people on our paid staff already, so we’re well ahead of schedule in terms of being prepared for the general election. I’m not arguing that we’re ready to turnkey tomorrow, but we certainly will be by Memorial Day, so we’re excited about that. And one of the things that we believe that unites people is success. Running a campaign that is very principles-forward and very professional will naturally invite people to participate from all sides and facets of our party, and we very, very much look forward to that.

Evans: In that same vein, and you touched upon some of this in what you just said, but there have been some former Libertarians now who have left the party entirely to pursue their own initiatives, including the formation of a whole new party earlier this week, the Liberal Party. Let’s say you’ve secured the nomination at this point. Do you see value in maintaining connections with those individuals who have left the party? And what do you do to engage and collaborate with them, especially if they don’t feel like they have a home anymore?

ter Maat: I do believe they will eventually come back to the Libertarian Party, so maintaining those relationships is very important. How they come back into the fold remains to be seen. Whether they come back as caucuses, as new affiliates, or if they just come back to join the party as regular fare, we will see how that plays out. I’m a little bit different from some of the other folks inside our party. I do not take the position that we should be disparaging individuals who form caucuses [and] who pursue caucus administration. The caucuses play a very important role in any party. Unfortunately, we have seen anti-caucus behavior that is extremely damaging to our party. When a caucus chooses to run down another caucus, then there is a problem. Instead of becoming part of the solution, you have become part of the problem. We see that increasingly, and I view it as a problem.

ter Maat (cont.): If, on the other hand, the caucuses stick to their knitting and continue to talk about how they feel about various public policy issues [and] how they feel about various administrative issues regarding campaigning, for example, how to run local campaigns, how to raise money, how to run a national campaign, these are issues that people naturally have differences about. So, sometimes, caucuses can be very useful in advancing these positions. That’s all good, but when they become so involved with trying to push down in order to push themselves up over other caucuses, then we’ve got a problem. As I see it, these groups can play important roles in the campaign both before and after the nomination, including those groups that have split off from the party to date.

Evans: We hate to think about this as an option when we’re candidates, but let’s say it’s the convention and you didn’t win the [Libertarian Party]’s nomination for president. Based on what you’ve told me, you’re someone who values the spirit of being a good team player and the party for the sake of the party in that regard, especially when you’re up against the duopoly. Would you support the Libertarian Party’s presidential nominee, regardless of who the delegates ultimately go with?

ter Maat: Absolutely.

Evans: Last convention question I have here, but it’s not just the presidential nomination that candidates are looking at. [Libertarians] have also had two candidates that Independent Political Report has identified who declared for the vice presidential nomination. You don’t have to choose between the two—I wouldn’t ask you that—but if you’re the presidential nominee, what qualities would you like to see in your partner on the ticket?

ter Maat: It’s important. I believe the ticket sends a unified message. A piece of that is a matter of style [and] a piece of that is a matter of substance. What we’re looking for is someone with whom to partner [and] who would embrace a very principles-forward platform—The platform that I’m running on we call the Gold New Deal, which your listeners can visit at GoldNewDeal.org—but we’re also looking for someone who would be able to advance what we believe is our brand of a great deal of credibility and professionalism, someone who supports the idea that public service is in the interest of the campaign, that a background in public policy matters, that maintaining your credibility both in terms of messaging as well as in terms of providing plans and details, understanding how public policy works in the United States. These are all important aspects, and I believe there will be any number of candidates who are able to fulfill on each one of those.

Evans: Okay, you have your running mate and are out campaigning now as the nominee. How do you plan to appeal to voters who may not be familiar with libertarian principles, or perhaps more importantly, those who may have preconceived notions about what it means to be a libertarian—negative, misinformed, or generally otherwise?

ter Maat: You’ve got to do a couple of things that I think we haven’t done a lot of in the past. One is to be robustly and uncompromisingly principled. So you need to be able to tell the truth about, for example, Social Security. You’ve got to be able to say, “Social Security is evil.” Social Security resolution is not just a math problem; it’s an ethics problem. The idea of bringing young people—forcing young people—into a system that promises them very little return, that promises them that they will earn hundreds of thousands of dollars less over the course of their lifetime than they would if they were to invest the same money in the private sector—that is an ethical problem.

ter Maat (cont.): I appreciate why a lot of people view it as a math problem because we’re recruiting these people—and, again, forcibly—in order to take care of the overhang of the retirees because the system was designed purely as a Ponzi scheme from the beginning, and we didn’t appreciate how lopsided the ratio of retirees to workers was going to get. But it’s an ethical problem. There are any number of issues that are in this category. For example, we need to remind people that it’s not only true that our foreign policy stinks as a practical matter, it also stinks as an ethical matter. Our foreign policy does not align with the values of Americans. If you stick to your guns [and] stick to your principles, you will not only differentiate from the other parties, but you will send the signal that this is a completely different choice that people should look at.

ter Maat (cont.): Most Americans have a libertarian streak. They wouldn’t identify it as such, to your point, right? They may have preconceived incorrect notions. Most Americans have never heard of the Libertarian Party and have no idea how to even dispel libertarianism—I get all that. But most Americans believe in a set of values that better align with our principles than with the other party’s. And so, in that sense, the object of the game for us is to seek common ground with voters underlying American values, not to seek common ground with Republican politicians or Democratic politicians whom I believe against whom we must cleave very, very hard edges. That is how to send the signal that there’s a new choice, and that choice aligns with your values.

Evans: So, you’re saying that a principled approach is the most effective way to reach out to these hearts and minds? Who, to you, would resonate with the Libertarian message?

ter Maat: Absolutely, and the fundamental message has to be, “Stop wasting your vote on politicians whose values don’t align with yours.” If you believe in the big issues: foreign policy, inflation, government spending, and taxation, the idea that the government should be allowed to shut down your business during a virus outbreak and force you to take a vaccine if you disagree with the way your government is handling all of these issues, it’s because your values better align with the Libertarian Party than they do with the Republican Party [and] the Democratic Party, and you should be giving us a look.

Evans: So getting that principled message in front of voters will be an important aspect of getting them to understand libertarianism and come on board to your campaign as supporters. Now, I don’t think it’s a secret that we’re living under a system biased against an alternative party or independent candidacy and that it’s designed to make it hard to get traction. So, with your message, do you have a strategy for increasing visibility and support for your candidacy and the party, especially when it comes to debate season?

ter Maat: Yes. Number one, as I said, you’ve got to be completely differentiated in your messaging, and that’s something I believe that in our past three cycles, we have not done a very good job of. The other is at a more tactical level. In answer to your question, you’ve got to come out guns blazing, and that means in June—I didn’t say October, in June—early in the cycle. You’ve got to come out with, and in many cases, paid media advertising that sends the signal that our messaging is going to be different from everybody else’s, that we’re not afraid to take on the big issues, we’re not afraid to say things that other parties are not going to say, [and] that we really do represent a completely different choice.

ter Maat (cont.): That means borrowing and spending. In our campaign, we’re probably going to have to take on hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt right away to get our message out, but you need to get the ball rolling early. You cannot wait until the fall and think that all of a sudden, you’re going to catch up. You need to get the ball rolling early before the money is rolling in. That’s the only way to maximize voter attention, media attention, and also importantly, donor attention, so you can maximize your ability to attract big donors.

Evans: Okay, so let’s say you’ve run through the campaign cycle. You’ve won the presidency, and in several months, the real work begins. You’ve run on this very principled libertarian platform, and you’ve gone through a lot of valuable issues. What do the first 100 days of a Mike ter Maat administration look like? What are your priorities?

ter Maat: There are a few things that a libertarian-minded administration can do unilaterally before waiting for the legislature to catch up. One of those is to get a handle on our foreign policy. A number of phone calls need to be made in the first few days, for example, to the heads of state of European nations that say, “This is your eighteen-month head start. This is a warning.” If you believe that it’s in your nation’s interest to remain paranoid of the Russian army, I’m not advising such, but you do. If you believe that you need 2%, 2.5%, or 3% of your GDP spent on military defense because your nation remains concerned about a Russian invasion from the land, notwithstanding what we have learned about Russia’s inability to overrun even Ukraine, but if you believe that you need to be paranoid about this, then you do you. But whatever was your plan B is now your plan A because the United States is no longer going to be your plan A; we are going to remove ourselves from NATO because we do not view it as an ethical proposition to force people in the United States to part with their resources to send abroad to take care of your defense posture.

ter Maat (cont.): The United States spends more as a proportion of its GDP—not less, more as a proportion of its GDP—than the European nations do, and that’s not right. That’s one aspect of a foreign policy change we can begin implementing right away. We need to change our posture toward the Middle East; we need to change our posture toward Taiwan; those are all things that we can begin doing right away.

ter Maat (cont.): On the regulatory front, you can also, through Executive Order, make a number of regulatory areas subject to the approval of governors and individual states, giving the states the opportunity to opt out of federal supremacy in a regulatory sense and an opportunity to attract investment and investment capital with a different regulatory structure. This can be done right away. You can sunset a number of functions of the federal government by redeploying assets, including personnel. You can begin the ball rolling in winding down a number of things the Federal Reserve does by reappointing its leadership. You can restructure the FBI and take important steps toward getting rid of the FBI functionally, if not legally, altogether. These are things that you can do unilaterally as the president.

Evans: What about those things that require you to work with lawmakers? There’s something to be said that an individual is not their party but their principles, but as we know, when it comes to legislators and people in positions of power, that’s not always the case. How do you move them on those issues?

ter Maat: It’s not easy, but there are particular issues where you can form coalitions. One is to implement budget control law that we used to have in the 80s. When I worked for the White House, much of my job was implementing budget control laws that kept an umbrella on how much the government spent. That was a bipartisan effort that we can reinstitute. We can go after that in a full-throated, wholehearted manner. I also believe we can make deep changes in the regulatory structure by imposing new legislative initiatives to go after a variety of agencies. There are a number of things that we can do legislatively, including getting rid of qualified immunity for law enforcement agencies.

Evans: My last question for you, and I don’t know if you would consider this a little too early to ask or if it’s something you believe every candidate should have in their mind, but even before you’re the hypothetical president, who do you consider worth surrounding yourself with in terms of advisors and, as the president, who would you trust to serve in cabinet positions?

ter Maat: There are a number of members of [the Libertarian Party] who have deep, deep expertise. I’m not going to name names, but you’re going to know who I’m talking about. When I say there are particular individuals with deep expertise in foreign policy, you know immediately that I’m telling the truth. Those individuals would be interested in coming on board a Libertarian administration. I think it’s also true that there are Libertarian-minded economists out there, some of whom call themselves libertarians and some who don’t. There is no shortage of economists who consider themselves libertarians. By the way, there are a number of economists to whom we have access who, frankly, we would have better access than Democrats and Republicans—which is a little ironic, as I hear all the time, “Well, how are you going to recruit people to an administration?” There are any number of libertarian-minded economists out there who would not work for a Republican or Democrat but who I believe we would be able to go after if we were in the White House.

ter Maat (cont.): The other thing that needs to be said is that you can build coalitions, and this goes to your earlier question about working with the legislature. There are libertarian individuals among Republicans and Democrats. They’re not everything we wish they would be, let’s be honest, but there are individuals with libertarian-minded positions on specific policy issues. Those individuals you can bring into an administration that help bring to the other parties. As long as you align them correctly with their portfolios, you can structure a situation where you get away from the dopey things that they do and the dopey things they say and align with the libertarian-minded aspect of their background.

Evans: I lied; I have one more question. Is there anything that you’d want to leave readers and listeners with—keeping in mind that Independent Political Report is a publication that focuses on third parties and independent news, so our readership is similar. Is there anything that you want to leave people with as a last thought?

ter Maat: The big picture is that this campaign is designed to reach out beyond the Libertarian Party, so I would encourage people to check out our material and contact me directly. You can find my real contact information on our website, and I encourage people specifically to check out our new artificial intelligence bot. We have an A.I. bot we call Lisa—the Libertarian Intelligence System Application. You can find it at libertarianintelligence.org. It does answer questions the way a Libertarian would, and it is a tremendous amount of fun. It is in beta and getting better every week.

ter Maat (cont.): To the extent to which you find it saying something you don’t agree with, drop me a line—email our team at [email protected] or me directly at [email protected], and let me know what you think about Lisa because it’s an interesting tool. And for all of the concerns we share about A.I. and the future, let’s not pretend that we’re going to be silly about this. Everyone has concerns about how A.I. plays out, especially to the extent to which government officials get their hands on A.I. power. We all have concerns, but it must be said that the power of A.I. is going to spread all around the government, around public policy, around politics, and around the private sector. It is up to us as Libertarians to get good at this as well.