PORTLAND, Maine — For voters who aren't excited about a rematch between President Biden and former President Donald Trump, Libertarian Party presidential candidate Chase Oliver's pitch is surprisingly simple.
“I'm under 80, I speak in complete sentences and I'm not a convicted felon,” he said during the campaign. “The bar is very low, but I've managed to clear it.”
Oliver, 39, is an anti-war activist and the new face of the Libertarian Party, the third-largest political party in the United States, who could determine who wins the presidential election in November.
He may not win the election, but that won't be his only measure of success: He also has to increase media attention for the party, improve voting access and get more Libertarian candidates into local office.
“There are concrete things we can do to strengthen the base of our party, even if we don't have to win the White House in November,” Oliver said, “and I think many of them, if done right, would be viewed as wins in my eyes and in the eyes of libertarians across the country.”
Oliver faced a tumultuous Libertarian National Convention and after seven rounds of voting he finally won the party's nomination (with 60.6% of the vote to 36.6% against), but then campaigned around the country to raise his profile and that of the party.
At a low-key campaign kickoff at a brewery east of Atlanta, Oliver told friends, family and running mate Mike Ter-Martin that he believes the Libertarian Party can appeal to a younger generation disillusioned with the state of America.
“The thing I hear most often is, 'I was a Libertarian when I was younger,'” he said. “Today, there are more than 40 million Gen Z voters ready to hear a message outside the two-party system.”
Chase Oliver, a millennial politician, has a different campaign energy than the stiff Biden or rambling Trump, and he has been quite vocal about his ideas about what freedom means in theory and practice.
“Broadly speaking, freedom means the right and ability to live your life peacefully and as you see fit,” he said. “If you're not hurting anyone through force, fraud, coercion, theft or violence, if you're not doing any of those bad things, your life is your life. Your body is your body. Your business is your business, and your property is your property. It doesn't belong to me, it doesn't belong to the government.”
Libertarians are often seen as disruptive candidates in close elections, such as Oliver, who is running for U.S. Senate in Georgia in 2022 and helped push incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock into a runoff against Republican Herschel Walker.
Still, Oliver wants the party to grow and develop into one that appeals to a wider range of people.
“The showdown between Donald Trump and Joe Biden 2.0 is a great opportunity. Voters are looking for something different and they're looking for a voice, especially the younger generation, to step up and really start to have a say in our political system,” he said.
But the Libertarian Party is suffering from an identity crisis, exacerbated by Oliver's own identity.
Differing visions for the party's future
Mr Oliver is gay and his support for gay rights, including issues affecting transgender people, has widened existing rifts within the party.
“I'm not just running as a gay candidate, although that is certainly part of my identity,” he said. “I'm not ashamed of it. I'm proud of who I am and living as my true self, so I hope to inspire other people to live as their true self.”
At a Pride festival in Portland, Maine, earlier this month, Oliver took a break from waving a U.S. flag decorated with marijuana leaves and rainbow stripes to hand out campaign pamphlets, practice his street speech and chat with a campaign worker from a rival campaign about voting access.
“Maine and Alaska are two states where people don't have to fear the spoiler effect,” he said. “One of the reasons I'm in Maine, and one of the reasons I want to go to Alaska, is to let voters know, 'Put me first. Don't worry. Put the lesser of two evils second.'
But some in the party believe Oliver's views and selection as a candidate are a greater evil.
Oliver is a more traditional libertarian, belonging to the so-called “classical liberal” wing of the party, which has a growing wing of “Misesians” who hold decidedly non-libertarian views on social and cultural issues.
The Mises Caucus' harderline, radical and sometimes inflammatory version of libertarianism is more compatible with the Republican Party under President Donald Trump, which is one of the reasons the former president spoke at this year's Republican National Convention.
Trump instead suggested that the Libertarian Party support his campaign.
“As you know, [back me] “If you want to win, don't do that,” he said, responding to boos and jeers from the audience. “If you want to lose, don't do that. Keep getting 3 percent every four years.”
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Support Oliver, help Trump
Historically, Libertarian Party candidates have drawn more voters away from their Republican counterparts, but this time around, some candidates are explicitly seeking the opposite.
This includes Libertarian Party Chair Angela McArdle, who has made it clear she supports Chase Oliver as a way to help Trump win.
“Donald Trump said he's going to put a libertarian in his cabinet,” she said during a recent social media livestream. “He came out and spoke to us. He said he's a libertarian. He supports us fundamentally. So I'm backing him in return, supporting Chase Oliver as the best way to beat Joe Biden.”
“Get in there, losers. We're going to stop Biden,” she quipped.
Oliver remains an optimist, convinced that despite the fierce criticism there is a path to reconciliation through a shared view of freedom.
He dismissed some of the homophobia and opposition to his campaign as being “vocal voices” within the Libertarian Party and not representative of the party's electorate as a whole.
Oliver also refused to badmouth the Mises Caucus or its beliefs.
“To be honest, I want to mend the divisions in the party and get more people involved in this campaign,” he said, musing. “I will continue to reach out even if some people want to slap me off. And I have to continue that effort to mend the divisions in the party.”
So far, four state parties — Montana, Colorado, New Hampshire and Idaho — have publicly denounced Oliver's nomination to varying degrees, but in the swing states — where the margin of victory really matters — Oliver has their backs.
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