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Libertarians nominate Chase Oliver, turn down Donald Trump and RFK Jr.

THE SCENE

Libertarians nominated activist Chase Oliver for president on Sunday, ending weeks of speculation about whether the anti-government third party would give its valuable ballot line to an interloper with higher name ID.

“End the genocide. Ceasefire now,” Oliver said as he clinched the nomination, defeating the “none of the above” option after a more right-leaning activist, Michael Rectenwald, was knocked out of competition. “RFK won’t, Joe Biden, Donald Trump won’t, but I’m saying it right now.”

In choosing Oliver, who prevailed after seven ballots at the national convention in Washington, D.C., Libertarians rejected Trump, who arrived on Saturday to make promises and ask for their endorsement.

They also turned away a more serious pitch from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who’d appeared at several Libertarian events, praised activists as true defenders of freedom, and made a final ask for their support via video while his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, mingled with delegates.

Oliver ran as the country’s “most influential” Libertarian thanks to his 2022 U.S. Senate bid in Georgia, which forced Sen. Raphael Warnock into a runoff with Herschel Walker, helping the Democrat defeat a Trump-endorsed ex-athlete who many in his party saw as unqualified. He’s the party’s first openly gay nominee, and his victory ensured that a true believer, not a politician making a late pitch to libertarians, would lead it this cycle.

KNOW MORE

Trump promised members of the Libertarian Party on Saturday that he would “put a libertarian in my cabinet” and commute the life sentence of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht, a top demand of a political movement that intends to run its own candidate against Trump.

“On day one, we will commute the sentence,” Trump said, offering to free the creator of what was once the internet’s most infamous drug clearinghouse. “We will bring him home.” His speeches more typically include a pledge to execute drug dealers, citing China as a model.

“It’s time to be winners,” said Trump, asking rhetorically if third party delegates wanted to go on getting single-digit protest votes. “I’m asking for the Libertarian Party’s endorsement, or at least lots of your votes.”

A chant of “We Want Trump” was drowned out quickly by “End the Fed!” When Trump called Biden a “threat to democracy,” some delegates shouted: “So are you!” He got a better reception when joking that the criminal charges against him made him a libertarian, and that he started “no new wars” in four years.

DAVID’S VIEW

Trump and Kennedy brought copious new media interest to the LP, represented by hundreds of reporters walking the Washington Hilton. Delegates I spoke to, that night and after, were thrilled that Trump felt the need to pander to them. But that’s what they figured he was doing — pandering, promising Libertarian wins that he refused to deliver in four years and might not in four more.

With both late arrivals out of the picture — Kennedy got just 2% of the delegate vote — the party was choosing between activists from different wings of the Libertarian movement, none of them well-known outside of it. Rectenwald, a popular writer and commentator with the ready-made slogan “Rec the Regime,” was the favorite of the dominant Mises Caucus, after podcaster Dave Smith opted not to run. Rectenwald got high-profile speaking slots all weekend, including one of the pre-Trump introduction speeches (along with Smith), and one of three positions in a post-Trump press conference, in front of an audience of hundreds. As Oliver and eventual vice presidential nominee Mike Ter Maat took questions, Rectenwald got annoyed with the focus on Trump and walked out early.

If he was the favorite, he fumbled that away. Rectenwald was unusually halting on Saturday, and admitted to reporters on Sunday that he’d taken an edible before the press conference, unaware that he was coming back onstage. “I’m a wild man,” he told Semafor on Sunday, comparing his looseness with Argentinian President Javier Milei, an icon with Libertarians. In his nominating speech, he made a joke about his mistake: “I am high…on liberty!”

Even in the LP, that didn’t help win votes. “I don’t have any judgment on anyone taking any substance so long as they can behave themselves,” party chair Angela McArdle told reporters on Sunday, hours before Rectenwald lost.

NOTABLE

• In Reason, Eric Boehm profiles the new nominee and his chances, as by far the youngest candidate on the ballot.
• In The New York Times, Rebecca Davis O’Brien and Michael Gold look at why Trump, unsurprisingly, got rejected: “Many of them had greeted Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Trump with deep skepticism and said that their presence at the convention was an unwelcome distraction.”

Texas. It’s runoff day, with House Speaker Dade Phelan facing a tough and Trump-backed primary challenge from conservative activist David Covey. Phelan won just 43% of the vote in the first round, and the third-place finisher backed Covey; the X factor here is how much turnout falls from Super Tuesday, and who that hurts. Polls close at 7 p.m. local time, which is Central for most of the state and Western for a small portion.

There are four more state House primaries where conservative allies of Gov. Greg Abbott, and supporters of his school voucher plan, are trying to knock out Republican opponents. In Houston, state Rep. Shawn Thierry faces a challenge from Laura Ashley Simmons, which gained traction after Thierry voted with Republicans on an anti-LGBTQ bill; Thierry’s gone after Simmons’ arrest record, which the challenger admitted before entering the race, to frame the choice as a “law-maker” against a “law-breaker.”

There’s one congressional runoff, pitting Rep. Tony Gonzales against gun influencer Brandon Herrera. Gonzales barely missed the 50% majority to avoid this race, and has been confidently portraying the runoff as a contest between responsible Republicans and “anarchists,” who he’ll continue to beat. He told CNN last week that after the primary, he’ll be in Virginia and Florida to campaign against House Freedom Caucus members who endorsed Herrera.

Ohio. The GOP-led state legislature is meeting in a special session today to determine how to put the Biden-Harris ticket on its November ballot, after Gov. Mike DeWine criticized them for ending regular work without it. Democrats still aren’t happy: DeWine favors a Republican effort to add campaign finance restrictions on ballot measures as a condition for shrinking the state’s long 90-day deadline for nominees to get ballot access, a change from prior years when the deadline moved without extra partisan demands. But Democrats may make the conversation irrelevant: They announced a plan Tuesday to nominate Biden early with a “virtual” convention roll call before the current Ohio deadline to “ensure that Republicans can’t chip away at our democracy through incompetence or partisan tricks,” DNC chair Jaime Harrison said in a statement.

Tony Gonzales for Congress, “Disqualified.” To hold off insurgent challengers, Republican incumbents aren’t saying they’re too far right; they’re saying they were disloyal to Trump. This spot attacks Brandon Herrera for a confusing joke about Trump’s youngest son, and for telling a podcaster last summer that he was still making up his mind on the GOP primary because Trump might lose the general election. “Sound familiar?” asks Gonzales’s narrator, comparing Herrera to a man now written out of conservative politics: Mitt Romney.

Virginia. Trump endorsed state Sen. John McGuire over Rep. Bob Good on Tuesday, continuing his revenge tour against conservatives who backed Ron DeSantis in the presidential primary. “He turned his back on our incredible movement, and was constantly attacking and fighting me until recently, when he gave a warm and ‘loving’ Endorsement,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, appearing to mock Rep. Good for appearing in Manhattan with the parade of Republicans supporting Trump in his campaign finance trial.

• seven days until primaries in primaries in Iowa, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Dakota, and Washington, D.C.
• 14 days until primaries in Maine, Nevada, North Dakota, and South Carolina
• 30 days until the first presidential debate
• 48 days until the Republican National Convention
• 83 days until the Democratic National Convention
• 161 days until the 2024 presidential election