Meet young Libertarian presidential candidate Chase Oliver

Some November voters may see a less familiar option on the presidential ballot at the polls this November: Chase Oliver.

Mr. Oliver is this year’s presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party, which typically wins about 1 percent of the national vote and is known for promoting civil liberties and small government.

At 38 years old (just three years above the constitutional threshold for presidential candidacy), Mr. Oliver is by far the youngest contender in the field this year.

He is also the only openly gay candidate and says he hopes to set an example for aspiring LGBT politicians.

The former Georgia congressional candidate finds himself a third-party presidential candidate in an election where voters are experiencing a sense of déjà vu. Former President Donald Trump won the Republican nomination while President Joe Biden is fighting for a second term against the incumbent Democrat, setting the stage for a renewed contest between the two candidates.

On Saturday, Trump addressed the Libertarian Party’s national convention in Washington, D.C., asking for their support. He was booed by the crowd.

This was no surprise to Mr Oliver, who ultimately won the party’s presidential nomination after seven rounds of voting the next day.

“He’s here to curry favor with our electorate,” Mr Oliver told the BBC’s America podcast on Thursday. “He got the liberal reception that someone like him deserved.”

Oliver said Trump represents “war nations around the world” and criticized his expansion of the U.S. national debt and COVID-19 lockdowns during his four-year term.

In the end, the chairman of the Libertarian Party Convention ruled that Trump was the presumptive Republican nominee and was ineligible to become the Libertarian Party nominee.

The Republican former president wasn’t the only outsider to speak at the convention. Robert F Kennedy, who is currently organizing an independent campaign for president, also spoke, and his reception was noticeably warmer.

However, when it came time to vote, he only received the support of about 2% of the delegates and was eliminated in the first round.

However, in polls of the American public, Mr. Kennedy performed significantly better than any third-party or independent candidate in decades, with a peak approval rating of about 15 percent. That’s well above Liberal candidate Gary Johnson’s peak support of 3 per cent in the 2016 election results.

Oliver said he understood why President John F. Kennedy’s nephew would do well, but told ABC that voters looking for outsiders would be better served by his party, which is working to build a A durable alternative.

He warned that Mr Kennedy was a “one-and-done” choice who would cease to exist after this election.

“Do you want to protest the vote loudly?” he asked. “Or do you want to build something that will last and lay the foundation so that together we can overturn the ills of the country?”

Dan John, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has been a Libertarian since the 2000s and most recently became a Libertarian delegate ahead of this year’s national convention.

Mr John said he believed Liberal candidates could have more influence in this year’s election cycle than in previous years.

“We each have a term [Biden and Trump] “There are people who hate their lives under both regimes. So we get protest votes,” the 39-year-old said.

But if Mr. Kennedy slashes the Libertarian Party’s vote share in November, the party could fall below the threshold for automatic voting rights in many states in the upcoming presidential election. Such an outcome could be a devastating blow to the Liberals’ hopes of further expanding the party’s support.

Alana Leguia, 32, attended the Liberal Party conference and said she plans to vote for Oliver in November.

“I think the libertarian candidates … will be direct competitors to Kennedy, and I think people are ready for something new outside of the duopoly. Their relationship with Trump and Biden is over.” ,” said the resident of Sussex County, New Jersey.

At its core, libertarians seek to aggressively limit the scope of government by cutting spending and regulation and expanding individual freedoms. In practice, this includes decriminalizing most drugs and prostitution, expanding gun ownership rights, slashing U.S. military spending, and allowing for open immigration.

Some party positions have limited public support and are not conducive to the current mainstream political debate.

“We have to educate the public that immigration is not a terrible thing,” Mr Oliver said. “This is actually a natural phenomenon that we’ve seen on the North American continent for hundreds of years, and I hope to continue to see this happen.”

He added that one of the goals of his upcoming campaign is to broaden the party’s appeal to younger voters, who have expressed particular dissatisfaction with the political status quo in recent years.

“They desperately need something better than the Republicans or the Democrats, and we need to give them that,” he said. “We need to provide solutions to their causes and the problems they face.”

Erin Wood, 40, a liberal for years, doesn’t believe Kennedy or Trump will win over her party.

“We are a stubborn party,” she said.

The Montgomery County, Maryland, resident said she plans to vote for the party’s nominee in November.

“I don’t have a backup plan right now,” she said.