(Sounds like excellent presidential material to me!) On the second vote, Johnson managed to garner a decisive 55.8 percent, winning the nomination despite concerns from party radicals that he is not quite libertarian enough.
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Today the Libertarian Party, at this convention in Orlando, Florida, officially nominated former Governors Gary Johnson and Bill Weld as their president and vice-presidential candidates. In terms of popular votes, the Libertarian is the country’s third largest party. He said Weld would be the best candidate to appeal to a national audience in the general election. He said he was hopeful of increasing his support due to the low popularity of Trump and Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton.
Billionaire investor Chris Rufer, who owns tomato processing firm Morningstar, has pledged one million dollars to groups that support Johnson and his running mate former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld. The high unfavorables of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and America’s increased willingness to look beyond the Democratic and Republican parties.
The duo, both two-term Republican governors, are running on the Libertarian Party ticket in hopes of taking advantage of the latest “outsider candidate” trend among many USA voters. Feldman’s possibly life saving work, and his rather good stand up comedy at a final debate Saturday night, did not push him over the top.
It wasn’t what you would call a pretty win, but hey, a win is a win and with 50.6 percent of the Libertarian convention vote, ex-Gov.
A Fox News Channel poll released two weeks gave people a chance to pick Johnson as well as the two major party candidates – and he scored 10 percent, compared to 39 percent for Clinton and 42 percent for Trump.
Ahead of the first vote, Johnson lobbied the crowd to elect his choice for vice president. It was not immediately apparent what attacks the announcer was referring to, but in a statement to the New York Times about Weld, Trump said, “I don’t talk about his alcoholism”.
The Libertarian Party of Arkansas has a candidate running in every congressional office (Democrats are challenging just two seats) along with a handful of state legislature and justice of the peace races.
Johnson faces some opposition within the Libertarian Party, as MSNBC reported that he was met with silence at the Libertarian convention when he pointed out that eliminating the Federal Reserve was “unfeasible”. “To the latter question, Johnson said, ‘I don’t know”.
Like Johnson, Weld narrowly missed a majority of delegates on the first ballot.
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Libertarians are already fighting for a spot in the televised presidential debates this fall.
