Gary Johnson and running-mate Bill Weld have heralded the achievement as a sign of their campaign’s momentum and voters’ desire for other options besides Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
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In a press release issued Tuesday, former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman and Montana Governor Marc Racicot called for the inclusion of Gary Johnson and William Weld in the presidential debates. She is qualified as a write-in candidate in three additional states.
For the Reform Party in the 2000 election, Patrick Buchanan appeared on all 50 state ballots, but not in D.C. The Libertarian Party also secured nationwide ballot access in 2000 with Browne running again, but Arizona’s Libertarian Party opted to instead run L. Neil Smith.
The Libertarian presidential ticket will run an open letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates – in the form of a full page advertisement in Wednesday’s New York Times – pleading to be included in the first presidential debate.
Clinton, for example, earns a roughly 55 percent unfavorability rating in the latest RealClearPolitics average of polls. A lawsuit Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein filed against the commission was thrown out last month. Johnson and Weld are hovering right around ten percent.
“The conditions of the presidential election of 2016 are extraordinary and without precedent”. It will urge the commission to allow Johnson to debate September 26 even if he falls short of 15 percent, a Johnson spokesman said. Allow us to make our case to the American people. “The collective destiny of millions of American voters now comes down to the methodologies of pollsters, the handful of respondents surveyed and the board members, directors and co-chairmen of your organization”. Johnson now is just below 9 percent in the three of those polls with results available so far.
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The letter also adds that a recent Quinnipiac University poll found that 62 percent of voters want Johnson to be included in the debates.
