Libertarians nominate Gary Johnson for president

Former Mexico Governor Gary Johnson has been chosen by the U.S. Libertarian Party as its presidential candidate in the upcoming election. Gary Johnson was once a Republican candidate, but will now be running for the presidential election on November 6 representing the U.S. Libertarian Party.

Gary Johnson first showed his interest to run for the election in December last year. It was believed to be a long shot, as there were several presidential candidates for the Libertarian Party. Gary Johnson won the nomination after winning 70 percent of the votes at the party’s convention in Las Vegas. There were a total of 632 delegates who casted their votes in the convention, as communicated by Libertarian Party spokesman Stephen Gordon.

Gary Johnson became the front-runner for the presidential election for the Libertarian party after winning straw polls at 12 state debates. There were initially six candidates for the nomination, but were reduced to two, the second one being R. Lee Wrights, who is an air force veteran and was beaten by Gary Johnson at the convention.

The Libertarian Party is considered to be the ‘third party’ in the two-party U.S. system. The party believes in ‘minimum government, maximum freedom.’ Upon his nomination, Gary Johnson said, "I am very humbled. This is just the start."

In the two-party U.S. political system, it will be interesting to see how much success Gary Johnson will achieve in the upcoming election. In the past, Libertarian’s best performance was in 1980, with their candidate, Ed Clark, winning 921,128 votes. In percentage terms, this was 1.1 percent of the total votes. In the last presidential election (in 2008), party’s nominee Bob Barr was able to get 523,686 votes. In percentage terms, that was 0.4 percent of the total votes.

Gary Johnson, who is 59 years old, has discussed various points in his manifesto. These points include reducing the spending budget for the government, so the balance of budget is adjusted by next year

Delegates have said that they prefer Gary Johnson over Wrights because he is experienced in administration and politics. He was the New Mexico governor from 1995 to 2003 and hence understands how political administration is done.

It will be interesting to watch how Gary Jones is able to compete against candidates from the two big parties in the U.S.