Days after a CNN presidential debate left some Democrats and Republicans feeling unnerved, Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver and his running mate Mike ter Maat were traversing the state of Texas — courting support from those who want to upset the nation’s two-party political system.
“The debate woke a lot of Americans up to the fact that the two choices provided by Democrats and Republicans just aren’t satisfactory,” Oliver said in an interview during a June 30 fundraiser in the Monte Vista neighborhood of San Antonio. “More people are now Googling us, looking us up and giving us a fresh look.”
Libertarians typically align with Republicans on fiscal issues, while embracing more liberal social values.
While many of their candidates come from Republican backgrounds, Oliver, 38, is a former Democrat who started as an anti-war activist in the George W. Bush era, and left the party amid disappointment with former President Barack Obama’s foreign policy decisions.
Vice presidential candidate ter Maat is a 63-year-old economist who worked in the White House’s Office of Management and Budget in the early 1990s and ditched the Republican Party when he says its leaders abandoned fiscal conservatism.
Their four-day tour of the Lone Star State included stops in Houston, San Antonio, Austin and Dallas, where they courted support from both Republicans and Democrats — jumping from Pride parades to donor gatherings to meet-and-greets at breweries.
They brought in about $10,000 at the San Antonio fundraiser where roughly 60 attendees sipped wine, posed for photos with the candidates and opened their checkbooks, all while seeming perfectly clear-eyed about Oliver and ter Maat’s chances.
“I think everybody’s a little Libertarian-curious,” said Susan Stiernberg, a former banking executive who held the event at her San Antonio home at the request of Bob King, a Libertarian running in Texas 21st Congressional District.
Among the guests were some longtime local Republicans who aren’t yet sold on the Libertarian ticket, but were willing to hear them out, including former Republican Party of Bexar County President Jeff McManus.
To the event’s planners, that was evidence enough of the potential excitement that dissatisfaction with President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump could bring to their movement.
The major party candidates’ June 29 debate fueled further skepticism that Trump, who is under criminal indictment for trying to maintain the presidency after the 2020 election, might not accept the results of November’s election if he loses. Biden, meanwhile, set off a firestorm of concern about his health and qualifications for a second term as he stumbled through his answers on stage.
“The existing choices are getting more and more untenable every year,” said Michael Chastain, a retired software engineer who lives in Dripping Springs and gave $1,000 to Oliver’s campaign at the San Antonio fundraiser. “Trump is not even competent to hold the position he held, and Biden, as everybody saw in America two nights ago, is senile.”
Chastain said he’s voted for Libertarians in the past, but this year he’s putting money behind that support in hopes that the Libertarian Party’s candidates will be able to seize the moment to build out its political infrastructure.
“What I hope to get out of this election is organization — people who will go run for assembly and school board and city council,” he said.
That’s precisely the message Oliver and ter Maat were peddling across Texas this month.
“We have already endorsed candidates across the state of Texas, all the way from the U.S. Senate down to El Paso County commissioner,” Oliver told the San Antonio Report. “One of the reasons why I’m running is because I want to help identify winnable races and help them win.”
The day before their event in San Antonio, Oliver was in Houston a fundraiser and to campaign at the city’s Pride parade.
Ter Maat, meanwhile, set up shop at San Antonio’s Pride parade before huddling with roughly two dozen local Libertarians at the Ridge at the Hill that Saturday night.
After Sunday’s fundraiser, ter Maat was off to campaign events in Austin on Monday and Dallas on Tuesday.
Asked what their campaign had to offer donors, Oliver said, “It’s a long-term investment towards building a party foundation that can eventually be a true rival to the two parties.”
“Their donations today are helping us buy the ballot access and the major party status in states across the country that will be needed to actually rival up and challenge the two-party system,” he said.
Local Libertarians are eager for the help.
“Events that are bringing people together mean there’s interest, which means there’s a possible volunteer base,” said King, who spent his career in banking and oil and gas and now lives in New Braunfels.
“I think if the Libertarian Party is able to put together a bench of campaign management skills, rather than having every candidate being on their own, that’s the step that I think the Libertarian Party of Texas has to make,” he added.
The best performance by a third party U.S. presidential candidate in recent history was by Ross Perot, an independent who took 18.9% of the vote, losing to Democrat Bill Clinton in 1992. The best a Libertarian candidate has ever done in a presidential race was Gary Johnson, who took 3.3% of the vote in 2016.
But in Texas, where Republicans control every lever of power, the party has at least forced one of the major political parties to contend with them.
The state GOP has sued unsuccessfully to keep Libertarian candidates off the ballot in the past two election cycles, amid growing concern that they could peel off some fiscally conservative voters who don’t align with today’s Republican Party.
“People who live in a Republican-leaning district certainly aren’t going to vote for the Democrat,” said King, who is running in a district currently represented by U.S. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Dripping Springs). “What I’m trying to do is give them a choice of someone who is more focused on solving problems than I believe Chip is.”
