Meet the Most Controversial Libertarian Presidential Candidate Ever: Chase Oliver
He's antiwar, anti-tax, anti-mandates for vaccines and masks. And at war with many members of his own party. Why?
There’s a new Reason Interview podcast up, this time with the Libertarian Party's candidate for president Chase Oliver, who has improbably emerged as the most controversial LP standard bearer in a very long time—if not all time!
Click below to watch or listen to my recent conversation with him.
I say Chase is improbably controversial because the 39-year-old Georgia native who got his start in politics as an antiwar activist is basically a doctrinaire Libertarian (the upper-case L denotes a party member; a lower-case l denotes a philosophical fellow traveler). He wants to bring all troops home and slash the Pentagon’s budget, favors ending the Fed, legalizing drugs, phasing out Social Security and Medicare, and cutting taxes and regulations.
None of that is controversial from a Libertarian POV, but many big wheels in the party look askance at Chase’s views on immigration (he’s all for it, and calls for a 21st century version of Ellis Island to facilitate easier legal immigration) and abortion (he’s in favor of it being legal everywhere). At the 2022 LP national convention held in Reno, a group called the Mises Caucus took control of the party and stripped out a longstanding platform plank supporting abortion rights while also de-emphasizing historic support for high levels of immigration. You can watch Reason’s coverage of the so-called Reno Reset here:
During Covid, Chase didn’t support mask and vaccine mandates, but he did wear a mask and get vaccinated, which doesn’t sit well with many Libertarians, many of whom are all over the map on whether Covid was a serious disease, whether the vaccines were more deadly than effective, you name it. In fact, Chase has even taken grief for criticizing governors like Ron DeSantis for passing laws banning businesses from requiring vaccines and masks for their workers or customers. Chase says from a libertarian perspective, allowing the government to tell you how to run your business is wrong.
Similarly, he supports the rights of parents, doctors, and minor children to decide whether the latter can transition without the state being involved (Chase doesn’t believe in surgical transitioning for minors). The trans issue in particular seems to have antagonized many Libertarians. Whether you agree with him or not, it seems clear to me that Chase is making an explicitly libertarian argument here.
Several chapters of the LP have said they won’t list him as the candidate in their states. Adding to the bad fit, Chase has criticized Ron Paul-style libertarians as too socially conservative over the years and it certainly didn’t help that he won the LP presidential nod over the favored candidate of the Mises Caucus, Michael Rectenwald. The Libertarian National Committee (LNC) has also entered into a novel joint-fundraising agreement with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (who along with Donald Trump spoke at the party’s July convention in DC) that, according to a former LNC chair overwhelmingly favors RFK. Sometimes it seems that the fate of the party’s own candidate is an afterthought. For instance, Angela McArdle, the head of the LNC, has talked about the need to beat Biden (before he dropped out) as paramount.
My colleague Zach Weissmueller’s video summary of the convention and the infighting there is worth watching:
For Reason, I spoke with Chase about how he first encountered the Libertarian Party at a gay pride event and why he thinks millennials and Gen Z are particularly ready to listen to libertarian ideas after constantly being lied to by boomers like Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
I don’t agree with him on everything—he’s called Israel’s actions in Gaza “genocide,” which I find deeply wrong—but I also find the intra-Libertarian anger at him puzzling and disheartening. The choices are Trump and Harris (and a Kennedy whose never held office and tells bizarre bear stories) and America’s third-largest party is engaging in a particularly vicious circular firing squad?
That’s a little too on the nose for me, confirming stereotypes about Libertarians and libertarians being too dogmatic and rigid for their own good when it comes to politics. And I say that with love, as someone who has voted for the LP presidential candidate in every election since 1988 (I wrote about my only major-party vote for president here).
The LP has been on the presidential ballot since 1972, when John Hospers and Tonie Nathan received an electoral vote from a faithless elector despite garnering just 0.2 percent of the popular vote. In most years, the LP ticket was lucky to crack 0.5 percent of the popular vote, but in the past three elections, it’s done historically well. In 2012, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson pulled 1 percent, which increased to an all-time high of 3.3 percent in 2016. In 2020, Jo Jorgensen got 1.2 percent of the popular vote.
Given the infighting this time around, it seems like such numbers, however tiny, are purely aspirational.
What do you think of Chase Oliver, third parties, and/or electoral politics? Let me know.
Here are chapter headings and time-code links to the YT version.
0:00- Introduction
1:29- Economic policy & entitlement reform
11:45- Immigration reform
19:55- COVID-19 policy
22:21- A message to younger voters
24:20- The cases for and against Kamala Harris
28:21- How Libertarians can appeal to Millennials & Gen-Z
29:52- The case against Trump and Vance
32:07- Are Millennials cynically attached to institutions?
33:29- Libertarian Party conflicts
36:12- Ad: Students For Liberty
37:44- A Libertarian view on trans issues
44:59- Being the first openly LGBTQ national candidate
46:55- LNC’s unusual collaboration with RFK Jr.
51:05- Uptick in Gen-Z LGBTQ identification
53:32- Oliver’s political evolution
56:53- Foreign policy: Ukraine, Israel, and China
1:04:40- Could Trump or Harris turn more libertarian?
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Thanks for giving Chase an opportunity to speak to sensible, broadly acceptable ideas. He's a good guy, sadly operating in a dysfunctional party fighting itself and losing its identity. This is a good interview and it is good hearing him articulate some important basic ideas - from immigration to war - and explaining his progression to joining the LP.
Sensible guy. There aren’t that many.