NEWS & VIEWS
Dr. Jo Jorgensen.
COURTESY PHOTO
Libertarian Jo Jorgensen has never smoked pot
But she would still defend your right to do it in her longshot bid for president B y Lee DeVito
In the Libertarian Party,
presidential candidates don’t pick their running mates; instead, they’re chosen by delegates at the nominating convention in a separate vote. This year’s presidential ticket resulted in the odd- couple pairing of D r. J o J orgensen, an academic from S outh C arolina, and J eremy “ S pike” C ohen, a podcaster prankster who promises “a Waffle House on every corner” and to fund time travel research to kill baby Adolf Hitler. “ All I can say is that I was the one who was nominated for president,” J orgensen says, diplomatically, when asked about her running mate’s more out- there ideas. “ And so I’m not campaigning on any of those things. I do have a different platform, and so that’s the one that I’m pushing.” Metro T imes caught up with her before a campaign stop in D etroit. That platform is that “ government is too big, too bossy, too nosy, and too in-
trusive,” J orgensen says. “ And the worst part is they usually end up hurting the very people they try to help.” In a political system where D emocrats and R epublicans dominate, third- party candidates like J orgensen, who made a campaign stop in D etroit on M onday, have their work cut out for them — and especially this year, with the coronavirus pandemic, civil unrest in the streets, and the all- consuming contest between President D onald Trump and D emocrat J oe Biden, which has been cast as no less than a battle between authoritarianism and democracy, the top issues of the day. E arlier this year, U .S . R ep. J ustin Amash of Grand Rapids briefly considered seeking the Libertarian Party nomination after defecting from the R epublican Party and becoming the lone Libertarian in C ongress, but backed out after just three weeks, citing the “ extraordinary challenges” of 2 0 2 0 . J orgensen, however, remains unde-
18 September 30-October 6, 2020 | metrotimes.com
terred. “The path of course is very difficult, but I still say somebody has to run,” J orgensen says. “ We have to get the word out there. And so many people are realizing that the two parties just aren’t working.” F our years ago, the Libertarian Party ran a high-profile ticket featuring two former R epublican governors, G ary J ohnson of N ew M exico and William Weld of M assachusetts. It wound up being the Libertarian Party’s most successful presidential run to date, earning nearly 4 .5 million votes nationally. (F or perspective, Trump and C linton received more than 6 0 million votes each, while the G reen Party’s J ill S tein earned just 1 .4 million votes.) The Libertarians did so well in M ichigan in 2 0 1 6 that the party qualified to hold a primary in the 2018 governor’s race — the first time that a third party did so in almost 5 0 years. The margin between Trump and C linton was just some 1 0 ,0 0 0 votes in
M ichigan, meaning that third- party voters got plenty of blame for helping Trump win. E ven Bill G elineau — who helped campaign for J ohnson in 2 0 1 6 and won M ichigan’s Libertarian Party gubernatorial nomination in 2018, where he came in a distant third — told us earlier this year that he was going to put his party aside and vote for Biden in N ovember. “ It’s not because I don’t believe in the party — I worked my ass off for people in the Libertarian Party — but the fact that M ichigan is going to be a critical state,” he says. “ I believe that Trump is a clear and present danger.” (Amash, meanwhile, has endorsed J orgensen.) S till, J orgensen thinks there’s an appetite for a third choice this year, claiming that most of her campaign’s volunteers have come from outside the party. Trump, she says, appealed to many because he was an outsider who promised to cut spending, balance the budget, and bring our troops