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Libertarian candidate offers voters a third way in NC-14 BY CORY VAILLANCOURT POLITICS E DITOR ibertarian David Coatney entered the race for North Carolina’s 14th Congressional District long before Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-Henderson) announced his intention to run in the newly-penned 13th District on Nov. 11. A lot has changed since then, but not Coatney’s desire to give voters a third option — outside of the typical American two-party dynamic. “I want to present people with another choice. I believe we can’t continue to sit on the sidelines, doing the same thing we’ve always done and expect it will magically get better,” he said. “At the end of the day, until we stop seeing each other as Democrats or Republicans, we can never be part of the solution because when you represent a team you no longer represent the people.” Founded in the early 1970s, the Libertarian Party is probably the most longstanding third party in American politics and recently gained its first member of Congress back in 2019, when Michigan Republican Justin Amash changed his party affiliation. Amash didn’t run for re-election in 2020. More than 350 Libertarians still hold office across the United States. North Carolina’s State Board of Elections reports that as of Nov. 27, more than 47,000 people had registered as Libertarians, compared to 2.5 million Democrats, 2.5 million unaffiliated and 2.1 million Republicans. Coatney holds a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism and a master’s degree in multimedia communications. He started a video production company, which evolved into a full-service advertising agency but now focuses on web design and search engine optimization. A native of Arkansas, he’s only been in the area for about a year, after a previous stint living in Western North Carolina. “We spent 10 years on the road traveling across all 50 states,” Coatney said. “We’ve lived in a half dozen different states and this was the one area that always felt like home. We knew when we were going to settle down and finally plant roots, this was where we were going to come back to.” The field in the NC-14 race has shuffled significantly since Cawthorn’s move, but Coatney remains the only Libertarian so far. Five Republicans (with the recent announcement of Henderson Republican Sen. Chuck Edwards) and six Democrats have also committed.
Smoky Mountain News
December 1-7, 2021
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The Smoky Mountain News: Unfortunately for Libertarians, rather than being able to go out there with that brand
name of Republican or Democrat where people know what they’re going to get, you all have to spend a good amount of time explaining what the party believes, right out of the gate. Tell me what your party stands for in 30 seconds. David Coatney: We support the rights and freedoms of all individuals, whether you personally agree with them or not. We’re often described as fiscally conservative and socially liberal, but our platforms are really consistent. We believe prohibition doesn’t work. For example, whether that’s drug policy, whether it’s gun rights, any number of issues, as a general rule of thumb, we support your right to live your life in the manner of your choosing and nobody else’s. That isn’t the government’s job and it’s nobody else’s job to dictate to you. SMN: So recreational cannabis should be legal. DC: Correct. SMN: Same-sex marriage legal. DC: Correct. SMN: One of the things I’ve watched during the pandemic is the Libertarian Party’s stance against mask mandates and vaccination mandates. DC: Let me start here. I’ve been vaccinated. I keep a mask on me. I’m happy to encourage these things, but I believe in encouraging them through education and not legislation. Ultimately infringing upon someone’s bodily autonomy sets a very dangerous precedent for the rights and liberties of individuals. I also believe that these are conversations you should be having with your doctor, not some politician. Educating people about vaccines is great, but when you say you’re going to use coercion or force to make people do something, it sets a very dangerous precedent. I mean, that’s what they do in dictatorships. SMN: What other social issues that we debate in the two-party system make you say, “Hey, we don’t think the government belongs here.” DC: Obviously you have LGBTQ rights, you have the abortion issue, other issues over bodily autonomy. Right now, with [mask and vaccine] mandates, we support your bodily autonomy in all situations, and whether that sides with the Democrats or the Republicans is completely irrelevant to us. It goes back to the false dichotomy of the two-party system as well, because when you look at the issues on the surface, what does the corporate tax rate have to do with
David Coatney is thus far the only Libertarian in the NC-14 race. Donated photo same-sex marriage? Absolutely nothing. There is this fallacy in this idea out there that if you sit in the middle, you inherently compromise your values and it’s not true at all. We understand that you can support same-sex marriage and also support a lower tax on business. We’re not so much fiscally conservative and socially liberal as much as we are fiscally and socially Libertarian. We support liberty for all individuals. SMN: So what does the phrase “common sense gun reform” mean to a Libertarian? Strengthening red flag laws, for example. DC: The lines drawn for red flag laws are blurry and gray and can be used to justify seizing guns for any number of reasons, which would be unconstitutional. We do not support red flag laws. We believe the best thing you can do to protect innocent, peaceful people is to not disarm innocent, peaceful people.
SMN: Similar issue, rural broadband. The free market has not provided the solution and some would argue that’s when governments should step in and act. DC: That’s something we’re looking into. I’m not an expert on this issue, so I wouldn’t want to jump to conclusions too hastily without doing more research into that particular issue but I think that if the private sector hasn’t been able to create the solution up until this point, the government’s not going to come in and be able to magically fix it either. I believe, given enough time, the private sector will innovate to meet those demands. SMN: But, how long can we wait? We’ve had multiple reports of families sitting in parking lots at McDonald’s so the kids can do their homework. Ideally, yeah, it’d be great if there was no government interference in that market, but right now people are suffering. How
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