Libertarian Party

Nick Gillespie | From the November 2024 issue

A self-described political junkie since birth, Libertarian presidential nominee Chase Oliver's activism started on the left in the 2000s, pushing back against Republicans for starting two wars in the Middle East. Once President Barack Obama took office, Oliver saw the left wasn't much different from the right. "That outraged me," he says.

At the 2010 Atlanta Pride Festival, the openly gay Oliver came across the Libertarian Party. "They were like, 'No, we're the real anti-war party….Also, by the way, we think you should be able to love who you want to love.'" Oliver has voted for the Libertarian Party in every major election since.

He launched his first campaign in 2020, with a special election for the House of Representatives. In 2022 he made a bid to represent Georgia in the Senate. In both elections, he earned more than 2 percent of the vote; in the latter race, that was enough to force a run-off between Republican Herschel Walker and the eventual victor, Democrat Raphael Warnock. This year, at the Libertarian National Convention, it took seven ballots for Oliver to secure the party's presidential nomination, rising from less than 20 percent on the first ballot to more than 60 percent on the final one.

Yet Oliver is arguably the most controversial presidential candidate in party history. He didn't support mask or vaccine mandates during COVID-19. He did, however, wear a mask and get vaccinated, which alienated some high-profile members of the Libertarian Party's Mises Caucus. His support for large-scale immigration, abortion rights, and the rights of trans kids, along with their parents and doctors, to make decisions free from government involvement has also rankled the party's right wing. Some state affiliates have even tried to keep him from being listed on their ballots.

Oliver now finds himself running against another person who spoke at the Libertarian convention, Republican nominee Donald Trump, as well as Democratic candidate Kamala Harris. In July, Oliver spoke with Reason's Nick Gillespie about his journey to libertarianism, his thoughts on the political establishment, and how different his platform is from those of the two major parties. "Broadly speaking, I don't think much of the Democratic portfolio is super libertarian right now," he says. "Frankly, none of the Republican portfolio is very libertarian either."

Reason: Can you lay out the Chase Oliver presidential platform? What's your vision for America?

Oliver: I want to see an America that looks toward the future. I want to be looking long-term at how we make our economy more secure. How can we better serve the needs of our voters, and how can we increase the freedom of each and every individual to seek their American dream? That starts with relinquishing the control of the U.S. government and returning that control back to the free market. Also, of course, cutting our government down to where we're not running trillion-dollar deficits every year.

What should the federal government be spending per year? What would be your target for the annual budget, and where should the cuts come from?

Right now, we need to get ourselves at least to a balanced budget, and that involves cutting a lot of the third rails of American politics. Maybe it's because I'm under the age of 40, and I'm not afraid to address issues that are going to hit us in the long term, but we have to cut entitlements. We have to get out of the Ponzi scheme of Social Security. It involves untangling the government involvement in our health care system, including Medicare and Medicaid, and phasing those systems out over time so that way we can return back to normal market practices with health care.

We're talking major cuts. A 50 percent cut to the Pentagon, for instance, would still have us militarily capable of defending ourselves and warding off any invasion that we could ever have but it would take an awful lot of bureaucratic mess and red tape out of the Pentagon.

Social Security is one of the largest and most popular federal programs. How do you propose we transition away from it, especially considering its widespread support across generations?

We have to recognize that Social Security is insolvent. I'm 39 years old. If you're in my age range, you're going to keep paying into Social Security and not have benefits. Or we can get rid of the system overall [so] you're no longer paying your employee contribution. You contribute that to a mutual fund or a retirement account on your own, which will have better return on your investment.

Then the question is, what do we do about people who are on Social Security right now—people's parents or grandparents? You keep the system solvent long enough for that last generation to retire. But once they retire, we sundown the system entirely. We remove the system from our lives and return that back to individuals being able to save for themselves and their families. And at the community level, if there's people who are in need, that's why we have mutual and direct aid organizations and charity to be able to help those people.

How is this playing with younger people?........

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