Will Third-Party Voters Decide Senate Majority?
Libertarians in Georgia and other states could finally become a force to be reckoned with.
by David Catron
November 1, 2022, 11:16 PM
Unless you have obsessively followed the midterm tracking polls in an effort to divine which party will control a majority in the U.S. Senate next year, you have probably never heard of the following people: Erik Gerhardt, Jeremy Kauffman, Chase Oliver, Neil Scott, and Marc Victor. Yet, because all are Libertarian Senate candidates in states where the major party nominees are statistically tied, each has the potential to save a faltering Democrat. Nowhere is that more true than in Georgia.
Chase Oliver is the Libertarian nominee for the Georgia Senate seat now occupied by Democrat Raphael Warnock, who is also fending off a far more serious challenge from Republican Herschel Walker. In Georgia, a candidate must win 50 percent of the votes — plus one — to avoid a runoff. Oliver recently told Fox 5 Atlanta, “If I cause a runoff, I’m happy that happens because it will show that voters are frustrated with the two parties, and they want better options.” Multiple surveys show Oliver with enough support to force such a runoff.
A new Atlanta Journal-Constitution survey, for example, shows Walker at 45.5 percent, Warnock at 45.2 percent, and Oliver at 4.8 percent. Most of Oliver’s support is probably coming at Walker’s expense. Libertarian candidates typically deny that they pilfer more Republican votes than Democratic votes, but Oliver has been pursuing Walker’s supporters far more aggressively than Warnock’s. In a recent interview with Bloomberg’s Christian Hall, he insinuated that he is better able to discuss Republican principles than is Walker:
I feel like [Walker] is unable to really articulate the principles of limited government, small government, lower taxes. These are things that are in Republicans wheelhouse … If you can’t properly articulate that, and in particular in a debate to defend those ideas, then I don’t think voters are going to have faith in you.more
https://spectator.org/will-third-party-voters-decide-senate-majority/
