There are only three people who could conceivably win our state’s U.S. Senate election this November. There’s the incumbent Democrat, Kay Hagan. Her Republican challenger, Speaker Thom Tillis. And then there’s Sean Haugh, the Libertarian.
Haugh, 53, of Durham, is not your traditional candidate. He’s never served in elected office, which his supporters would say is a plus. A longtime activist, Haugh was protesting American intervention in Central America back in the 1980s. A major part of his platform is opposition to all wars. In his quirky, low-budget campaign video, he says he is running merely “for his own conscience,” and to offer another choice to voters who don’t want to vote for more war and more debt.
Although some might guffaw and say, “A Libertarian in the Senate? HAUGH HAUGH HAUGH!”, the negativity voters feel toward Hagan and Tillis and the two-party system in general could give Haugh a credible shot at victory. To win, he must do one thing: win more votes than his opponents. The math is simple. With a three-way split in the vote, Haugh needs only 33.4% of the vote to prevail. But even this low bar could be a hard one to clear: Mr. Haugh has actually run for this seat before, back in 2002, and his performance in that election, where he garnered a feeble 1.45% of the vote, have led some to dismiss his candidacy out of hand.
But that was then. The latest PPP poll shows Haugh in a strong third place, taking an incredible 11% in the polls. This is a 759% increase in support from his 2002 bid. Another 759% increase in Haugh’s support would put him in striking distance of victory.
Mr. Haugh says that if you want to vote for him too, “Go right ahead.” While he might not emerge victorious in November, he has already polled better than any Libertarian in the state’s history. For those who truly wish to buck the two-party system, Haugh could be a compelling alternative.
John Wynne is the “conservative voice” at PoliticsNC, where he also provides polling analysis and commentary on legislative campaigns. When not writing about politics, he enjoys gardening and listening to opera. Contact: johncwynne@gmail.com.
Sean Haugh is not taking any votes…..he is earning some, and some are gained simply because the other two candidates are absolutely horrible.
The disdain on both sides of the aisle is awarded to the now obvious futility of the dichotomy we are pushed into every year. That is their bed, not mine, and certainly not his.
More than ever, folks are realizing that this game of having only two players in musical chairs is not working.
Some of that disdain is deserved since libertarians are more conservative than conservatives except in the bedroom….
All this yo yo can do is take votes away from Tillis.. Voting for hims is brainless moral masturbation.
Votes cannot be “taken away” from a candidate because they don’t belong to them to begin with,but to the voters who cast them. I am a supporter of Sean Haugh and I assure you that Tillis, with his blatant social conservatism would not be getting my vote if Haugh wasn’t running. I am a libertarian, not a conservative!
Or, all that yoyo Tillis can do is take votes away from Haugh.
Haugh is the other option in the NC Senate Race. Tillis and Hagan both support endless wars, restrictions on the 2nd Amendment, banker bailouts, and more government. It is time to truly limit government, Vote Libertarian.
As a Libertarian about a Gold backed economy.
Should police be government or private business?
What about education?
Do you trust business to regulate the environment?
One debate and a competent opponent and any libertarian is DONE.
A gold-backed currency would not allow counterfeiters at the Federal Reserve to steal the wealth out of the pockets of the 99%.
Ideally, everything, even legal services and military defense, would be performed by competing private institutions.
We cannot trust government to regulate the environment. For example, they actually stopped lawsuits against Duke that were filed by citizens who tried to get them to clean up the coal ash before it spilled in the river.
One debate and a competent opponent and any statist is DONE.
If a Gold Backed currency is so awful awful evil evil evil evil, why does NO COUNTRY ON EARTH use it? I mean not one. Not even Libertarian heaven Somolia?
And of course we can’t trust the government to regulate the government to DO ANYTHING (except contracts and the military) right? Because ALL government is bad, no matter what!
Yeah, see, just because you drink the Libertarian cool aid doesn’t mean anyone else does. You keep thinking that if you can just speak your message enough times and loud enough, people will believe it….
It’s been a couple of decades now jack…and the tea party is closer than anyone has ever been to libertarian dogma…how popular are they again?
And whlie we’re at it…I don’t like a lot of what the Fed does, but could it be that the real reason you hate them is because they stopped the financial apocalypse caused by Market Fairy Capitalists that all the gold sellers and Libertarians were waiting for to prove “WE WERE RIGHT!”
RandGoldOwl