In Boston trip, Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson puts the spotlight on running mate Bill Weld
Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson (left) and vice presidential candidate Bill Weld greet the crowd Saturday at a campaign rally in Boston.
It isn’t often that a presidential candidate refers to himself as the “lesser half” of the ticket.
But that’s exactly how Libertarian nominee and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson introduced himself before a campaign rally Saturday on Boston Common—just across the street from the old office of his running mate, former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld.
In what Weld called a “wonderful homecoming,” the two former Republican governors (“Honest Johnson” and “Brainy Bill,” as they would have you call them) addressed a crowd of enthusiastic supporters and curious passers-by from the steps of the Parkman Bandstand.
Johnson, who ran as the Libertarian nominee in 2012, and Weld said they’ve been “small-L libertarians” for years. And as the highest polling third-party presidential ticket in two decades, they’re looking to capitalize on an election cycle with historically unpopular major-party candidates. Johnson underscored the point with a line repeated both to media before the rally and during the rally itself.
“We agree 100 percent with both [Hillary] Clinton and [Donald] Trump on their number one issues,” Johnson said. “Clinton says ‘Don’t vote for Trump’ and Trump says ‘Don’t vote for Clinton.'”
For the Libertarians—having never topped 1 percent of the vote in a presidential election—actually challenging the Democratic and Republican “monopoly” would take a third-party campaign unprecedented in recent electoral politics.
Leslie Marshall, Bill Weld’s wife, introduces the two former governors on the Parkman Bandstand.
But Johnson and Weld think their socially inclusive, small-government platform has broad appeal, especially in the current hyper-partisan environment, which they described as having opened “a six-lane highway down the middle.” Recent polls show Johnson at about 9 percent.
Despite his position at the top of the ticket, Johnson was largely deferential to his running mate, as the duo finished a New England campaign swing in Weld’s home state.
“Beyond my wildest dreams, Bill Weld is my running mate—whew!” Johnson told the crowd, calling the former Bay State governor his “political role model.”
In turn, Weld was equally laudatory toward Johnson. But the pair has increasingly cast their candidacy as a partnership, as they look to woo discontent Republicans, who are mulling a check in the Libertarian box.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Maine Sen. Susan Collins, both of whom have sworn off Trump, have said they would be more likely to vote Libertarian if Weld was at the top of the ticket. Both expressed hesitation over Johnson’s support for legalizing recreational marijuana (a position Weld also holds).
“We are planning a partnership as president and vice president; I think it’s something unprecedented,” Johnson told reporters before the rally, adding that, if elected, they would not have separate presidential and vice presidential staffs. Weld compared the partnership to the one he had with his late lieutenant governor, Paul Cellucci, in the 1990s, except with the Massachusetts governor now in a supporting role.
The proposed partnership-presidency with the theme on reigning in budgets, as the bare-bones campaign traverses the country (the two friends stayed at Weld’s home in Canton on Friday night, where they played chess, and Johnson back-flipped off the swimming-pool diving board Saturday morning, according to Weld). If elected, Johnson said that frugality would extend to the White House.
As the Libertarian flag-bearer for two election cycles now, Johnson said his ideal of his small-government vision would be abolishing income and corporate taxes and replacing it with a federal consumption tax.
However, as both candidates emphasized, their top priority would be to introduce a balanced budget within 100 days of taking office.
Weld, who has not held back in his criticism of Trump, said he thinks the majority of the population agrees with the Libertarian platform, but he also noted one of the major roadblocks for their campaign: Most people still don’t even know enough about their candidacy to have an opinion of them, which makes it increasingly difficult to hit the 15-percentage point support threshold to be included in the presidential debates this fall.
But Johnson disabused the notion that they had “flattened” polls, saying the “consensus number” in the polls two months ago had them at five percent.
“Now the consensus number is 10,” he said, adding that some state polls had them as high as 16 percent. “We’re doubling like every three weeks.”
Johnson said they were now reaching 30 million people on social media. Jumping in, Weld referred to a recent Quinnipiac poll that found 62 percent of voters wanted Johnson to be included in the debates and slightly misquoted an Abraham Lincoln quote about the power of public opinion.
That opinion was the vast majority Saturday afternoon. Multiple times during the rally, chants of “Let Gary Debate” broke out from the crowd. The last third-party candidate to participate in a general election presidential debate was Ross Perot in 1992.
But, as Johnson noted Saturday, this election cycle has been unpredictable.
“As crazy as this election season is, we’re the next president and vice president,” he said. “That’s how crazy it is.”
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