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Chase Oliver had to fit his Senate campaign into the spare hours he had left after two days of work. The 37-year-old runs the operation from his basement with four employees and the help of friends. Every Saturday morning for the past few months, he would wake up early, drive his battered Toyota Corolla to another neighborhood and start knocking on doors. Voters, he says, “were very happy to hear directly from a candidate — even if they didn’t vote for me.”
Almost 4 million Georgians voted on Tuesday. Most pick them for Senator Raphael Warnock or his celebrity rival, former football star Herschel Walker. And then there was the small but mighty segment of the electorate that stuck with the two-party system and threw its support behind Oliver, the libertarian candidate. In the end, he received just over two percent of the vote. Warnock, meanwhile, finished 0.6 percent short of the 50 percent he needed to avoid a runoff.
The rematch between Warnock and Walker is now scheduled for December 6. By forcing Warnock and Walker into a runoff, Oliver’s irreverent candidacy has already had a huge impact on the by-election. And with the ear of more than 80,000 Georgia voters, he may have even more influence to wield. Oliver isn’t endorsing either candidate—at least not yet. They suggested he put aside their insults and hold a forum with the two candidates for voters to hear their positions on issues like weed legalization and immigration reform. A rolling stone talk to him about how it feels to be the most influential libertarian in the United States this year.
You ran this campaign from your basement – how does it feel to have, quite possibly, decisive control of the Senate?
It is humbling to know that over 80,000 people have trusted this campaign. I am truly honored to have won their votes. The fact that I was able to do it on a shoestring budget shows how much discontent there is still with the two-party system.
How much did you spend?
I think we’re right around $10,000 total for the entire campaign. I would like to say that I took zero PAC money, unlike my opponents. And unlike my opponents, most of my funds actually came from the state.
I heard you describe yourself as a former Democrat – how did the Democrats lose you?
I started my political life as an anti-war activist after the Iraq war. I was a fervent supporter of Barack Obama in 2008 because he promised to close Guantanamo Bay. He said he would stop the Bush administration’s drone and war policies. And he really did none of those things – and still got the Nobel Peace Prize. This was very offensive to me. And what really bothered me was that the anti-war left that marched with me in the streets while Bush was president completely disappeared while Obama was president. That got me kicked out of the Democratic Party.
What did the libertarians win you over?
It was 2010. I was at Pride in Atlanta and the Libertarian Party of Georgia was at the Pride Festival. I started talking to them, and I found out that they’re a party that generally talks about peace and free markets and things like a balanced budget – which used to be something the Democrats stood for: Bill Clinton stood for a balanced budget in the 1990s, and that brought widespread prosperity and a growing middle class. libertarians preach this message of fiscal sanity as well as a different kind of foreign policy, social issues like immigration reform and gay rights. I felt I found a political home there.
You have a full-time job, right? It was almost like a side hustle for you. What did you hope to achieve with this campaign?
I have a full time job. I also have a side job. I work in HR for a security company in Washington State. I basically do job interviews and fill out HR paperwork all day.
I really wanted to make sure that people understood that we need to have more voting opportunities and more voices in the discourse because the two-party system is poisonous. We currently have two major parties that continue to pull each other more and more and come to ideological extremes. And that leaves many voters feeling unrepresented. And I wanted to provide a real opportunity for those voters. And I also wanted to highlight how structurally broken the United States Senate itself is, that even individual members don’t actually lead legislation. It is a basic guide that gives us thousands of pages where the bills are and they are voted on the next day. And that’s a real problem.
You are currently facing a lot of criticism for “ruining” this competition. How do you react to this?
Many people in this election have been spouting rhetoric about how we must preserve and save our democracy. The truth is: our democracy works better when we have more than two choices on the ballot. I don’t think people should be mad at me for providing another option. We have a runoff for this very reason.
As a libertarian, though, is it worth the money the government spends on a runoff election like this to you? Last time it was about $6.1 million in Fulton County alone.
First, I’m the only candidate in my election who actually came up with a solution to stop runoff spending in the future: ranked-choice voting. I spoke about this in my debate with Senator Warnock. His only solution was, if you don’t want a runoff, you should just go out and vote for me. I think that’s insulting to the independent voters out there who wanted to have another option. As for the trickle-down cost to the taxpayer, people say, “Well, those people who caused the runoff, they should pay for it. But the truth is that libertarians pay for the Republican and Democratic primaries every election, runoff or not, and we can’t participate. And that’s an immediate advantage for Republicans and Democrats. So I don’t feel bad about causing it – especially when the race libertarian is the only one offering the solution.
You ran on weed legalization, criminal justice reform, tax reform, gun rights, abortion rights — what issues do you most hope the candidates will take up in your absence?
Whoever represents Georgia in the United States needs to tackle comprehensive immigration reform because it’s something we’ve been discussing and debating since Ronald Reagan was president, and it hasn’t been done. We really need a bipartisan group of senators to come together to make immigration cheaper, more efficient, and simpler. And when it comes to justice reform, we really need to see an end to qualified immunity for law enforcement at the federal level so that states can follow suit.
You talked about organizing a forum where you would interview both candidates. I understand you’ve contacted both campaigns about this idea – have you heard back?
We sent an email before noon [on Thursday]. We have yet to hear back from either campaign. We will continue to reach out throughout [runoff] — I’m leaving the invitation until election day.
What were your impressions of Walker and Warnock as you campaigned against them?
I didn’t really focus on the individual campaigns too much as I was trying to make something of my own. I feel that Walker should have been in one of the debates – I would like to see him on the debate stage with myself and Senator Warnock. I felt he did his campaign a disservice by not showing up. At the same time, I also felt that Warnock did Georgia voters a disservice by basically ignoring his opponent on stage when we debated.
Which is worse – ignoring you in the eyes or refusing to discuss you at all?
Neither of them are very pleasant. But I think there’s something personal when someone stands a foot to the left and can’t look to the right for an hour. This is perhaps a little more personal. But I think both are disrespectful to the voters of Georgia. I can be disrespected in person, I don’t mind, I have a thick skin. But it bothers me when voters are disrespected.
Will you be voting in a runoff? For which?
I haven’t made up my mind yet. I’ll probably go out and vote. But I want to hear more from both candidates first before making a decision.
Who do you think your 80,000 voters will support? Do you have a prediction?
I’m predicting a high turnout for a runoff, that’s what I’m predicting. A lot of people will come out and vote. I can’t say who’s going to win because if you look at the exit polls for my supporters as to where they would go, it’s all over the place. It’s pretty evenly split who, ideologically, would have gone with the Democrats or the Republicans as the second choice. There’s also the factor: some libertarians simply won’t vote for a bipartisan candidate, they’re a smaller minority in that pool of voters. [But] this will also have an effect.
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