WASHINGTON — Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson said he can pull votes away from both the Democrat and Republican contenders in the election once more Americans realize that they agree with many of his views.
“I’m trying to appeal to the majority of Americans whom I think are libertarian, it’s just that they don’t know it,” Johnson said on a CNN program broadcast Sunday. “And libertarian, with a broad brush stroke — fiscally conservative, socially-accepting liberal.”
Johnson, whose party has never won more than 1 percent of the vote in a presidential election, has surfaced as a third option at a time that presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton have high unfavorability ratings in polls and have faced stiff opposition from within their own parties.
A self-made millionaire, triathlete and former two-term Republican governor of New Mexico who climbed Mount Everest in 2005, Johnson, 63, secured the party’s nomination at its convention last week. William Weld, a former Republican governor from Massachusetts, is the Libertarian Party’s candidate for vice president.
About half of Americans are declare themselves independents when they register to vote, Johnson said. “It’s about a 50-50” in terms of how ideologically different he is from either Clinton or Trump, he said.
Johnson said his differences with the mainstream element within the Republican Party include his support for legalizing marijuana and ending “military interventions that, at the end of the day, make the world a less safe place.”
He said, though, that the Libertarian Party is not isolationist and favors a bigger role for Congress in decision-making regarding defense.
“Let’s use diplomacy to the hilt. Let’s involve Congress in declaration of war,” Johnson said. “Let’s involve Congress in how we move forward with regard to our military, something that they have completely abdicated to the executive and to the military.”
Johnson cited a long list of objections to Trump’s positions, including the idea of building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, and description of Mexicans as murderers and rapists “when in fact they’re law-abiding citizens, more law-abiding than U.S. citizens.”
While pointing out that he is “not advocating the legalization of any drugs outside of marijuana,” Johnson said the U.S. needs to change its approach and understand that 90 percent of the drug problem is related to prohibition, not drug use. Decriminalizing the use of other drugs would be a step in that direction, he said.
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