The truth, as usual, is somewhere in between. Besides getting his name on all 50 ballots–he’s currently excluded in West Virginia and Oklahoma–Barr’s goal is snag the support of 15 percent or more of registered voters and participate in this fall’s presidential debates. That’s unlikely to happen. One big reason: Ron Paul. With his cult-hero bid for the White House, Paul has done more this year than any of his predecessors to popularize Libertarian ideas–no foreign interventions, minimal government, a return to the gold standard. But the trouble is, he ran (and is still running) as a Republican, and shows no signs of abandoning his party. If Paul continues his campaign through the GOP convention, as he’s already promised, he’ll monopolize much of the newly-unleashed Libertarian energy–the record-breaking donations, the clever online organizing, the passionate activism–at least through September. At that point, he could (belatedly) pass the torch the torch to Barr. But Paul has shown little enthusiasm for his ostensible heir, and it’s unlikely that his followers, “many of them energized out of opposition to the war and apathetic about the Texas congressman’s other, non-cannabis-related libertarian views,” will abandon their guy for a relative unknown–especially an unknown who led the impeachment battle against Bill Clinton; supported militarizing the War on Drugs; authored and sponsored the Defense of Marriage Act; fought ardently for anti-choice measures; once pushed the Pentagon to outlaw the practice of minority religions in the armed forces; and was condemned in a series of 2002 TV ads as the worst sort of big-government authoritarian–by the Libertarian Party itself. No matter what happens with Paul, Barr’s going to have a tough time attracting the grass-roots and financial support necessary to reach double digits in the polls.
Except, perhaps, in his home state–and that could make all the difference. Last week, InsiderAdvantage unveiled a Peach State survey that–presuming Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee, and Barr as the Libertarian choice—showed John McCain at 45, Obama at 35 and Barr, who’s been a known quantity in Georgia for two decades, at a whopping eight percent of the vote. That might be enough to swing Georgia in Obama’s direction. When Reform Party candidate Ross Perot won nearly 14 percent of Georgia’s vote in 1992, Bill Clinton took the state, and even though Perot dropped to six percent four years later, it was still enough to keep Clinton within 1.2 percent of Republican rival Bob Dole. Of course, Clinton was a son of the South. But Obama has an advantage that his predecessor didn’t–unprecedented excitement among African-American voters. In Georgia’s Feb. 5 primary, black turnout rose to 536,000 from 289,000 in 2004. What’s more, the Obama campaign already has eight full-time staffers in Atlanta targeting the state’s 400,000 unregistered African-Americans–and they plan to keep the pressure on.
Elsewhere, this wouldn’t matter much. As Noah Millman of the American Scene has written, “even if [Obama] he gets record African-American turnout in states like Mississippi, Alabama and South Carolina, overwhelming white support for the GOP will make an Obama victory impossible.” But say Barr siphons off 10 percent of McCain’s support in Georgia. That’s will potentially put the state’s 15 electoral votes within Obama’s reach–and make his path to the White House a whole lot smoother. Instead of having to flip Ohio (or New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado) to reach 270, he’d only need to turn Iowa blue–a much easier proposition, considering his popularity there (and McCain’s lack thereof).
At last weekend’s Libertarian Convention in Denver, Barr told the crowd that he isn’t expecting to snatch the 2008 election from McCain’s eager grasp. “I do not view the role of the Libertarian Party to be a spoiler,” he said. “And I certainly have no intention of being a spoiler.” Most places, he’s probably right; he’ll be a nonentity. But in one state, at least, “spoiler” may be the part he was destined to play–and one state may be enough.
